The ocean is sending perfectly formed waves toward the deserted shore, pounding against the jetty and shooting spray up into the rose-colored sky. For once, these wet-suited enthusiasts have their playground all to themselves. Without a word, they head into the water to play among the waves. After just an hour in the water they rush back onshore, scrambling to get to work in Manhattan. The joy of their surf session is often muddled by the long commute, frigid conditions and the hassle of carrying their heavy equipment home before starting their day. But changes are in the air at Beach 90th street in Rockaway, and they begin with the name Stathis.

For years Beach 90th Street in Rockaway, Queens sported an infamous reputation among commuting surfers. Though it is the closest surfing beach to Manhattan, it is difficult get to and situated in a less than friendly part of town. However, since 2004 interest in the sport has risen dramatically. The number of surfers commuting to the area has skyrocketed and Boarders of Rockaway, the area’s only surf shop, has led the charge by offering lockers for commuters to store their equipment. Steve Stathis, 56, and his son Christian, 33, run the tiny shop by themselves all while juggling other full-time careers and families.

Boarders is tucked away in the residential sprawl of Beach 92nd street, once the no-man’s land between the predominantly Irish community of Rockaway Park to the west and the newer housing projects from Beach 90th street to Far Rockaway in the east. The shop is the epicenter of a new wave of city surfers, providing lockers for commuters who ride the A Train to catch waves. What’s more, the area’s recent popularity has created a tantalizing scene by drawing city-bound surfers out of Manhattan and other boroughs to rent apartments closer to the waves in Rockaway.

Inside Boarders, the walls are a collage of local postings, amateur photos, and notes from friends. There are so many boards packed into the tiny shop, made by local shapers from New York and New Jersey and as far away as Ireland, that several hang from the ceiling. They carry locally made wetsuits and apparel as well. The St. James brand board shorts are sold by Jimmy Dowd, a local retailer who lives nearby on Beach 88th street.

“We quickly realized that we didn’t want to deal with the larger companies and we wanted to have a local feel anyway.” says Christian. He wears a loose t-shirt and jeans, lazily fielding phone calls behind the counter.

But its not only what’s going on inside the surf shop that is changing the New York City surfing scene; its what goes on behind the surf shop. Out back, an area roughly the size of a small garage has a large bank of 56 wooden lockers that house virtually any size surfboard, wetsuits, and other equipment. Nearby is a small shower, complete with hot water. The area is fenced in and accessible through a padlocked gate. For 60 dollars a month customers can have access to these facilities even when the surf shop is closed. It is an open door for commuting surfers to store their equipment and clothes instead of carrying it with them.

“It helps people who commute,” says Steve. “They have to get to work at 9, which means they have to get here at 6 to surf. Then they have to bring all their stuff back to their apartment, and then head off to work. It cuts down on their surfing time.” According to Steve, the lockers help commuting surfers to maximize their time in the water. His customers hail from all parts of the city: Williamsburg, Greenpoint, and Manhattan, to name a few places. He even has a renter from Westchester County.

The locker rental program is so successful, in fact, that it forms the foundation of Boarders’ income, exceeding sales of surfboards and equipment. After opening in the winter of 2004, Steve and Christian realized that their new business was in danger of sinking right away. “We knew we couldn’t survive selling retail alone,” says Steve, referring to the tremendous amount of money needed to keep even his small shop stocked with surfboards and apparel. The two men had quickly maxed out their new business credit cards and were sunk $80,000 in debt. In the spring of 2005, Steve began to cultivate an idea that had germinated long before Boarders even opened.

According to Christian, the original owner William Kosty built a shower in his basement and let surfers store their boards and equipment inside the store. Those customers’ boards were still hanging around when the Stathises took over in 2004. It was then that Steve came up with the idea of creating a massive storage space in the area behind the surf shop.

