My Father, the Gynecologist

The first time I saw an aborted fetus I was 7. My father had stuck it in a jar filled with yellow liquid that, I figured, was to keep the miniature body intact. He placed it on the top of the refrigerator, for everyone to see. I was fascinated and repulsed; I couldn't stop staring at the little person. At that time I didn't think it was bizarre, tasteless or inappropriate for a gynecologist to keep a dead baby on his fridge. Or that some people might be offended by it. Nobody was, because we were living in Communist Romania, at the height of its oppressive regime. My dad was no weirdo. For him that dead child symbolized the freedom one should have over one's sexuality, a right brutally denied in a country that had banned the selling of any contraceptives.

My parents divorced when I was in first grade. I made an immediate connection between my dad's job and my parents' separation. My father was connected to so many women, went my theory. He could not be with just one. My mother's complaints strengthened my suspicions.

"Your dad was not made to have a family. He only cared about his career, and I had to make all the sacrifices," she said.

She raised me to think men were a necessary evil, but I found my father fun and free-spirited. As a child I thought my father was a baby deliverer, not a women's doctor. I never got the occasional jokes among his friends, and didn't realize that my dad met some of his dates on the examination table. He was a handsome, youthful doctor living a bachelor's life. It was only later, when I learned about contraceptives (in the 90s legal and thriving in Romania), and what gynecologists really did, that I understood why my male classmates smiled every time I mentioned my father's infamous profession.

I was separated from my father when he immigrated to the U.S. and I stayed behind with my mother in Romania. My friends made fun of the pens my dad sent from America, which advertised the latest vaginal medication. Eight years later, I finally moved in with him to start college in New York. At 19 and on the verge of womanhood, I suddenly felt new interest in his profession. I argued with my boyfriend over which birth control to use, but I would have rather died than discuss the topic with my father. He tried to offer advice. "Yes, Dad, I know what a diaphragm is," I would say, rolling my eyes.

When I went for my first checkup, at the school's women's center, I prayed that my dad would not notice what the bill was for. He did not mention it. I started to pay attention to the little boxes with contraceptive pills he brought home, and occasionally read the instructions. As with the fetus I had found years earlier, my dad kept the paraphernalia of his profession in the kitchen. Contraceptives were piled on the shelves, Gynecology Today and Menopause for You on the table. He collected and decorated our home with small, primitive statues of women in labor.

Yet my father had metamorphosed from the fun-loving, easygoing guy I had known in Romania into the epitome of the Eastern European patriarch and a diehard Republican. His favorite topics were the national birth rate, the global demographics problem and the alarming increase in divorces. I found it strange coming from a man who had divorced twice and had only one child. Oddly, my father was convinced that having children or getting married would solve all my problems, to my boyfriend David's horror. To David's relief, my dad strongly believed in steady relationships, so he kept a close eye on all my phone calls and evening rendezvous.

"I want you to bring only one man into my house," his heavily accented voice resonated through our home after a male friend visited. He raised his arms in despair every time I mentioned a guy's name. "Ah, where did you learn to behave like that? I feel sorry for your boyfriend," he said. For my dad, my hanging out with a male friend amounted to promiscuity. Since it was late for him to redeem his past conjugal mistakes or to have more children, I thought, he was turning me into the embodiment of his model woman.

"It would be nice to see you married by the time you finish school," he told me as I approached graduation. The thought made me sick. "And just have a baby, I will raise it for you," he added, not entirely jokingly.

At least he didn't offer to deliver it.