In the beginning of their nearly 40 year relationship, it was a struggle for Colette to come to terms with being in a relationship with Laura -- because she was a woman. And then after being together for a couple years, the relationship got easier and Colette told Laura that she really wanted to have children. But the idea of having kids also made Colette aware that her relationship would be even more in the limelight. And she wanted to be honest with her children and herself.
In the beginning of their nearly 40 year relationship, it was a struggle for Colette to come to terms with being in a relationship with Laura -- because she was a woman. And then after being together for a couple years, the relationship got easier and Colette told Laura that she really wanted to have children. But the the idea of having kids also made Colette aware that her relationship would be even more in the limelight. And she wanted to be honest with her children and herself.
Laura felt that "it was just an amazing stroke of luck that we had twins and it was really kind of wild because here we were two lesbians having a kid which would seemed wild enough but then it was twins and that just in some ways took the onus off the lesbian part because that's exciting in and of itself."
This is the fifth chapter of a big story that takes up most of Rashomon Season 2. You will hear multiple families telling every side of multiple stories, all having to do with the early days of sperm banks and how it effected the lives of the families that used them. From Season 2, Episode 2 onward, it is important to listen to them in order to get the full story.
Before you listen to this one, listen to:
S2E02: Sharon and Sammy
S2E03: Emily, Cathy and Nancy
S2E04: Cara, Susan and Carol Ann
and
S2E05: Sammy, Emily and Cara
Rashomon is produced and hosted by Hillary Rea
Thank you to Laura Gold, Colette Doyle, Matthew Doyle and Rebecca Doyle.
And a HUGE thank you to Anny Celsi for recording everyone in California. I accidentally left Anny out of the end credits of the show and feel terrible about it. Anny, I'm sorry! Please visit her website to learn about her music and her radio work!
Music in this episode is by Paul Defiglia
Podcast artwork is by Thom Lessner
Theme music is by Ryan Culinane courtesy of the Free Music Archive
This episode of Rashomon is sponsored by Care/of. Head to https://takecareof.com/ and enter the code RASHOMON25 to get 25% your first order of vitamins, supplements and protein powders.
Rashomon is an independent podcast. Become a supporting member of this podcast over on Patreon: https://patreon.com/rashomonpod
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Hillary [00:00:09] You are listening to Rashomon, a podcast where one family tells every side of the same story, and I'm your host, Hillary Rea. And in this season, there's more than one family telling every side of more than one story. Now, this episode builds upon the last four episodes of this season, so make sure that you go back and listen to them all if you haven't already. And now here's Rebecca, Matthew, Collette and Laura.
Hillary [00:00:42] At the end of the last episode, we found out that Emily and Sammy and Kara had two more siblings, a set of twins. And this set of twins also grew up just outside of Boston with their moms, Laura and Colette.
Laura [00:00:55] My name is Laura Gold.
Colette [00:00:56] My name is Colette Doyle.
Laura [00:00:58] And right now I'm in Santa Monica, California,
Colette [00:01:00] And I live in Santa Monica, California. After many years growing up on the East Coast, New York, Virginia and Massachusetts.
Laura [00:01:07] But I grew up in Concord, Massachusetts, and lived in the Boston area except for when I was at college. So I'm basically a New England girl, but also my parents and all my relatives were from New York. The New York socialist Jewish type.
Hillary [00:01:23] And Laura ended up going to New York for college. She went to Sarah Lawrence. And when she was a junior there, she realized she was gay.
Laura [00:01:31] And when I say I realized, I. I mean, I had no real consciousness of being gay, although once I realized I was gay, all of a sudden, you know, all the feelings I had had for other people throughout my life came flooding through me. So I realized that I had always sort of known I was gay, or at least I had feelings of that nature. And the first thing I thought of practically when I came out was, who cares if I'm gay? It's not like I'm going to have kids or anything.
Hillary [00:02:02] Laura didn't have a strong desire to have kids, and she knew that she definitely did not want to be pregnant because mental illness ran in her family.
Laura [00:02:10] Plus, I'm neurotic and a lot less so now. But at that time, I just thought not a good fit for being pregnant.
