Family Vacation

On Father's Day, she made it a habit to gather her children and say: "Let's send lots of hugs and kisses to your donor. Let's think of your donor. Let's send our love."

Her children, as she recounts, happily chimed in: "Thank you, donor. We love you."

She began to correspond over the Internet with an organization called Single Mothers by Choice. There she found another buyer of 929's sperm, a Southern California woman who exchanged photos with McGhee of their children. But all of McGhee's networking and new friends had brought her no closer to 929. Then, in 2003, while watching an episode of "Oprah" devoted to donor-conceived families, she heard of a Web site that invited donor-inseminated women to log on and send out messages in an effort to locate their children's donors and half siblings. Called the Donor Sibling Registry, the site also invited donors to search for mothers and children.

Within a month of the show's airing, on June 1, 2003, McGhee posted a note on the Donor Sibling Registry site, alongside a reference to California Cryobank Donor 929: "Message to donor: THANK YOU! These children are the greatest gift of my life. They are beautiful, brilliant, talented, kind, absolutely delightful." She added, "We are very open to contact with the donor and/or siblings . . ."

Three thousand miles away, Rubino heard about the "Oprah" episode, too. He logged on, he recalls, to the donor sibling site, but he logged off before coming upon the message to 929. Early last year, McGhee asked the cryo-bank to forward a letter to 929, in which she asked for his baby photograph. The cryobank declined her request, insisting that it had already sent such a letter to all donors, and that 929 had not responded (Rubino says he never received the letter). "I said to myself, 'Forget it, he doesn't want to meet these kids, and he never will,'" McGhee remembers. "I thought, 'Get ready to tell the kids they will never know this person.'"

Shortly before last Thanksgiving, a still curious Rubino logged on to the donor sibling site again, this time noticing partial lists of donors, who were grouped according to their sperm banks and identified by their donor numbers. Then Rubino discovered McGhee's message for 929. Teary-eyed, he couldn't stop looking at two lines in particular: "THANK YOU! These children are the greatest gift of my life."

Having no name or address for his messenger, he left a note on the site: "Hi. I'm Donor 929. I'm Mike and I live in L.A."

That same day, McGhee received an e-mail from a woman who ran the donor sibling site: "Check the site now."

McGhee logged on and saw 929's message. "My heart pounded when I read it," McGhee says. "I cried. I sent him a message, and we exchanged numbers. We were on the phone together in an hour."

In their first conversation, she learned that he had divorced since Aaron was born. She told him a bit about her work as a psychotherapist. The talk turned to the future. As McGhee remembers, Rubino told her: "I don't want to be intrusive. I don't want anything from you." She assured him she wanted nothing from him either; she was simply grateful, she added, to have made contact and to have the chance perhaps of someday introducing him to her children. Within a few minutes, each was extending the other an invitation to visit. Their first conversation could not have been more auspicious, McGhee thought, though she remembered then that Rubino was not hers alone. She knew that, in Southern California, another woman would be thrilled to learn Donor 929's name, the first step to introducing him to her own son. "I have to admit that I had thoughts of keeping the information from her since she didn't know about the [Donor Sibling Registry] Web site," McGhee recalls. "I thought, do I want to share Mike? But, I thought, there's no way I could do that to a kid."

Soon McGhee was seriously contemplating a trip with Aaron and Leah to see Rubino, buoyed by what she had learned about him through a series of phone conversations and e-mails. He was easygoing and respectful of her feelings, she told friends.

Aaron and Leah mailed him holiday cards that addressed him as Daddy and sent along drawings bearing inscriptions of their love for him. Rubino sent presents of fossils and minerals to the children and, on Christmas Day, called the McGhee family to say hi to everyone. McGhee described at length their holiday plans before saying that she should let him go so he could get on with his own day.

As McGhee remembers, Rubino answered, "I have no plans." She was surprised. "I thought it wasn't right that he didn't have someone to celebrate with," she says. "But it made me feel that talking to us was very important to him."

