Why search?

So, I always swore to myself that I would not ever write a blog. Here I am, starting one though. So far it’s just in Microsoft Word though, which means I don’t have to publish a thing. I guess what drives me crazy about blogs is that everyone suddenly thinks they are a writer. Their spelling and grammar no longer matter. I think blogging is really going to be the downfall of the written word. But, here I am. Possibly starting a blog…. That is, if I publish this on line. So far, I’m still private and anonymous. My other problem with blogging is that it really is literary vomit. Bloggers spew very personal thoughts before they get a chance to think about what they are typing. Once it is published, it’s out there. No take-backs on the internet. We’ve all experienced that a little. We hit “send” too soon and regret sending an email or we accidentally hit “reply all” leading to disastrous results. Why on earth would I even consider writing a blog? Plus, I’m already editing myself. It’s not the spelling that I worry about. I have spell check, right? It’s the inconsistencies. I have a huge issue with tense consistency. I know most people will not notice it, but there are those who will see it, which bothers me enough.

Here goes:

I am currently embarking on a very scary and emotional journey of searching for my birth parents. I guess my apprehension lies in baring my soul to anyone who might read this and failing, in one way or another. I don’t feel incredibly comfortable with standing emotionally naked, which is why I try to keep the real stuff to myself. Although, my husband, Chris, and my mom are my sounding boards for a lot of things. So, if all this is true, I guess the question is why I’m even considering posting this on the internet? Throughout my life, I haven’t known many adoptees older than me and I certainly wasn’t close enough to any of them to talk about real stuff. So, IF I post this on line, I hope that it will be helpful to other adoptees, whether they are older or younger than me. Specifically, I hope that Korean adoptees are able to take from this blog.

So, I guess I start with my story. This could take years to write. I’ll try to just give the Cliff Notes. I was born in South Korea at Sung Sim Hospital in Paju-ku, Gyeonggi. For those who don’t know anything about Korean geography, Gyeonggi (do) is a Korean province. Paju-ku was a county when I was born, but Paju is now a city. So, I was born on May 12, 1982 in Paju-ku. The paperwork I have says very little about my birth mother except that she wanted to disclose her identity. I was born breech and had a particularly difficult labor and was sent to St. Mary’s Hospital in Seoul for surgery. After surgery, I went to a foster home. I don’t know much about my time in my foster home. I think they paperwork I have says that my foster mother was married and had two children.

Meanwhile, back on in the ranch (or in California), my parents had been working on the adoption process for quite a while. They had five boys already; Rick, Tom, Tony, Tim, and Todd. So, they figured they would mail order a girl! They had actually asked for a daughter between the ages of 1 year and 4 years (which was Todd’s age). They said they could take a child who was somewhat handicapped (today we’d say “special needs.”). They were offered me, even though I was an infant. I was “handicapped” since I was recovering from surgery.

I was brought to the States when I was three and a half months old. When I was a kid, I imagined that I was in the cargo hold of a plane in a dog kennel. Obviously, that was not the case. Some lady brought me over. My parents picked me up at LAX. My immediate family was all these, as were my Aunt Karen, cousin Kim, cousin Beth, Aunt Sylvia, Uncle Mike, “cousin” Brian, and “cousin” Sharon. (I put “cousin” in quotation marks because neither Aunt Sylvia nor Uncle Mike is siblings with either of my parents, making Brian and Sharon my unofficial cousins. Our parents have been best friends for many, many decades.) I was named after both of the women present; my Aunt Sylvia and my Aunt Karen Lorene. Apparently, I was a daddy’s girl from that very beginning. My mom has told me how my dad was the only one able to calm me at the airport. During the car ride home, my momma held me though (those were the days before mandatory car seats!).

I had a pretty typical childhood. No one wants their own looks, right? I wanted to be white, blond, and have blue eyes. Or, I at least wanted brown hair and blue eyes like the rest of my family. If adoptees go through the stages of grief, my childhood was largely about denial.

I remember the day I became an American citizen. There was a lot of sitting around, but I do remember a sense of pride, even as a kid. I maintain that I probably appreciate my citizenship more than most natural-born citizens because it was something I had to earn.

I can’t even say I had little interest in anything Korean. I really wanted nothing to do with it all. One time, my parents took me to a dinner for Korean adoptees. I tried kimchi for the first time and I hated it. I was completely disinterested in the beautiful costumes and dances that were performed. I kinda hated being Korean. It made me different and that’s not what kids want.

When I was in junior high, I used to get this magazine for Christian teenagers called Brio. It was supposed to replace Seventeen and those types of publications. It was a sorry substitute, but I enjoyed reading it. There was an article about a girl who had survived a botched abortion. I cried to my mom, convinced that my biological mother had tried to kill me and that I survived somehow. She did everything in her power to prove that I was loved from the beginning because I was born in a hospital. I was unconvinced, but tried to at least act like I bought into it.

Being adopted or Korean wasn’t too much of an issue again until I went away to college. I was at Westmont in just about the most beautiful place in California and started to really see how different I was. I saw very few Asians. Actually, I saw very few people who weren’t white. I was “the Asian one.” I look at it now and it wasn’t negative. I think I even knew it wasn’t a negative thing then, but I felt like it was. I knew I was being referred to for being different and I hated it. I wasn’t the token Asian at home; I was just Sylvia. My friends from growing up would forget I was different. I went through a lot of difficult things in the months I was at Westmont, trying to figure out who I was. I ended up coming home soon, after discovering Westmont wasn’t the Utopia I had imagined it would be. I went through a stage of depression, although I don’t know if it was a stage of grief or just where I was in life.

I guess it was somewhere around this time that I realized I hated being Korean. I felt like I had been rejected by my race, my country, my own blood family. When I was 23, I gave birth to our daughter, Zoey. She was the most amazing thing I had ever experienced. I felt euphoric for the first couple years of her life. I loved being a momma. I loved my daughter more than life itself. There was a specific day when she was sleeping in my arms and I wept. I didn’t cry because of the love I felt for her, but out of anger that the woman who birthed me didn’t feel that way about me. I hated her. How could a woman carry a child for nine months, feeling her movements, and just leave her. I sobbed for a long time. It wasn’t a good cry. It was all about anger. If it was a grief stage, I definitely was going through the anger stage.

Somewhere during early motherhood, I reached acceptance. Not only did I accept my Korean-ness, I embraced it. I became incredibly interested in my heritage because it was my daughter’s heritage. I didn’t want her to be as confused about her identity as I had been. She hadn’t been rejected by anyone and I wanted Korea to be a positive idea in her mind. Through finding her heritage, I found a lot of myself. I learned to cook as much Korean food as possible. I continue learning new recipes all the time. I’ve learned a few Korean words to say to my kids. For my son, Jude’s first birthday, we had a somewhat traditional celebration, called a dol. Through my kids, I started loving and taking a lot of pride in being Korean. I am constantly trying to include more Korean culture into our family.
So, where does this leave me? I never thought I’d be able to find my birth mother. It just didn’t seem possible. I thought I’d have to hire a private investigator to DNA test half of Korea for me. Recently, Sharon (the same “cousin” from above) told me about Missy. I’d known Missy for a long time, but mainly just as Sharon’s friend. I knew she was adopted from Korea, but that was about it. Sharon told me Missy had found her birth mother.

Next time: My talk with Missy, my first failure, my first success… And I need to figure out how to post pictures.