As winter nears, many commuting surfers who ride the subways to Rockaway call it quits; the water and weather are too unforgiving, as a few hours surfing might lead to hypothermia or worse. Even now, as the fall marches into winter, the water temperature drops from a balmy 70 degrees to a sobering 50, and in winter ocean temperatures can plunge into the high 30’s. Add a punishing December wind and you have an idea of what the typical commuting surfer faces when he gets off the A Shuttle at Beach 90th Street in Rockaway.

“The hardest part is getting back out,” says Christian. “In the water you’re relatively ok, but the dash back to the car or the shower, that’s when it’s cold!”

Rev. Christine Selfe, clad in a white ceremonial robe, stands behind a short brass podium and smiles at her small Sunday gathering. Her congregation of four sits abreast in the front pew of metal folding chairs, comfortable and quiet. There’s an altar adorned with two lit candles, and a white tablecloth that adds a sense of ceremony to the modest chapel room. A fan hums breeze into stagnant air.

Rev. Seife gingerly opens a bulky Bible, her eyes scanning the weathered pages behind thick wire-rimmed glasses. Bangs and a button nose lend an endearing youthfulness to her countenance in spite of her 47 years.

The reverend looks up and smiles once again, full cheeks dimpling. Then, she lifts her hands to preach:

“Jesus said, ‘but when you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be…’” She begins with Mark 13: 14-23, her arm movements brisk as she signs the gospel verse with grace and gusto. “…then those in Judea must flee to the mountains…”

Though she voices the passage and her words are audible, the message of her sermon — and the power of her preaching — is rendered through the rhythm of her hands.

Rev. Christine Selfe, one of the eight deaf priests currently alive, is the second deaf woman ordained in the Episcopal Church and 46th deaf priest in the ministry since 1892. Here at St. Ann’s, the world’s oldest church for the deaf, she has preached to and prayed with Manhattan’s hard-of-hearing community as the vicar since the beginning of 2006. Her roots here were spawned seven years ago when she came to the church as a student assistant from New York’s General Theological Seminary.

There are no interpreters here — no middlemen translating spoken verses from the King James Bible, itself a translation from many originals, to sermons in American Sign Language (ASL). Rev. Selfe chooses to conduct her services alone and in both English and ASL, pegging the delicate task of simultaneous voicing and signing — a practice seldom mastered within the deaf community, and even rarer in the religious one.

She preaches with conviction, but also with the knowledge that translation is always a thorny battle of semantics. ASL, Rev. Selfe tells me, is not English-based but what she calls “concept-based.” In English, there can be a spectrum of synonyms for one meaning — “closing” and “shutting” the door, for example. ASL, however, designates one sign for a particular concept.

But when it comes to translating the Bible, it’s not the concepts Selfe finds most challenging.

“ASL does ‘justice’ to the ideas,” she says, lip-reading my questions. “But it’s in the idioms and figurative language where there are a lot of challenges to overcome — finding a way to convey the true meaning, while attempting somehow to maintain the beauty of the imagery and language.”

Her congregation watches her intently today, oblivious to the resounding music and voices from the concurrent service upstairs where hearing churchgoers flood the oak pews. Above, the stained-glass windows and organs of the main chapel hover over the annexed quarters of St. Ann’s. But Rev. Selfe is content with the “warm, intimate space.”

“The key, for me, was to focus on what God has given us,” she says. “Let’s face it. St. Ann’s is not very big, and even if we had our own building, I’m sure it would have been of humble stature.”

The uptown dinner crowd at Roth’s Steakhouse was ready to turn in for the night. By the time Jimmy Norman took the stage on this warm October Saturday, an hour before midnight, they had already gnawed, swallowed, paid, and taken those first-date kisses.

That left twelve, not counting the bartender: a few serendipitous strangers, but mostly just an overcrowded table of family-like friends dead center. Jimmy Norman — the man who wrote The Rolling Stones-covered hit “Time Is On My Side,” smoked weed with Jimi Hendrix the night before he left for London, and taught an unknown 23-year-old Rastafarian named Bob Marley about American R&B — was playing a full set to an almost empty house. Once again, Jimmy Norman was an aspiring musician.