The day after Christmas, she turned on a television to learn of the tsunami that had killed hundreds of thousands in Asia, sweeping whole families to their deaths in the Indian Ocean. "I thought that you just don't know when the next disaster could strike or where," she recalls. "There are earthquakes in L.A.; there are disasters all over. I thought: What am I waiting for? . . . I bought the plane tickets for L.A. the next week."

Not wanting the emotional stakes of the visit to become too high for her children, she subtly downplayed their get-together with Rubino. She told the kids that their trip would be "a wonderful California vacation," careful to make Rubino sound like just one more part of the itinerary. They'd spend a day at Disneyland, she told Aaron and Leah. They'd see the Pacific Ocean.

This had the calculated effect. In the last couple of weeks before leaving for Los Angeles, the kids sounded more excited about seeing Mickey Mouse than meeting Rubino, thought McGhee; thanks to television and videos, Disneyland and Mickey were more real to them.

She took one final precaution: finding a list of L.A. hotels near Rubino's home, in case staying with him proved to be troubling or awkward. She already knew how she would say goodbye to Rubino if he turned out to be a disappointment.

Still, McGhee was excited, especially about the possibilities for her son, who had not had a chance to bond closely with a man. Her own father had died many years earlier, and she had no brother or brother-in-law. A T-ball coach had been kind to Aaron, as well as a hockey coach and a playmate's father, but none of the men could possibly be more than a pale substitute for a committed and unencumbered man, thought McGhee.

Early this year, as the days ticked down toward their flight to Los Angeles, McGhee was reading Aaron a bedtime story, she recalls, when she noticed his eyes growing heavy, the boy falling into that state between dreams and consciousness, where people are at their most truthful, thought the psychotherapist, who sought an answer to a question nagging at her.

"Aaron, have you ever wished you had a dad?" she remembers asking him.

"I wish I had a dad to play with me," he murmured drowsily.

"How come you've never told me that?"

"I don't know," the boy said softly, his eyes closing.

The moment affirmed her conviction that she was doing the right thing in bringing her children to see Rubino. And, deep down, she did not rule out the possibility that maybe something miraculous would happen and she and Rubino would become a couple. "I'd be lying if I said that my mind didn't go to that fairy-tale ending, and that it ended with all of us living happily ever after," she says. "But, at the same time, as a responsible adult, you realize that such a [scenario] is a fairy tale, and unlikely."

One night, as McGhee and Rubino remember, Rubino called to say that he had placed photos of Aaron and Leah in his home, asking whether she minded that he had referred to them as his "children" around a few of his friends. She was pleased, and then asked what he would like the children to call him when they arrived in L.A.

"If I could choose, I'd love it if the kids called me 'Dad,'" he said.

Despite the good feelings all around, Rubino couldn't be sure what he was getting into with McGhee and her children. He had his own secret plan if the visit became uncomfortable, knowing of a hotel where he could take refuge while politely urging his guests to stay in his home. And, as much as Rubino looked forward to seeing Aaron and Leah, he did not want McGhee to misunderstand the future he envisioned for himself. "I'm comfortable with my current situation," he told her, shortly before she and the children flew to see him. "I don't see myself as a family man ever staying home raising kids 24/7. I don't ever see myself having a family in the conventional sense."

Yet now, after just one full day together, Rubino is having a very conventional moment with his new family. Aaron again rests his head on Rubino's shoulder, watching another cartoon.

"Aaron, do you want something to eat?" his mother asks him.

The boy doesn't seem to hear.

"You're happy right there with your Daddy?"

The boy nods, burrowing into Rubino's shoulder. Rubino puts an arm around him, drops his chin on the top of the boy's head. For an hour, they don't move.

Aaron McGhee has inherited, it seems, his father's ability to shut out the rest of the world in favor of his passions. He sits on the hardwood floor across the room from everyone else, head buried in his artwork, studying his drawings. His mother, his sister and Rubino sometimes call out to him, but he doesn't answer. "He's concentrating," says Rubino, who understands the feeling.

