You Know… I’m An Artist!

So many people ask how you go about choosing a sperm donor. It’s simple really, like shopping for a bathing suit in a catalogue. You scan the pictures and see if one captures your eye. When it does, you stop and read the fine details. If you like what you read, you fold the corner of the page over. Then you go back, have a closer look and decide.

But with a bathing suit, it’s one season really. If you pick the wrong one, you can try and pawn it off on someone, or just wear it when no one will see you, like the sauna at the gym? When you’re picking a sperm donor, it’s life baby. You can’t return it. You can’t just wear it for one season.

I was incredibly lucky with my donor. Boom. First try. I also feel really lucky with him because as Will is getting older, I’m seeing that the things that drew me to him in the first place seem to be shining through.

Specifically, the kid, by his own description, ‘is an artist’. The donor I chose is an artist – cartoonist, glass blower – not an athlete.

Tomorrow, Will is giving ‘a workshop on how to draw Pacman. Because it’s really easy Mom and not everyone can do it.’ He’s making a sign up sheet and they’re setting up a table for him to teach at. When you leave his class, you see his current artwork hanging on the wall with his explanation on it. Then you could come home to see his poster that he’s working on or his portfolio of super heroes that he’s created and named.

This is fascinating to me to watch. A babysitter taught me how to draw Fred Flintstone once and I can whip that off to this day…but that’s it. We are a family of analytics and athletes. We can organize, break 80 on a golf course and win at Words With Friends. What we can’t do is draw a picture. Of any kind. Ever. My step-mother is an artist and my step-brother a photographer. So now we can add Will to the list of artists in the family, just the first with our genes.

I always thought I wanted to be that hockey mom in the rink at 7am on a Saturday. But I chose Will’s donor because of the fact that he was an artist. I guess I knew what I really wanted…even if I didn’t want to admit it. More and more I know, I folded the right corner down in that ‘catalog’.

*I should add, I’m not saying the kid is the next Monet (because let’s be serious…my nose doesn’t look like that!) but man do I love his passion! Like really, really love it.