At the table of friends, a woman named Wendy Oxenhorn, the executive director of the Jazz Foundation of America, sat closest to Norman. His eyes tenderly sealed, he dedicated “My Funny Valentine” to Oxenhorn, his guardian angel. Norman’s words hung in the beats of silence, touching the rims of wine glasses with their vibrato.

“She saved my life,” Norman announced in his low-register, deep-wisdom voice as the final notes hung, his eyes right at Oxenhorn’s. “I mean it,” he says to her table of friends. “Without her I wouldn’t be alive today.” Her eyes never turned from his to the table in embarrassment, and her smile did grow — she was like a daughter full of family pride. Then he began to sing.

That night, Jimmy Norman, 73, performed five songs from his first album in 11 years, titled Little Pieces; it’s composed of songs he wrote more than twenty years ago. Thread by thread, he has been pulling his performing career back together. “I’m still able to do my craft,” he said later. “As long as I’m able to do that, I’m cool. I don’t expect to live in a mansion and drive a Mercedes-Benz.”

Jimmy Norman armors himself with a pressed black suit and four-piece band. What photographs might mistake for a corona stage lighting is actually his charisma, a quality that will never be measured in album sales or contract bonuses. For those still left sitting at the bar, Jimmy Norman’s voice, and the honesty that permeates it, was enough to make one forget about the whiskey sours and any other troubling thing beyond those steakhouse doors.

Only a few years ago, Norman was just a byway of music history. Some of the reasons were physical: his lungs would not allow him to sing more than one song in a set. He would become heavily winded even through the first tune. Three years before, Norman couldn’t walk several feet from his bed to his front door. He was recovering from bypass surgery, following his second heart attack in seven years. The singer’s lung capacity sagged to 40 percent of what it had been. He couldn’t breathe lying down, so his doctor ordered him to sleep sitting up against a plastic chair.

But the ability to sing at all still felt like a blessing. As his body fought from within, Norman found himself embattled from without. His landlord was again trying to evict him from his home of 30 years, an apartment on West 70th Street. He’d been taken to court by his landlord so many times, they knew him as Jimmy at the courthouse.

Then Wendy Oxenhorn, and the Jazz Foundation of America, came into Jimmy Norman’s life. Days before his final court date in 2005, Norman called Oxenhorn at a friend’s suggestion. Oxenhorn, not a lawyer, showed up in court for Norman. She won a rent extension after speaking to the landlord’s attorney about Norman’s dismal health. (Without insurance, Norman was also paying his own hospital expenses.) Thanks to Oxenhorn’s intervention, Norman still lives in the same apartment today, and the landlord’s lawyer has done volunteer legal representation for other musicians who’ve sought assistance from the Jazz Foundation of America.

And Oxhenhorn’s work still wasn’t done. She sent two of the foundation’s staff, Lily Morton and Jeni Lausch, to Norman’s apartment to clean the clutter of an entrenched pack rat. Among boxes ready to be thrown out, the two found books of lyrics and songs Norman had written, some of which would later be recorded for Little Pieces. There was also a tape he had recorded with a not-yet-famous Bob Marley in 1968.

Norman and Marley had spent a day at Norman’s apartment, then in the Bronx, recording each other’s songs. The session convinced Norman to spend seven months in Jamaica, recording with Marley and Peter Tosh. After the discovery, Norman was able to sell the worn cassette tape for more than $10,000 at auction.

Today, the BMI Songwriters Database includes about 150 songs credited to the name of Jimmy Norman. He has also written countless tunes for other artists — including Marley, the Chargers and his own band of thirty years, the Coasters — for which Norman was never given credit. Today, he receives only a small percentage of the residual payments he should be owed.

Norman’s most famous song, “Time Is On My Side,” was written for New Orleans singer Irma Thomas in 1964. Norman received no credit for the song, which was mislabeled, with credit given solely to a co-writer named Norman Meade, the pseudonym of songwriter and producer Jerry Ragovoy. Ragovoy also wrote several songs for Janis Joplin.