Since spending the first few hours of her visit so raptly watching Rubino, McGhee has turned her attention to her children's activities, trying to monitor their moods. Leah is prancing and dancing like Tinkerbell, still avoiding Rubino's efforts to pick her up. Aaron is working on a drawing of a smiley face. He says he wants to do a smiley face drawing for each day he's in Los Angeles, happily showing the latest face to Rubino. It is surrounded by swirling patches of red, orange and violet that Rubino interprets as reflections of Aaron's bliss.

Rubino has told McGhee that he sees much of himself in the boy, particularly a need for time alone. McGhee has wondered about some of her son's inclinations, since he is not nearly as outgoing or comfortable around groups of people as is his sister, she thinks. Now, listening to the man who accounts for one-half of her son's genetic makeup, she believes she is hearing the reasons for Aaron's personality. "I was a lot like that as a kid," McGhee remembers Rubino telling her. "I wanted to be off by myself. I was pretty quiet . . . I just didn't need a lot of people around."

That explanation alone is worth the price of a plane ticket, thinks McGhee.

On a Saturday morning, they all drive in Rubino's old blue Buick LeSabre to Long Beach and one of his favorite places, the Aquarium of the Pacific. Rubino takes the children's hands and leads them toward a family of sea turtles swimming behind glass. "This one here can hold its breath underwater for more than an hour," he says. He reads a placard: "On extra-long dives, the sea green turtle is able to absorb oxygen through its anus. Now that's weird!" Aaron cackles. He thinks he has figured out what this word anus means. He makes a face at the sea turtle and turns to his mother. "Did you hear that, Mom? Anus."

For a while, the day only gets better for Aaron. Rubino brings him to the petting tank, where the boy touches stingrays and small brown-banded bamboo sharks the size of trout. "Don't hold their tails," Rubino says, watching Aaron grab. "Just pet the tops with your fingers."

Aaron is stroking everything that swims by. "I am petting sharks, I am petting sharks."

"Yes, you sure are," Rubino says, laughing.

"You pet them, too, Mike. Pet them."

"Okay." Rubino's hand reaches into the water. "You notice how they feel a little rough, like sandpaper?"

The boy isn't really listening. "Can I come back here with you again?" he asks.

"Sure you can."

"Soon?"

"We'll do it again, sure."

The idea of "again" is still on the boy's mind as they grab lunch in the aquarium restaurant. They're sitting at a table, eating sandwiches, when Aaron blurts to his mother: "Can we just stay here? With Mike? We could live here."

She smiles at her son, pondering how to make him happy without misleading him. In the back of her mind is the conversation she had with an old friend, the actress Ellen Burstyn, whom she met in the '90s while Burstyn was researching a role and McGhee was counseling at a New York group home for children. Burstyn is now considering making a film about the McGhees' experience with Rubino, McGhee believes. "Sweetheart, if Mommy sells the screen rights," she says, "maybe we can buy a second house here someday, and you can come here a lot to see Daddy."

This isn't nearly good enough for the boy. "I want to stay here," Aaron says.

McGhee rubs his arm. "This is a fun time, a vacation time, a fantasizing time. But, day to day, we would have work to do, and it wouldn't be as fun, wouldn't be the same. And you have school."

The boy looks down at his sandwich. "I could skip a day of school," he says firmly. "I could."

"You can't, sweetheart."

"That's life," Rubino interjects, rubbing Aaron's head to soften this.

"Right," McGhee says, "that's life."

On their way back to the gallery, Leah asks her mother, "Do we really have a Daddy?"

McGhee understands the challenge posed by Rubino's presence. It is early in their stay, but even when Rubino has invited Leah to sit on the couch next to him, the little girl usually dashes into Mommy's arms. It's the consequence of never having had a close relationship with a man before, McGhee thinks. Her instinct and her work as a psychotherapist tell her that Leah may see any Daddy as threatening. "Maybe Leah thinks if it happens, I get squeezed out and there's no more Mommy," McGhee tells Rubino later.

Nonetheless, she is delighted when later in the day, back at the gallery, she sees Leah resting on Rubino's lap. "Who are you sitting with there?" she asks Leah.

"Mike."