Hillary [00:02:18] on the opposite end of things, Colette knew very early on that she did want to have children.
Colette [00:02:23] It was very important to me.
Hillary [00:02:25] Colette was one of eight children and she grew up in a very loving Catholic family.
Colette [00:02:30] But what came with that was my own struggles about being gay. And most of my relationships were with men. And I had a relationship with a woman in 1979, which was a shock to me, and then something that I tried to put away in my brain.
Hillary [00:02:52] Colette had been teaching in Ecuador at the time, and then she became involved in a born again Christian church, pushing aside that relationship.
Colette [00:03:00] And thought I had finished with that part of my life.
Hillary [00:03:04] For Laura, coming out at Sarah Lawrence College was the most wonderful and open environment that she could have hoped for.
Laura [00:03:11] And I once I came out to myself, I was pretty much out to almost everyone, not at work for a number of years. But, you know, all my friends and family and everything,
Hillary [00:03:21] Colette had a different experience.
Colette [00:03:24] I had several experiences where people weren't particularly supportive and loving upon hearing that I was in a relationship with a woman. And so I basically was very careful about who I told. And I don't like the word gay. You know, when you grow up and you don't know any people who are gay and you are realizing that that's who you are, it's hard. It's it's different. It's I mean, obviously, it's a lot different now than, you know, almost 40 years ago. But it was my own discomfort and my own homophobia. I just had a negative connotation with the word. It frequently would be used in a derogatory way. People would be name calling. And I don't like labels. It never really tells who a person is.
Hillary [00:04:21] When Laura and Colette first met, Laura shared right away that she had been in a previous relationship with a woman.
Colette [00:04:28] We were having lunch together out at a restaurant and I just started crying because I thought, oh, here I go again, because I already knew that I really liked her a lot.
Hillary [00:04:37] And this brought back Collette's own experience that she had tried to move on from. But that day marked the beginning of their relationship
Laura [00:04:45] And it took her around six or seven years before she felt comfortable deciding that she wanted to be with me the rest of her life. There was never a question of compatibility or love, but just a question of whether she really wanted to live out her life as a lesbian.
Colette [00:05:01] I am with a woman. I love her. I had nice relationships with men also. I don't consider myself bi. Laura is the only one I want to be with.
Hillary [00:05:11] But in the beginning it felt like a struggle for Colette. And then after being together for a couple of years, the relationship got easier. And Colette told Laura that she really wanted to have children. But then the idea of having kids also made Colette aware that her relationship would be even more in the limelight. And she wanted to be honest with her children and herself.
Colette [00:05:32] And I was, you know, strict with myself about I'm going to be honest, I'm not hiding this. I don't want them growing up feeling that I'm thinking I'm ashamed of myself. So that was a real challenge for me. But I pretty much, I think, stuck to that as far as I've never lied about my sexuality, but I don't volunteer it unless I feel safe or if someone asks me how my husband is or who my husband is, I am always honest. But that was one big difference between Laura and I in terms of that. And I admire her for how open she is and how wonderful she is.
Hillary [00:06:15] So Laura and Colette were seriously talking about having kids.
Colette [00:06:19] You know, that was part of why I really never wanted to live a gay lifestyle, because I really didn't think parenting would be possible.
Hillary [00:06:26] In the late 80s. Laura and Collette came across a few documentaries that featured women couples from the Boston area raising children together.
Colette [00:06:33] But then these movies, we saw them and we thought, oh, this is possible.
Hillary [00:06:38] So they did a bit of research and went to an information session at Fenway Medical Center. And they were basically presented with two options.
Colette [00:06:46] There was one where you could order frozen sperm and you could actually choose ethnicity, race, etc..
Laura [00:06:54] You know, there was the San Francisco sperm bank where you could really know exactly, you know, what you were getting, but you had to inseminate yourself. They would send it to you and it had to be in dry ice and then you had to figure it out yourself.
Colette [00:07:09] And then we learned about this medical center in Cambridge. That was a very small practice that would offer what they called fresh sperm. So the donors would be people known to them. There was no, you know, selecting what race, what ethnicity, what profession the person has or whatever.