The song was first recorded by jazz trombonist Kai Winding and his Orchestra in 1963. For that recording, “Time is on my side” was the only lyric Ragovoy had in mind. Jimmy Norman was brought in a year later by arranger H.B. Barnum to write the remaining lyrics for Irma Thomas to perform.

That same year, it became a huge international hit when it was recorded by the Rolling Stones. Their version became a number 6 hit on the U.S. Billboard Singles Chart. The song has since entered the public domain. Jimmy Norman has never received any payments for the song’s success. Ragovoy, as sole songwriter, received the royalties.

“I haven’t gotten it yet, and there’s good reason to think that maybe I won’t get it,” Norman says of the royalty payments. He says he’s at peace with the way the dollars flowed. “If I did without it this far,” he says.” I ain’t got much of a problem.”

“Car!” I bark, a moment too late. The vehicle rounds the corner, driving toward us. I squint in the glare of the oncoming headlights, pivoting into the shadows of the overpass. Between a stroll and a sprint, I’m trying to look nonchalant, but also wanting to get the hell out of there.

Animal instincts take over: leave Fernando behind. Run if necessary. Damn the fact that he drove me here and I’ll be stuck in New Jersey without him. Better to figure out another way home than to spend the night in the back of a police car.

I steal a glance over my shoulder. He’s tucked the cans of spray paint into the waistband of his jeans and is pulling at the bottom of his striped sweater, covering the nozzles. He affects my same clipped stride, but in the opposite direction; he’s headed uphill and I’m going down.

My mistake is obvious. What an idiot I am! Why would I walk toward the oncoming car?

Fernando’s headed in the direction we came from, where his car is parked in the desolate open street. I, though, have trapped myself under an overpass with 15-foot retaining walls on either side. There’s nowhere to run. No one else around.

I freeze, bracing myself for the blare of the siren and the glare of a police searchlight.

The car keeps rolling. Maybe the driver slows slightly, but if so, it’s only to eye me with confusion: a kid in a dark green hoodie standing frozen on the sidewalk with his fists clenched at his sides and his eyes squeezed shut.

Then, car is gone. My heart still flutters in my chest, and I haven’t been breathing. I allow myself a sip of oxygen, crestfallen and a bit disappointed in my nerve. I meekly turn and wend my way back, only to find Fernando finishing his tag.

He adds the final flourish, three dots to the lower left, then turns and calls to me from across the street as I approach, “Shit, man! That’s what I’m talking about!” His smile beams in the twilight of the streetlamp on the suburban street.

My eyes dart to the Neighborhood Watch sign posted on the street lamp above his head. This whole graffiti thing may be new to me, but I’m pretty sure shouting on a quiet street at 1 a.m. on a Monday night isn’t the greatest way to avoid drawing attention.

Fernando seems unfazed.

The tag is a beauty. Letters at least three feet high on a prominent wall that drivers can’t miss. The evening is young though, and he still has plenty of energy.

On the way back to the car, he pulls out a fat permanent marker and tags the side of a utility box at a large intersection. That makes four for the night, the first two hits covering the side wall of a grocery store. He’s riding high on a wave of bliss and paint fumes.

Her tongue was quick and her blows heavy, aggressive and self-assured, as she took down her opponent with ease. But they weren’t throwing punches. These stairwell battles are freestyle competitions in which the blows are verbal. Here, opposing rappers duke it out to determine who has the best rhythm, flow, and lyrical mastery.

“Sometimes people give you problems,” Shannon explains. “You gotta battle to get respect.”

She got plenty of it. While attending Kingsboro Community College in 2003 she became the first female Battle Champion, a high honor for hip-hoppers in the New York City area.

Less than five years ago, this hip-hop artist spent many weekend nights like this, pruning her image as a streetwise young rap artist, and working hard to break into the industry as one of the few female rap artists with any sort of recognition at all. While in school, she kept going to rap battle and worked on the street team for Roc-a-fella records, rap artist Jay-Z’s record label.

