On Saint Patrick’s Day sixteen years ago, towards the end of a busy workday, my mother busted me for frozen sperm. I was moving around a lot at the time and had had all my mail forwarded to her house. If there is one thing that my retired librarian mother was good at, it was keeping track of things. So, I get this email from her, quite different from her usual updates (for example, she inexplicably sent my brother and I detailed records of everything that she ate). She had meticulously typed out the entire contents of a document that had come for me in the mail, including a typo and the return address. It was a bill for the annual storage costs of a fairly large batch of frozen sperm. I had forgotten to contact them to change my mailing address to a friends, and my mother was now in possession of a highly incriminating document, and worst of all I had no one to blame but myself. Merde.

My staff were asking me all sorts of questions about a project, I’m trying to act normal, and stare at the computer screen trying to figure out how on earth to respond. Total blank, and I’d promised my running club to get to an Irish pub early and hijack a big table for everyone. I decided to reply to my mother when I got home that evening, as if I didn’t already know exactly what kind of shape I’d be in after a Saint Patrick’s Day pub crawl with the guys. So, there I am parked at a huge empty table, with a cold Guinness and an extraordinarily awkward email to answer. The running club guys trickle in as they get off work and then finally, at last another woman shows up. Psst! Holly! I need to talk to you NOW! And go on to explain that my mother has busted me for a stash of frozen sperm (who, helpfully, I’ve nicknamed Ace for “ace in the hole”). “Oh!” she squeaks. “Oh oh oh oh! These are Modern Girl Problems. You need another drink.” I knew Holly would say just the right thing. We go back to the table where I’m well on the way to being a drunken deer in the headlights, and Holly cracks up hysterically every time she glances my way. The runner guys are far too intent on their holiday festivities to notice that I’m a zombie and Holly is acting like a loon. These guys actually downed a pitcher that a non-English-speaking, utterly clueless teenaged sister-of-the-bartender who had come in to “help” that evening had greenified by pouring in a bunch of crème de menthe syrup. (She seriously thought she was being helpful and following directions.) In case you are wondering, peppermint beer is every bit as vile as it sounds.

Okay, so now it’s 11, I’m actually not too worse for the wear, and I have an email to answer. How, I don’t know, but whatever. So I get home and…. I’ve managed to lose my keys, and my housemate Lisa isn’t home, nor is she answering her phone. Oh yeah, this night is getting better and better. I literally have nowhere to go but to a party and further celebrate the night when my people behave badly. Lisa is totally incommunicado, but other friends are there who respond to my crisis by laughing like hyenas and buying me more drinks. I’m feeling very off by this point as I can’t get this horrid minty coating out of my throat. TOM! Tom is here! Tom has a lovely home with a beautiful guestroom, and of course I can stay in it tonight until I can get a hold of Lisa or the landlord and get new keys. I feel immensely relieved, especially as Tom is well into his 50s with a high-powered corporate job that he certainly needs to be at the next day in a well-rested state. I happily assume that soon I will be in his lovely guestroom, sleeping soundly, and preparing to explain to my mother that ummm, yeah, in fact I do own a bunch of anonymous iced sperm, but then I started dating someone talked me out of it at least for now, but uh yeah that’s the plan if things don’t work out, and really this is a good idea, Mom.

Unfortunately, I had made yet another very bad error of judgment that evening. Remember Tom, the guy I thought was too old and corporate to be out late drinking on a work night? Well, it was Saint Patrick’s Day and Tom is……. Australian. Of Irish descent.

Somewhere around 3 AM Tom is still putting back pitchers of Guinness, and I finally manage to get a hold of Lisa to let me into the apartment. Tom can’t figure out why on earth I would want to leave so early. Meanwhile, the entire party has been gleefully drafting increasingly inappropriate responses to my mother’s email for hours, and at least one person was choreographing an Irish jig / interpretive dance of my dilemma. I go home, Lisa lets me in, and I turn off my phone and collapse into bed.

Morning comes. On autopilot while waiting for coffee to brew oh-so-painfully slowly, and before even showering I check my email. My computer was set to automatically log me into skype, and before the screen even brightened my mother was calling me on it. She had clearly been parked in front of the computer, staring at it unmoving, like a cat when there is a mouse behind the kitchen cupboard, waiting for my login so that she could POUNCE. And there I was onscreen, stumbling with a raging hangover, hair like a hornet’s nest and that special slept-in-smudged-mascara look. I think she could actually smell the stale mint beer on my breath over the internet. We are talking the model of responsible single motherhood here.

Becoming an SMC is an enormous decision that no one takes lightly; it is one born, so to speak, by the deepest of soul searches and painful stocktaking of your life, your options, your dreams, and your beliefs about yourself and others. And unlike for heterosexual married couples, it is not a decision that is automatically celebrated by others. How and when to tell your family about your decision to pursue this extraordinary path is sensitive, often loaded, and approached delicately. All of the SMC books discuss this at length, and it’s an endless topic of discussion on the members-only forum. My example is how not to go about it.

And here I am, sixteen years later, parenting a red-headed teenager conceived by that anonymous Irish donor I bought online. My mom, to my endless sorrow, died of Covid – but yes, she did eventually come around and my little girl was the light of her life. I am so very grateful to have been part of the first generation of women with both the technology and the social space to purse single motherhood on my own with integrity.

~ Colleen

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