Laura [00:07:28] And I had been going there to get my gynecological care. And anyway, they just were sort of cutting edge. They used fresh sperm, which no one would ever do now, and they just used their friends basically. So it was it was you know, we decided to go with that. I don't know now I wouldn't. But that's what we did then.
Colette [00:07:49] So anyway, that was our our path. And we were very lucky with our insemination process because it was the third try. I'm not really sure. I don't remember what word to use to describe it. But the third time it worked and we were so excited, we had the pregnancy test and we were so beside ourselves when we saw that it turned pink. And we we must have done it every day until the kit had run out because we just wanted to make sure.
Hillary [00:08:27] Six weeks into her pregnancy, Colette felt like something wasn't right. She thought she had miscarried, so she went to the hospital.
Colette [00:08:34] I was in the sonogram area and the technician looked at the screen and said, oh, I see the twin gestational sacs. And at that point, I became catatonic. I was so afraid. I thought, what twins? You know, that was such a total shock.
Laura [00:08:52] And I think she vomited then. But that's because she had terrible morning sickness with twins in particular. So it was we must have laughed. It just seemed so unbelievable and so great.
Hillary [00:09:04] And the greatness continued. Laura remembers Colette's pregnancy as, in her words, great.
Laura [00:09:10] She was made to be pregnant.
Colette [00:09:12] Laura was amazing. It was as if she were pregnant, too. I had breakfast, served to me in bed every morning, a hot breakfast. She would pack my lunch and a snack for when I went to work for every day I came home, I would listen to a meditation tape, take a nap. She would serve me dinner in bed. So, you know, it was like a sabbatical.
Hillary [00:09:34] It felt like a sabbatical. But Colette worked pretty much up until the kids were born. She gave birth to a boy and a girl. Matthew and Rebecca.
Colette [00:09:44] It was the beginning of our journey. We really didn't know what we were doing as new moms of babies. All we knew was we wanted them. We loved them and we wanted to have a nice life with them.
Laura [00:09:55] It was just an amazing stroke of luck that we had twins. It was really kind of wild because here we were two lesbians having a kid, which seemed wild enough, but then it was twins and that just in some ways took the onus off the lesbian part because that's exciting in and of itself.
Hillary [00:11:58] Growing up, Matthew loved having a twin sister, and as adults, it's still something he loves.
Matthew [00:12:05] We kind of both got to grow up at the same time and as we get older, we, you know, have a close relationship. She's interesting to kind of go through life with her. I remember years ago I would start to feel kind of weird and then I would call Rebecca. I'm like, are you OK? Like, I was feeling something and she was feeling something, even though we were in different parts of the state.
Hillary [00:12:30] Rebecca and Matthew both live in California now, both not too far from their moms. But as kids they grew up in Newton, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. And growing up, the idea of being a kid at school that was sharing a grade with their twin was something that could have potentially drawn a lot of attention from their classmates. But Rebecca doesn't remember anyone making a big deal about it.
Rebecca [00:12:51] My brother and I were always in separate classes. I guess the teachers knew that we were twins. I don't even know. In middle school we were in some of the same classes and high school we were in the same classes, too. And some students did have some questions. They asked us if we were fraternal or identical, which is kind of weird because he's a boy.
Hillary [00:13:09] Rebecca didn't have much interaction with kids in school about being a twin, but she does remember being teased about having two moms.
Rebecca [00:13:17] I didn't realize that my family was any different than a quote unquote, traditional family until I started kindergarten. That was when the bullying started. That was when students were like, why don't you have a father? Where is your father? Why do you have two moms? Up until that point, it never crossed my mind.
Hillary [00:13:36] In daycare and then in preschool, Rebecca and Matthew were accepted just fine.
Rebecca [00:13:41] I don't know particularly why it was in kindergarten, but that's when it did start. My brother and I always knew that we had two moms and we never questioned it.
Hillary [00:13:51] Until the kids started asking them about it at their new school. And then they started to think...
Rebecca [00:13:57] Yeah, why don't we have a father.