Today at 23, Shannon is more likely to cite Qur’an lyrics than brag about bling and Ferraris. She performs charity shows for inmates in prisons across the country, and will proudly tell you that she hasn’t performed in a club that serves alcohol since she embraced her Muslim identity in 2001. The hair weave has been displaced by a cloth head cover. At 18, Shannon became inspired to use her rap as a way to spread the word of Islam. She called herself Misunderstood Muslimeena and is now known to her fans internationally as Miss Undastood. She has been carrying out her mission ever since.

“One day I had writer’s block, and then everything I started writing just had an Islamic theme to it,” she says, explaining that her convergence to religious music and lifestyle is a bit of a mystery even to her.

She didn’t expect to take this path, in life or in music. Shannon found her way into the hip hop scene after matriculating at Kingsboro Community College, in Brooklyn. “One semester someone told me to enter a battle at school, and I won it,” she says. Shannon took on the name “Flawless” and built street cred rapping with such underground hip-hop sensations as Papoose, and as one-half of a duo with another lady rapper named Kharisma. She fielded interest from Epic Records and other industry players. She rocked poetry slams at Bowery Poetry Club and the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. With their tight lyrics about men, money and fast cars, and their even tighter jeans, Miss Undastood and Kharisma were quickly becoming known as the hottest duo since Salt-n-Pepa

Then she traded in her alias and her jeans for a hijab, and Miss Undastood now rhymes with a different rhythm. At 24, she has taken her music to new, spiritual heights. These days, Miss Undastood’s rhyme schemes are more likely to cite the Qur’an than brag about bling and Ferraris. And no longer does she perform in crowded, sweaty hot spots and back-alley street battles. Today, she is much more likely to perform at an all-female “sisters only” event in London as she did a few years ago in 2003. The doe-eyed beauty will proudly tell you that she hasn’t performed in a club that serves alcohol since she first started embracing her Muslim identity a few years ago.

Miss Undastood is one of a growing number of traditional Islamic artists using rap music — since its beginnings an outlet for social and political commentary — as a forum to discuss Islam and problems within the Islamic community. Her lyrics, which tend to be more inflammatory than those of other popular Muslim artists, such as Native Deen, focus on topical issues like the hijab, being a Muslim woman in a modern-day society, and the jealousy that sometimes comes into play between co-wives. Just as urban African Americans created a voice for themselves in hip-hop in the seventies, in a post 9-11 country stricken by Islamophobia, Islam, and Miss Undastood, have found in hip-hop a voice of their own.

Miss Undastood says that she can’t even possibly begin to define the moment she started writing with a religious message in mind. “When you give someone a mic, they have to have something to say,” she says, “I think that what I have to say is something all people are going to realize they want to hear.” And she has a lot to say. In “Hijab is the One Thing,” she discusses not only the misconception that the hijab is oppressive, but the right of a Muslim woman to wear her hijab anywhere and the right for women to choose whether or not they want to wear it. Through lyrics like “Just because I cover doesn’t mean I’m all righteous/ Just because you don’t doesn’t mean you’re less pious,” she emphasizes that religious devotion comes in many forms. And all this to the tune of a funky drum beat.

When Shannon was 10 her father brought Islam into their home, restricting pork from the family diet, praying five times a day, and putting Miss Undastood in a strict Islamic school. She was in the midst of an Army brat childhood all over the East Coast that eventually arrived in Jackson Heights, Queens with her, her mother and army father.

At 11, Miss Undastood started trying her hand at writing rap as a way, she says, to “escape” from her strict school life. By the time she was 18, she had what she describes as writer’s block. The only lyrics that came to her were about Islam. She ditched her traditional rap image for a voice both more conservative and more outspoken.

“The main difference between my image now and then,” she says, “is street cred. I think I lost that.”

“Do you smell that?” she asks self-consciously. She looks around one of the two communal kitchens which can hardly fit three people simultaneously that she shares with 25 of her floor-mates in her First Avenue, Upper East Side dorm. All are immigrants who have recently come to America to practice nursing. “I hate when people cook and make the whole floor smell,” she explains, and then makes a disarmingly blunt statement. “Especially when the Indian people make curry. I don’t think I’ll ever eat curry again.”