"And who is Mike to you?"

Leah beams, delivering her answer, "the donor."

As the children tire and rest late in the day, the attentions of McGhee and Rubino turn to each other. They sit on opposite wings of the sofa, sharing a little wine, talking about their tastes and interests, and usually, in the end, finding something to rib each other about. "Turned out to be a gorgeous afternoon," McGhee says, fingering a plastic octopus that Rubino bought for Aaron at the aquarium.

"I promised California sun for Leah, and it finally came," Rubino says, "after you Easterners had your great Eastern blizzard of 2005 -- all that snow falling."

"Rubbing my nose in it again."

"Falling all over that bunch of tiny states you have out there," he adds.

"Which we call New England."

"We usually leave our windows open out here -- fresh air," he says, smiling.

Aaron grins, enjoying this banter between his mother and father. He plops on Rubino's lap, nuzzling there. Leah is resting alongside Rubino's dog and cat. Rubino refills McGhee's wineglass.

At night, after the kids have gone to sleep, each of the adults has a martini. They watch a retrospective of one of their favorite television comedies, "Saturday Night Live," howling at the "land shark" skit from the '70s, in which a talking shark knocks on an apartment door and tries to entice an unsuspecting woman to open it up. "Candygram," the shark says, and Rubino and McGhee laugh like kids when recalling how cast regular Laraine Newman excitedly answers, "Oh, candy," and then opens her door to be ravaged. "We've discovered that we grew up liking much the same things," McGhee says later, "and that we came of age at the same time, being attracted to the same cultural and political ideas."

Watching television, they talk and laugh, but they don't sit near each other, remaining on separate wings of the sofa. McGhee doesn't think it would be appropriate for her to sit next to him, believing this might suggest an uncomfortable intimacy. "We don't want to give even the impression of lines being crossed," she says later. "And I'd never screw up something for my kids because of some romantic fantasy."

Their emphasis has been in slowly forging a comfortable connection so as to make Rubino a member of the family. "Part of what's wonderful right now with Mike," she says, "is that we have no negative baggage between us -- no marriage, no divorce, no custody fight, no emotional vendetta."

She spends much time looking around his gallery. One night he points out perhaps his most arresting painting, a work called "Photo-Op," in which a nude couple lords over a virginal jungle filled with exotic birds and, bizarrely, human fetuses. The woman is pregnant, and her own fetus visible, while a roughhousing baby at her feet dumbly chokes a native bird to death. Rubino tells her that the birds depicted in the painting are extinct, and that the work serves as his personal statement about the evils of overpopulation. "I know that's kind of ironic," he says, "because I'm probably responsible right now for a lot of kids in the world."

Rubino takes the McGhees to California Cryobank, where they receive a tour. For Rubino, the visit is a sentimental, even triumphal return. He strolls around the lab and tells McGhee and the children: "This is where they drew my blood for testing. That is where they put the donors' sperm under the microscope." He pauses at the five masturbatoriums and grins. "I remember some of these rooms," he says, chuckling. Surrounded by Cryobank administrators, he gestures at the fruits of his seed. "These are my children, Aaron and Leah," he says, rubbing Aaron's neck. "My ready-made family."

The administrators are beaming, too. It is the first time in the cryobank's 28-year history that any of them can remember a mother, her children and their sperm donor gathering together in this office. Someone takes photos, and McGhee asks Aaron if he wants to see where the sperm is kept; Aaron has grown up hearing about sperm. Everyone is led into a chilly room, where vapors are rising from six liquid nitrogen tanks that store the semen of hundreds of donors.

"We expect a lot of beautiful children will be born from what you see in the tanks," says the cryo-bank's Cappy Rothman. He points at a small portion of the semen vials being readied that day for a FedEx shipment -- headed to Nacogdoches, Tex., Chesterfield, Mo., Panama City, Fla., Sacramento and Boston, in addition to shipments going overseas.

"You have wonderful-looking children," he says to McGhee.

"I have to go to the bathroom," Aaron announces.

"Daddy will bring you," McGhee says.

