Word: birth
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...risked it. Five plane tickets to Seoul for our two redheaded birth boys--Kellen, 15, and Jake, 13--Rae, me and my wife Linda. We steeled Rae for the chance that her birth mother wouldn't show up. Come to think of it, we steeled ourselves...
...American families, sat in one room at a home for unwed mothers outside Seoul across from 25 unwed mothers, some who had just given up their babies, some soon to. They looked into their unmet children's futures. We looked into our unmet birth mothers' pasts. A 17-year-old Korean-American girl--roughly the same age as the distraught girls in front of her--rose and choked out, "I know it's hard for you now, but I want you to know I love my American family...
Another 17-year-old adoptee met not only her birth father but also her four elder birth sisters. They were still a family--had always been one--but they had given her up as one mouth too many to feed. Then they told her that her birth mother had died of an aneurysm two weeks earlier. So how was she supposed to feel now? Joy at finding her father and her sisters? Grief at 17 years without them? Anger at being given up? Gratitude for her American parents? Horror at coming so close to and then losing her birth mother...
...these kids--even the three who never found their birth relatives--were piecing together the puzzle of their life at whiplash speed. This is where you were born. This is the woman who held you. This was the city, the food, the smells. For them, it was two parts home ("It's so nice," Rae said amid a throng of Koreans on a street. "For once, people are staring at Kel and Jake instead of me") and three parts I'm-never-coming-here-again (a teenage boy ate dinner at his foster parents' home only to discover...
When the day came for our visit with Rae's birth mother, we were told "It has to be handled very, very carefully." She had three children by a husband she had never told about Rae, and she was terribly afraid someone would see her. And that's how we found ourselves hiding in that van like Joe Friday, waiting for the woman of a lifetime to show up. It is a very odd feeling to be staring holes in every Korean woman walking down a Korean street, thinking that your daughter may have sprung from her womb...