Hillary [00:14:00] Regardless of the kids at school teasing her about having two moms. The absence of a male figure was never an issue.
Rebecca [00:14:07] Up until this day, I love both my parents and I never, ever, not once was angry at them that I don't have a father at all. I just love my family the way we are.
Matthew [00:14:19] My first memory, um, it was about fourth grade, I remember my classmates were asking me how is possible that I didn't have a father. I remember explaining to them I was like, well, you know, I had a sperm donor. I don't really think I understood what that meant at that age. But I knew the story. You know, it definitely was different, but I never saw it as really like a disadvantage.
Rebecca [00:14:47] I guess growing up, it was an issue on school forms and they would ask for like a mother's name and then a father's name. That was a situation where I felt very different from my peers because I would always cross off father and write mother. And in elementary school we did arts and crafts a lot and we did it for Mother's Day and for Father's Day. So it was always very awkward. And the teacher, would always be like, oh, you can just do one for your mother. It's OK.
Hillary [00:15:18] Rebecca and Matthew seem to be well-adjusted all on their own, but at the same time, Laura and Colette's parenting style was to be open and honest about how they were conceived.
Laura [00:15:27] You know, we didn't want it to be like we're sitting down to tell you something. We always said we had a really nice man help us out. And that person is your biological father. And when you know you're older, if you want to meet him, you'll be able to.
Hillary [00:15:44] And even with that knowledge and that choice, Laura doesn't remember her kids being all that interested in finding out more.
Laura [00:15:52] If it had been me, I think maybe my personality, just because I'm a very curious person. And I might have said, well, what do you mean, how did that happen? But no, they were very accepting. They still are.
Colette [00:16:04] We always from the beginning told them the story about that. We had a donor who helped us have them. We've always been very open with them about sex and life.
Matthew [00:16:14] I mean, of course, you know, from seeing all the other families around being a mother and a father, I was always curious on who the donor was. Pretty much throughout my whole childhood. I really wanted to meet him.
Rebecca [00:16:28] Honestly, I didn't really have an interest. I guess I was just so comfortable with my family that I never thought about it at all, really. I mean, we knew that when we turned 18 that we would have the option to contact him. Laura was definitely an advocate for that, and she worked really hard for my brother and I to be able to have access to the donor information when we turned 18.
Hillary [00:16:54] Laura had always wanted the donor of their children to be a yes donor, meaning it would always be an option for the kids to reach out when they were of legal age. And when she and Colette first went to Woman Care, the clinic in Cambridge, the midwife who was in charge of everything said that theirs was a yes donor.
Laura [00:17:11] She told me at that time, yes, the donor agrees, and I had contacted an attorney who said she'd be happy to write up the form and get it all set. And this woman at Woman Care never followed up for a number of years, even though I called her quite consistently to say, could you or would you? And and she'd always say, yeah, yeah, we're going to do that. Yeah, yeah, we're going to do that. And then finally, she tried to I'll say what I felt was extort a little money from us, which I might have been willing to pay if I had totally trusted her. But I didn't. By this time, she had left Woman Care and she took all the information with her. It was a big saga. And finally it got resolved with me being kind of threatening to Woman Care. I worked with this lovely woman who helped me get it all resolved but it was it was no joke.
Hillary [00:18:06] Laura grew increasingly frustrated with the midwife.
Laura [00:18:09] She was just not a nice person. Plus, when she left Woman Care, she not only took all the information, which why should she you know, it was from Woman Care. She also had it all in code so that even if she had left it, they wouldn't have been able to decipher it. I won't say her name, but I had such a struggle with her through the years and left such a bad taste in my mouth. She's the only person I reserved for, you know, not forgiven in my life because she just made life difficult.
Hillary [00:18:54] Eventually, there was confirmation that their donor was indeed a yes donor,
Colette [00:18:59] but as they approached 18, Rebecca wasn't I don't know if she didn't have an interest or was a little nervous about it, I'm not sure. But Matthew definitely wanted to find out who the donor was. And he made the first contact.
Laura [00:19:12] So he called woman care and he got the information, but truthfully didn't seem very interested. And we were like, well, we have the information. If you want to do it, you can.