With dark brown eyes and shiny, shoulder-length jet-black hair, you can almost mistake Christmas Borlongan for a woman of Indian descent herself. Her round face and tanned skin make her ethnically ambiguous; she could also easily pass for Hispanic or Malaysian. Soft facial features and her slightly plump frame combine to give her a youthful look, her face almost childish. In fact, looking at Christmas it is hard to believe she is 26 years old and completely on her own in a foreign country.

Small kitchens and funky smells are just some of the things Christmas has dealt with since March 12, 2006, when she emigrated from the Philippines to New York City to become a nurse. Due to the shortage of nurses in the United States, especially in large cities, special incentives (including higher pay) are being offered to nurses to come to cities such as New York.

This is not new. Going back at least forty years, no country has provided the U.S. with more immigrant nurses than the Philippines. The Asian country is a choice target for recruitment due to its respected nursing programs and most citizens’ ability to speak English. (The Philippines were an American colony from 1898, when they were taken at gunpoint from Spain, until 1948 – for many hundreds of years, Spanish was imposed on the Philippines by its colonizers from Spain. The language faded when the Americans imposed their will, but survives in family names and place names.) Today Philippine schools are taught primarily in English despite the prevalence of Tagalog, the Philippines’ national language. Specially designated nursing recruitment agencies court thousands of nurses each year, and the majority make the move. In fact, so many nurses leave the Philippines that the country is experiencing its own well-documented “nurse drain” crisis. But with higher pay, better working conditions and an overall better quality of life in a first-world country, it’s no surprise that thousands of nurses emigrate each year.

Like most mothers, Lisa Grossman* lights up when she shows off a picture of her son. She extends the picture, her brown eyes beaming. Her short, dark hair complements her delicate features and narrow jaw. She will be the first to point out that she and her son, Josh, look nothing alike. That’s because Josh shares none of her genes. Josh was born through an egg donation from an anonymous woman when Grossman, a psychotherapist, was 41-and too old to get pregnant with her own eggs.

Grossman was one of the first women to receive a donated egg through the NYU School of Medicine’s fertility center, which had started its program shortly before her procedure in 1996. Preferring to get pregnant rather than adopt, Grossman plunged herself into the double unknown of a new medical procedure and of bearing the child of a woman she would never meet.

In the decade since, women who have encountered trouble conceiving have increasingly turned to using eggs from younger women, who donate them for a fee. Even as sperm donation became popular in the 1970s, egg donation remained a futuristic concept hovering out of the reach of science. But the most recent data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that infertile women have a growing dependence on this technology. In 2004 alone, 15,175 eggs were transferred from one woman to another, with about 51 percent leading to births. This is close to triple the number performed in 1996, when there were only 5,162 transfers with about a 40 percent birth rate.

At NYU’s center two years ago, medical teams transferred 153 fresh embryos, with 51 percent resulting in births, according to the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology, a watchdog group. The NYU School of Medicine, which is the one of the components of the NYU Medical Center, was one of the early promoters of egg donor technology. Even though its numbers seem small, the donor program is one of the largest in the country.

Buying a stranger’s eggs is a huge investment. It costs $16,200 at the NYU clinic for a shared donation procedure, meaning that two women share one donor’s eggs. If a woman desires to monopolize the donor’s eggs, she must pay $25,250. Either way, it is prohibitively expensive for some infertile women and a boon to the doctors who have turned it into a specialty. It also can be a much-needed source of income for donors, who are often struggling college students. Savvy to this, the clinic advertises in college newspapers, bulletin boards and online.

The demand for egg donors, however, is much higher than the supply. Recipients, who are usually over 40, often wait between eight and 12 months to acquire that precious capsule of genetic cargo through NYU’s clinic. In light of the demand, the clinic recently hiked the donor’s compensation from $7,500 to $8,000, to entice her to give up about 20 eggs out of her lifetime supply of around 300,000.

