I grew up in an upper-class suburban family. We did all the things that I thought everyone did. Family trips, social gatherings, church on Sunday. I attended private schools as did everyone I knew. My parents were very social which taught me to be as well. We had block parties and theme parties, social events with friends for church, our club and from school. My mom was a great cook, so most events centered around great meals.

At some point in my early teens or possibly earlier I realized that I was different than my friends. They were interested in girls; yet I was interested in them. It is a confusing and scary time for a youth at this age to go through. You feel all alone and think you are the only one that feels this way. I wanted to be like my friends, and tried but could not change my feelings.

I tried not to think about it, but the thoughts always came back. Why am I different? Why can’t I be like everyone else in my town. When you grow up a certain way you think that you will have the same thing when you are older. I wanted the same things that I had and grew up with because that was normal and how I was taught.

I looked up to my dad as a boy and often thought I will be the same kind of man he is, only better. The few things I did not get from him that were important to me I would change, and I would be that father to my children. But there was a big problem. I was gay. How can a gay man be a father and a great Dad to his children?

I tried dating girls because that was what everyone else did and I wanted to be the same and saw myself as a family man. I had girlfriends but at the same time I had a boyfriend on the side. Not an honest way to live. I realized that I did not have a problem with being gay, my problem was with not being a father.

I started to give up on trying to pretend that I was straight in my mid 20s. I was having a lot of fun at the time. When I was just turning 30, I met a man that I started seeing. After some time together I told him that I always wanted to be a father, and he said he did also. We waited several years before deciding to pursue a way to have children. At the time it was very difficult. Gay men were not allowed to adopt children. The only way to be a father was through surrogacy. Surrogacy was fairly new and there were stories circulating at the time about women who changed their mind after giving birth as a surrogate. After researching what was best for us, we ended up going with an agency that provided a surrogate and a separate egg donor, so the surrogate was not biologically related to the child. The courts always sided with the biological parent. Everything worked out very well for us. On the first try we got pregnant with twins.

Our daughters were born on Christmas Eve, in Pasadena California, the city I grew up in and where I had all those confusing thoughts about being a gay and being a father.

In California, a birth certificate is printed with the headings Mother and Father. We hired an attorney that found a California superior court judge that was willing to have the names on the blank certificates changed to Parent and Parent so the two of us could be on our daughter’s birth certificates when issued. We were the second couple in the state to have this done.

When our daughters were 16 one of them told us that she was going to find her biological Mom when she turned 18. This scared me because I did not know how it would go and I wanted to protect my daughter in case it went bad. I gave the small amount of information I had on their Mom to our attorney and asked him to find her and see if she had any interest in meeting the two girls that where born to the eggs she donated many years back.

Shortly after we got call stating that she was very excited to meet the girls and had four children of her own. She said she always wondered but never knew what happened with the egg donation she graciously made back in 1998. She got in contact with us and decided to fly down from Northern California to meet us. We planned on meeting her and her husband in a restaurant near our home. It was a very awkward time for all of us, waiting for our daughter’s mother to walk in the door.

When she arrived my partner and I could not get over how much our girls looked like their Mom. Mannerisms, way of speaking, defections in the voice, thoughtfulness in telling a story - all seemed very familiar to us with someone we were just meeting. Our daughters were so much like their Mom. We all hit it off and have this new family that now is so important to all of us. Our daughters have another sister and three brothers. We have traveled together and had holidays together. We have met all their extended family and friends and they have met ours. We are blessed by how everything worked out.

I still am astonished how much our daughters are like their mother even though they never knew her growing up.