By Deirdre Cunniffe
Editors: Elim Chan and Alloe Mak

Dear… Dad?

I’m not entirely sure how to address you. My sister, mom, and I have always called you ‘the Donor Dude,’ but I don’t think that’s a necessarily appropriate face-to-face title. And of course, I don’t know your name. For my whole life, you’ve been nothing but a file—pieces of information on charts and fill-in spaces on cold paperwork. There was a baby picture too. Mamma says that I looked a little like you. I don’t know how much I see it. I’ve always been my mother’s daughter; after all, it’s the only thing I could be. My family sees me as a tiny copy of her. I’m not so tiny anymore though. I’m 5’7 and 17 years old. I’ll be able to vote in less than a year. I’ve started saving up for the first tattoo I plan on getting the moment I turn 18. The one mamma says she doesn’t entirely approve of, but admits her own thoughts don’t matter since it’s not her body. She’s always been fair like that. Four whales on the side of my hip and outer thigh. One for me, one for my sister, one for mamma, and one for our dog, Finn. I feel bad telling you about it; you’re not included. But to be fair, you weren’t there on the endless whale watches that inspired the tattoo; the ones in northern Maine that mamma makes us go on every year. I don’t know if you’ve ever been whale watching, but it’s six hours long. If you get motion sick or are afraid of deep water, I wouldn’t recommend it. We are a saltwater family, though. It’s supposedly a flip of the coin whether the watch will result in anything. But every time I’ve gone, I’ve seen whales. Mamma thinks there might be a little bit of magic in that. I know there’s a little bit of magic in that. Fionnula (my sister) doesn’t care about whales enough to have opinions about the magic in whale watching.

We can learn a lot from whales, Dad. The paperwork said you were a scientist pursuing a PhD in engineering. It’s one of the reasons my mother picked you; she was always more of the English, liberal arts type. The word “pick” makes things sound so clinical. Frankly, they were. It was simply just finding the outcome that would result in the healthiest kids for my mom. You were just another tube and file. I don’t think I really recognized you as a person until my later teens. I just never really thought about it.

I feel bad about it sometimes. Half the time, I feel bad about not thinking about you as a person, not feeling the missing presence in my life, not seeing the things that you might have given me, and not acknowledging you as the other half that was necessary to create my life. The other half of the time, I feel bad about acknowledging you. My mamma has done everything she could possibly do to give me a better life than I could imagine. She’s raised me to be the woman I am today. She gave me my empathy and my eyes. I’ve never needed anyone but the ones who have been there, never considered nature nearly as important as nurture. I never needed you.

I don’t resent you, dad. Really, I don’t. Maybe I would if I felt like something was missing, but there was never anything to be missing at all. My mother didn’t even know you; you were a choice out of thousands. You have no obligation to me, nor I to you. My mamma is the greatest role model in my life, and my family is full, loving, and steadfast.

Sometimes, though, I wonder where I get my blonde hair. Everyone in my family is naturally brunette. Even my cousins who were born with blondish hair have faded to light brown, and taken up the practice of highlighting and dying it, like our mothers did. I’ve done the same; not blonde, but every other color under the sun. Purple, gray, red, blue, and green. You name it, I’ve done it. But naturally, my hair is a dark honey blonde. No one else has a shade near that. The paperwork says you do, though. The baby pictures show someone with wild blonde waves and a smile that looks shockingly like mine, paired with ears that are larger than normal that I recognize in myself. I grew into mine, and I guess I have you to thank. They’re perfect for piercings. I have studs in my cartilage on both sides and three piercings up and down each lobe. Mamma won’t let me get my septum pierced while I’m still not a legal adult. Maybe I would have been able to convince you. When I stare at myself in the mirror and worry my eyebrows together, when I smile and the corners of my mouth move in unfamiliar ways, when I clench my jaw and the line is sharper in wild comparison to my rounder face, and when I look at things I can’t recognize from the rest of my family, I think of you. I wonder if you would see it too. If you would be proud to see parts of yourself reflected within me.

I’m scared, dad. I’m not scared of a lot of things; spiders are the only big one really. Inexplicable, acute fear of spiders. I think they have far too many legs. What do they need all of them for? And I’m scared of not being enough. I shouldn’t need anyone else’s approval, I have my family who have watched me grow, my friends who are there, who have been there the whole time, and people I love who have been in my life for years. I shouldn’t need a stranger’s approval. But somehow, it seems different. I don’t talk about it to people normally because it’s hard to understand, hard to explain that I care about someone who doesn’t know I exist. It’s easy to say that when situations are different. I have friends who compare their complex, difficult relationships with their fathers to mine. I can’t explain how it’s different. In those moments, they wish they didn’t have a dad. They resent their fathers. I don’t resent you. I never, ever have.

Just because I don’t need something, doesn’t mean I don’t necessarily want it. My mother, my family, my friends. They’ll always be enough. I’ll never need anything more than them. But sometimes I find myself wanting approval from the person who gave me my smile. Pride from someone who pulls the same faces and holds their chin the same way. And I’m afraid I wouldn’t be enough sometimes, but somehow, I don’t think you’d ever be disappointed in me. Sometimes I want a dad. Sometimes I want to not feel a little weird about Father’s Day. Sometimes I want to not feel alone. It’s not that not having you around has made me lonely; it’s that I feel alone in my situation. When I want to reach out, to talk to someone who understands exactly what’s going on, there’s no one at the other end of the line. When I think about going to my friends I realize that they wouldn’t know. When I realize that I have no one whose situation matches mine I feel deeply, deeply alone. And it scares me. Maybe if you were around I wouldn’t have to feel alone.

Sometimes when I stand on stages where audiences’ faces are blurred, I imagine somewhere out there, the origin of my smile, my stubborn pride, my laugh line in strange places, is watching. I hope you’re proud of me, dad. I love you, in the way that you can love a stranger and the ways you love the ones closest to you.

Sincerely,
Your Daughter