The donor and recipient, who never reveal their identities to one another, embark on parallel psychological and physiological journeys that can make them re-evaluate what it means to be a mother. It can also force them to confront–and even re-define–their views of themselves.

To donate her eggs, a woman must go through the unappetizing combination of repeated hormone injections followed by surgery–and then live with the tantalizing possibility of her unknown biological child’s existence.

For Hadar Cohen, an Israeli immigrant, the stringent requirements of her visa that forbade her from legally working, combined with her shrinking bank account, prompted her to respond to a newspaper advertisement looking for Jewish donors. Throw in the sheer kindness of helping out an infertile couple, and Cohen, now 29, was sold on the procedure.

“I thought, ‘This is something I could do to earn money and be proud of, not something I would hate myself for doing afterwards,” said Cohen. “I was convincing myself that the real parent is really the person who is raising the child and the biological link is not really–not nearly–as important as the actual rearing and taking care of, and educating, and all that, so I just went ahead.”

Cohen, a doctoral candidate in psychology at Yeshiva University, had just immigrated to Astoria, Queens, with her husband, when she noticed the ad in an Israeli newspaper in late 2003. After being reassured that the donation would not compromise her own fertility, she filled out the NYU clinic’s 12-page application–the beginning of the rigorous screening process meant to ensure that only the the most qualified women between ages 21 and 32 have the opportunity to pass on their genes. The application asked about her appearance, ethnicity, extended medical history, religion, education, musical and athletic abilities, hobbies, occupation, and sexual health. Among other responses on the questionnaire, she said she did not have acne as a teen, did not wear braces and had a maternal grandmother with blue eyes. Although her husband assured her that any recipients would be lucky to get the Cohen genes, she admits she experienced some test anxiety at the time.

“I think I was feeling a mixture of pride in my family together with a fear of how we are going to be viewed by others,” she said. “For instance, is it really bad that my father has high blood pressure?”

One question asks applicants whether they would be willing to be contacted by children once they reach the age of maturity, should the laws change to allow this. The U.S. currently forbids children from contacting their genetic mothers, but experts in the field predict this will change. “The laws for adoption did change,” explained Dr. Mindy Schiffman, the NYU program’s psychologist. “So there is a chance [the contact restrictions] could change. We ask that question in case they do change.” The U.K. eliminated donor anonymity in April 2005, so children who were conceived after that time will be able to look up their donors’ contact information once they turn 18.

Three simple boxes follow the parental contact question on NYU’s application: Check yes, no or undecided. Cohen checked “yes,” prompted by a feeling of “some responsibility” for the child who might result. “I think he or she would have a right to know how they were conceived, and if they wished, to contact me as well,” she explained.

In her mind, the urgency of her financial state obscured the full emotional consequences of that tiny mark-for the time being. “I did that because I think I do have some responsibility for that child,” Cohen said in retrospect, “and I think he or she would have a right to know how they were conceived, and, if they wished, to contact me as well.”

Soon after, she went into the clinic for a physical examination, a drug test and a genetic screening to make sure she wasn’t a carrier of recessive diseases like Tay Sachs or cystic fibrosis. She and her husband, Assaf, a graphic designer, also met with Dr. Schiffman, who evaluated their motivations and backgrounds.

It’s part of Schiffman’s job to match donors to recipients. In suggesting possible matches, she looks for the same race, physical type and perceived intellectual ability. With regard to matching for race, Schiffman said, “We do that because we think it’s easier for the child to grow up in a household where they look like their parents.”

Recipients make the final decision knowing the summary of the woman’s medical exams, genetic screenings and psychological consultations. The recipients also have limited profiles of the possible donors, such as where they grew up and if they attended college. They never see a picture. Cohen–a two-time donor–has zero information on who received her eggs and whether pregnancies resulted.

Each time Cohen donated, the procedure was medically identical. When a recipient agreed to be her match, both received shots of Luperone, a hormone that artificially shut down their menstrual cycles for several weeks so they could be synchronized.