Matthew [00:19:22] By the time I was 18, you know, I was kind of ready to start my life, leave high school, go to college. So I kind of just wanted to focus on myself. So at that point in my life, meeting him wasn't the biggest priority. I still wanted to. But, you know, I was I was ready to start college. I was ready to kind of just move forward with my own life.
Hillary [00:19:46] Matthew made the choice to not do anything with his donors information, but Colette and Laura took what little info he had to find out some information on their own.
Colette [00:19:55] But obviously, we were not going to contact him with the kids how to make that move. But, of course, we looked on the Internet, you know, looked where he lived, zoomed in on where he was living and the whole thing, and learned as much about him as possible. But, you know, still hadn't met him.
Hillary [00:20:12] And then everyone just kind of moved on.
Matthew [00:20:27] I remember thinking about growing up with two mothers, and as I got older, I didn't really care that I didn't have a father. It was kind of like as long as I had two parents who loved me, I really didn't see a purpose in having a father. You know, of course, as a young boy, I did look for a male figure and I didn't necessarily have one in the household. But, you know, as I kind of got older, I learned to be who I wanted to be. And in a way, it was kind of good because I didn't have anyone wanting me to be like them. I was kind of like, I got to create whoever I wanted to be.
Rebecca [00:21:09] So one question I got asked growing up a lot was what is it like to have two moms? And I was never able to answer that question because it's all I've ever known. It's like me asking someone who grew up with a mom and a dad. What's it like growing up with a mom and a dad? Would they have the answer for that or is it just because it's so normal for them? Everyone has a different family. When they first started asking, I really didn't know how to respond because it really is all I've ever known. I didn't know what they were getting at. Now, looking back on it as an adult, I know. And they were trying to ask, like, why are you different than me? The first time I was asked it, I was like, um good? I just didn't know what to say.
Matthew [00:22:06] You always hear stories about people not having a good relationship with their parents or seeing movies where the kids don't get along. You know, it's for us the dynamic is, you know, we're just very open, honest family. And there's really no, like, harsh feelings towards each other. We're just very honest and respectful. And I think, Laura and Colette really created a great foundation for us.
Colette [00:22:34] Matthew and Rebecca are just amazing people, very kind and very hard working. And I admire them a lot. And a lot of that has to do with Laura creating an atmosphere of openness and honesty and me learning from that, too, and the four of us just kind of growing together.
Hillary [00:22:56] A year or so passes and the family moves forward without much thought around contacting the donor, and then one day Laura was reading...
Laura [00:23:05] People magazine. And, you know, I don't know if you recall that movie, The Kids Are All Right with Annette Bening. It was a horrible movie.
Hillary [00:23:13] The Kids Are All Right was a movie about a lesbian couple and their children meeting their sperm donor and forming a relationship with him.
Laura [00:23:21] So anyway, there was an article in People magazine and you know how sometimes they have like an article and then they have a little sidebar and they had something called The Real Kids are All Right.
Hillary [00:23:33] And there was a picture of a young woman with her sperm donor.
Laura [00:23:36] And I said to Colette, that's the guy, that's him.
Hillary [00:23:40] Laura saw his name printed in the article and remembered it from the info that Matthew received from Woman Care.
Laura [00:23:47] But we still knew the name. We just hadn't contacted him. So then when I saw his name in People magazine, I was like, that's the guy. That's Gerald.
Hillary [00:23:59] And what happens next, you'll find out in the next episode.
Hillary [00:24:09] Rashomon is produced by me, Hilary Rea. Music in this episode is by Paul Defiglia, theme music is by Ryan Cullinane, courtesy of the Free Music Archive. Podcast artwork is by Thom Lessner. Please consider supporting the podcast over on Petrean and become a member, and you will get a monthly behind the scenes newsletter as well as bonus audio. Please subscribe to the show on Apple podcasts or follow the show on Spotify or just listen to it on your favorite podcast player and share it with a friend. You can stay up to date with the show over on Instagram and Twitter. And we have a website. Thanks so much for listening. And we'll be back in two weeks with the next episode.