Rothman nods, looking impressed. "Daddy will bring him, huh?"

Looking to entertain the kids, Rothman asks his lieutenants to find souvenirs for everybody.

An assistant chimes in: "May I answer any questions for anybody? About anything?"

This sounds like a formality, but Rubino takes advantage of the offer. "I've asked this question before," he says. "But I'm going to try again now, though I know you probably won't answer. Could you tell me, roughly, how many kids of mine are out there?"

Silence in the room.

The assistant sweetly smiles, saying nothing.

Rubino smiles wanly. "You can't tell me?"

Nothing.

Rubino shrugs. "Okay, I understand."

The souvenirs have arrived -- silver sperm pins. "Oh, cool," Aaron says. "I got a sperm, I got a sperm."

"Sperm for everyone," Rubino says.

He drapes his arms around Aaron and Leah. "It is amazing how good it feels to be with them," he says to Rothman, bidding the doctor goodbye. Rothman shakes his hand and tells him that the cryobank is moving to larger quarters and that maybe Rubino could paint a mural for the new building. McGhee clasps his elbow on their way out, whispering as they step into the rain, "Wow, you might even get some work out of this."

In Colorado, the woman whose Donor Sibling Registry Web site enabled McGhee and Rubino to find each other keeps a curious eye on their developing relationship, hoping it might serve as a model. Wendy Kramer has made a cause of helping women search for donors, but few women, says Kramer, have been as lucky in their searches as McGhee. Kramer herself is still trying to connect with her donor, thinking how much that meeting the stranger would enhance her 15-year-old son's knowledge of himself and his background.

Kramer didn't choose her child's donor. In the late 1980s, she and her then-husband delegated the task to her gynecologist. Then, as now, there were about 20 sperm banks in the country, and Kramer had had no idea where to go. "I just said to my doctor, 'Here is what my husband looks like; please find a sperm donor who matches him,'" Kramer recalls. "People ask me now, 'Didn't you think your child would be curious to know about his donor?' I was only thinking in that moment about how lucky I was going to be to have a child . . . It wasn't until later, after my husband and I divorced and my son started asking me about his donor, that these questions started occurring to me . . . Then when I started asking, a lot of cryobank people didn't want to have anything to do with me."

No one on any side of the discussion about the rights of American donors, mothers and their donor-conceived children, has any doubt over who shapes the rules of the industry. The sperm business in the United States has always hinged on the wishes of the adults paying for the semen and the desires of the adults providing it. If any party wants anonymity in a transaction, then anonymity reigns. The child created by the process has no voice, particularly over when or whether that child will ever be able to meet the donor.

"Looking historically at it, kids have been the ones left out . . ." says Ryan Kramer, Wendy's precocious teenager, who co-founded the Donor Sibling Registry site with his mother and who is a freshman engineering major at the University of Colorado. "[Sperm banks] and parents are happy to produce children through the use of sperm donors, but then a lot of children's interests are ignored."

The Donor Sibling Registry has brought him no closer to any contact with his biological relatives. Ryan knows that his donor is an engineer, but it is what he doesn't know about the man that preoccupies him. He feels stymied over having to wait until he turns 18 before California Cryo-bank will formally contact his donor and ask whether the man wishes to speak with him. "If I had the chance," Ryan says, "I'd tell him, 'I want to meet you now because there's a half of me -- mental, emotional and physical -- that I'm not sure about, and also because we have a common interest -- engineering.' To see him would complete me."

Nobody knows for sure how many donor-conceived children are out there. But the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's estimate that 80,000 to 100,000 inseminations with donor sperm are performed annually suggests there may be a large group of kids like Ryan seeking to meet a biological father. Complicating their challenge, says Wendy Kramer, is that California Cryo-bank and other U.S. sperm banks do not have records of where all their donors live. Nor for that matter, the sperm banks acknowledge, do they have complete records of how many sperm-purchasing women have given birth, or where their children live.