Then Cohen injected herself once each night, in the rear end, with shots of the hormone FSH, which stimulated her ovaries to produce more than the usual one egg per month. The 10-day injection regimen prompted her ovaries to swell to the size of oranges and made her feel more than a little bloated. Every other morning, she went to the clinic so doctors could check on the development of her maturing eggs through a vaginal ultrasound examination and a blood test. “I was a little squeamish about giving myself the shots,” she said, “but it was kind of challenging, like when someone gives you a dare.”

Assaf said he felt uncomfortable watching Cohen give herself the shots, but proclaimed proudly, “It’s a messy process, and I think she was a rock. She handled it like a man.” They both say the experience brought them closer together emotionally, if not physically; the hormones made Cohen hyper-fertile, so they had to forgo intimate relations during that period. Although today Cohen says she would like to have kids, she and Assaf did not discuss it during the time of her donations. “We were not ready then,” she said, “and are not entirely ready now.”

Donors run a slight risk of hyper-stimulation of their ovaries, according to Dr. Frederick Licciardi, the director of NYU’s Donor Oocyte Program. Optimally, the ovaries will produce between 10 and 20 eggs during these 10 days, but some women–about 1 in 500–must be hospitalized if their ovaries produce too many, causing fluid to swell in their abdomens.

When a donor starts these injections, her recipient starts injecting herself with estrogen to prepare her uterus to receive the embryo. “Excluding the risks of pregnancy, it is more risky for the donor,” Dr. Licciardi said about the hormone injections. “I would still call it a very low-risk procedure. Certainly having a baby is much more risky than giving your eggs up.”

“You swiped it already, Al,” she said.

“I swiped it already? I swiped the card already?” he repeated, and she nodded in confirmation.

Later, the two drove to lunch, with a reporter in the back seat, for a private celebration of Young’s 24th birthday. During the drive, Albert became worried that he might not be allowed to attend dinner with his roommates that night.

“When we go back to the house,” he said, halting and knitting his eyebrows, “I’m going to ask Amy if I can go out to dinner with everyone, even though I’m going out for lunch.” Ashley said yes, but he was not wholly reassured.

“One more time. I’m…I’m trying to think of what to say,” he started, and paused to sniffle.

“Do you want me to say it for you?” Ashley asked, to which her brother replied, “Yes, please.” Ashley repeated his earlier statement about the party and Albert nodded. He did not make eye contact with his sister through the entire conversation.

Later, Ashley explained that this repetitive questioning is a symptom of Young’s autism. His formal diagnosis is PDD, or Pervasive Developmental Disorder, and one of the primary behaviors associated with his condition are difficulty in communicating needs and the use of repetitive speech.

“He’ll ask you something, and you’ll say yes,” Ashley explained, “Then he’ll ask again because even though he heard you, he won’t feel like he got an answer. You can’t say, ‘Yes, I told you that already.’ You just say yes again.”

Young is one of thousands of Americans with autism, a developmental disability resulting from a disorder of the human central nervous system, characterized by impaired social interaction, atypical behaviors and difficulty in communication. The Centers for Disease Control estimate that one in every 150 American children is autistic, and Young was diagnosed when he was three years old. He is classified as high-functioning, meaning he can read at a fourth or fifth grade level, speak well, perform basic functions of daily life and have relationships.

But as an autistic adult, he not only faces the normal challenges of finding a job, a place to live and a social support network, he must do these things while living with a disability. And in New Jersey, the occurrence of autism is the highest in the nation, estimated at one in every 94 children, and thus there is urgent need for programs and services to help individuals like Young function in society.

On March 15, the New Jersey State Assembly passed a seven-measure package, intended to enable the state to provide better lifetime care for people such as Young. The bills include measures designed to advance early detection of the disorder; initiatives to ensure that teachers are properly trained to educate autistic students; and, for Young’s age group, the establishment of an Adults with Autism Task Force, which is charged with improving the provision of basic services such as appropriate housing, job and skills training, and continued medical and behavioral support.