One school of international medical ethicists, pointing to legal reforms in several foreign countries, argues that the only realistic means for guaranteeing that children be able to contact their donors is to prohibit anonymity in the donor process. In Britain, where a national registry keeps track of sperm donors, a new law gives every child conceived with the aid of donated sperm the right to learn the donor's identity upon turning 18. Switzerland, Sweden, the Netherlands, and New Zealand have similar laws requiring varying degrees of donor identification.

A rival of California Cryobank, the Virginia-based Fairfax Cryobank, has announced its hope to institute a voluntary donor identity release program next fall, though a Fairfax spokeswoman reported that so far only about 10 percent of active donors indicate they are interested, about the same level of interest as among California Cryobank's donors.

Rothman knows that such numbers will not please critics of the sperm banks. But he says that the openness activists among donor-inseminated mothers have forgotten about the goal that had once been their priority: giving birth. "I know Wendy Kramer would like Ryan to be able to meet his donor by the time he turns 18, and preferably before," Rothman says. "I know she thinks she didn't get the right deal. But she signed a paper [before purchasing sperm]. She knew what [donor] anonymity was. And she knew that our donors wanted anonymity and trusted they would receive anonymity. Here's a question: Ask Wendy Kramer and Ryan if they would take their kind of 'openness' if it meant Ryan would never have been born?"

On their last full day together, Rubino takes Leah, Aaron and Raechel McGhee to Disneyland. Leah is wearing her sperm pin, and Aaron his Best Buddies T-shirt. By 1 p.m., they've already been on several rides and had their pictures taken with Mickey Mouse; Leah is humming "It's a Small World." Now they're in Mickey's Toontown, and a beaming McGhee, noticing everybody relaxing on a bench, says she'll use the moment to visit the restroom.

"Stay with Daddy," she orders the kids.

"We'll all sit together," Rubino says, asking Aaron to stay put, please. Just to test the situation, Aaron walks off a few steps. Rubino retrieves him, tickles him, and the kid laughs.

"Where's Leah?" Rubino asks.

Leah's not around.

"Where's Leah?"

With Aaron staying close, he checks the nearest attraction, the S.S. Miss Daisy boat, scouring both the top and lower deck. Nothing.

"Leah? Leah?"

She's been missing two minutes, maybe. Now he's running, headed toward the next attraction, Goofy's Bounce House. "Leah?" He steps over a barrier, ignores a Disneyland employee, cuts through a line, and there she is, her blond hair making her stand out among a pack of kids. He swoops her up, calls for Aaron, and they trudge back to the bench.

McGhee reappears. "Hi, everybody." She turns to Leah. "Where's your jacket?"

Rubino scurries back to find the jacket.

McGhee watches him, smiling. "A little parental mishap, I see."

Aaron says grimly, "We have one more day, and then we gotta go."

"We'll be coming back, sweetheart."

After Rubino returns with the jacket, McGhee says, "We're all going to work hard and maybe make lots of money, and maybe Daddy will make the big mural for the sperm bank."

By 5 o'clock, Rubino looks a little tired. With the kids trolling for souvenirs, he sits, chewing on a big piece of red licorice, watching Leah trying on princess crowns, wondering how much of this day she'll be able to recall in a few years. A determined McGhee, trying to bolster the chance that Leah will remember this week with him, has had the girl sitting with Rubino on all two-person rides today. "Leah, take your Daddy's hand, and let's go," McGhee says, and they bound down Disneyland's Main Street, looking for a spot from which to watch the afternoon's last parade.

The little bit of sun that is left falls out of the sky, and the temperature plummets. Rubino and Aaron sit on a curb, and the boy looks up at him with a serious expression. "I want to stay here late," Aaron says.

"Sure, sure," Rubino says. "We don't have to go anywhere for a long time."

The next morning, Aaron lies on the tan sofa, not moving. His mother has changed out of a long T-shirt from California Cryobank that she has been wearing on these last nights as a nightgown, the front of which has an illustration of swimming sperm headed into eggs, and the back of which offers a slogan: "All Of The Tomorrows Are In The Seeds Of Today." She is scurrying around, calling out over her shoulder: "What are you doing, sweetheart? We have to get ready to leave for the airport."

Aaron just stares at her. Zero more days. He has packed away his art supplies, finished with the last of his smiley face drawings. As his departure day has approached, he has colored steadily less around the smiley faces. Today's smiley face has no colors around it.

They eat muffins out on the backyard patio. McGhee turns to Rubino and taps his shoulder. "I want you to get yourself a cell phone," she says. "You need one, because you don't have the best car in the world. You're a father now . . . And you need to get a vent in this place so that when you paint you won't breathe the fumes . . . And you're going to stop eating all that crap you like, right -- all that food with the MSG in it? And you'll get to a gym?"

Rubino chuckles and nods compliantly.

Aaron walks over to Rubino, holding a milk-rimmed, disposable plastic cup that he has wrapped a rubber band around and turned into a present. "I made this for you," he says. "So you'll remember me."

Rubino bends and tousles the boy's hair. "Hey," he says, trying to summon his happiest voice. "I have so many memories of you that I'll remember you all the time. Oh, my gosh -- I'll be sending you tons of e-mails and calling you."

The boy just looks up at him.

"I better grab your things," Rubino says to McGhee, his eyes welling. He hauls their luggage to the car. Then he walks inside to join the boy on the sofa, lifting him and depositing him on his lap, tickling him as Aaron watches a cartoon.

"Don't do that, Dad," Aaron says.

"What did you call me?" He's seen the name in notes and holiday cards from the children, but he's not sure he has ever heard Aaron call him that.

"I just want to sit here. No tickling, Dad."

"Okay."

But, finally, it's time. Aaron pets Rubino's dog and says goodbye to the frogs. Then everybody gets into the car. The sky could not be brighter.

"Wouldn't you know the weather is finally perfect on the day we're leaving and headed back to a snowstorm," McGhee says.

Once at the airport, everything moves so quickly. Lines are short today. McGhee gets their boarding passes, and they're walking to the security line, Leah skipping in front of her mother, Rubino holding Aaron's hand.

"Hey, stop," Rubino says to him. They've reached the security line. "I have to say goodbye here. Give me a hug."

He bends and hugs the boy. "'Bye," Aaron says, hugging back, staring at him.

"See you next time," Rubino whispers to him.

"Okay."

He looks up. "Bye, Raech." He embraces her, kissing her on the cheek. He turns and hugs Leah. Then the three are walking through the security scanner, looking back at him, waving.

In the days ahead, he will remember keenly what this parting felt like, the swift desolation of it. By the time he will leaves the airport parking lot, however, he will already be thinking about other things, pondering his work, refocusing his attentions, vowing to spend long days with his canvases. He will realize over the next month that some things about him have not changed. "I guess the future is wide open, but I still can't get my mind around the idea of a traditional family," he will say. "I've told Raechel . . . that I'll be there for [her] and the kids. At the same time, as an artist, I seem to do better and be more creative alone. I need solitude often. I can't ignore that fact. On the other hand, every moment I spend with these children I cherish."

By then, Raechel McGhee will be taking early steps to uproot her psychotherapy practice and move with her children to Los Angeles, talking about it from Massachusetts to Rubino. With his support, she will have begun the process of redoing her will to give custody of her children to him should she die, and of changing her children's names to Aaron Rubino McGhee and Leah Rubino McGhee. She will say that she still sees, in her mind's eye, her children's expressions as they are hugging Rubino goodbye. "They couldn't stand letting him go," she will say. "I can see the looks on all of our faces during that week -- the happiness. I know this: Those looks are on Mike's mind, too."

Back at the airport, those looks during the last moments in Los Angeles freeze Mike Rubino. Leah turns and blows him a kiss from the top of a stairway beyond the security scanner. McGhee smiles at him and mouths slowly: Love you, love you. It is only Aaron who hasn't looked back, already well beyond the stairway and gone, it seems. But then he's back, standing on the top step and looking down at his father, his small hands jutting out, waving slowly. He has waited his whole life to wave at the former 929.

Michael Leahy fielded questions and comments about this story. Read the transcript.