Discovery

Thursday, 6.21.18

I met my birth mother, my eomma, today.

I remember when I saw the email in April, alerting me that she had been found and requested a letter and pictures. This was a possibility that felt so intangible that it was almost as if an owl had flown through my window to tell me I was going to Hogwarts.

We strike out early, snaking through Seoul’s subway and streets with the fluid ease of a native thanks to Minyoung, who, for all intents and purposes, is our Korean cultural ambassador-liaison-advocate-KAD saint. Minyoung’s daughter and nephew also come to help with translations. Emily, another adoptee, accompanied by her KAD sister, Jenna, will also meet her birth mother today. Her appointment preceeds mine, so we all travel together to Holt, her adoption agency. 

The subway is clean, efficient, but for the navigationally-challenged such as myself, confusing as ____.

The face one makes right before they meet their birth mother.

The subway ride is mostly quiet. We discuss the photo albums we made for our birth moms. I notice I call her “birth mom”. My lips can’t form “eomma” as easily as when I left. 

Holt has a coffee shop (it may have been a Dunkin’ Donuts) in its reception area, adjacent to a convenience store. As we wait for Emily’s appointment time, I notice the babies being carried in and out. I wonder where they’re going. I wonder who’s taking care of them. 

Emily’s appointment time draws near. I watch Emily and Minyoung leave. Stillness.

Jaeson, Minyoung’s sweet nephew, escorts me by cab to Eastern, my agency. He waits in the lobby when the social worker arrives. 

"Welcome to your Motherland, Korea!" still gives me mixed feelings.
Also, "Cafe Eastern." Jaeson and I chuckled over that one.

She is in her mid-late 50s, with skin so fair and wrinkle-free it seems unnatural. She takes me on a brief tour (“Here’s the baby room,” etc.) before we enter the Counseling Room. 

The Red Chair is the first thing I see. All Eastern babies sit in a Red Chair for our adoption photo, our Korean names written on a card held in front of us, not unlike a catalog. Here is Chang, Hee Jung. Order now. My picture in the Red Chair is black and white and honestly, it's probably not the exact same chair because well. . . old, but in my photo, my Red Chair was similarly ornate. I have maybe 3 (?) baby pictures, and 2 of them are in this chair.

The Red Chair.

We sit on black pleather couches facing each other, and the strangely smooth-skinned social worker says that I have “special circumstances.” She goes on to explain that a few years after I was born, my birth mother remarried, but has since divorced. When they married, her husband brought with him a young daughter, and together, they had two children. So, after a lifetime of being an only child who craved siblings, I have a step-sister, a half-sister, and half-brother. But there’s more. They’ve lived in Chicago for over a decade.

This is when I cry. I ugly cry. It is so ugly that my body involuntarily creates the most fantastic animal sounds. It reminds me of childbirth, when my executive function shut itself down and my reptilian brain said, “Step aside. I’ll take it from here.” It is the sound of deep exuberance. It is the sound of han. Not only did my eyes weep, but so did every cell in every organ.

She opens a folder and goes through my file with me. Most of it, I have seen, thanks to my parents who don’t make a habit of throwing much away. I see three new things: a letter from my mom to Eastern, updating them on my post-adoption progress, and two baby pictures - one of just my face as I cry (it reminds me of my son, and I smile) and another of my foster mother holding me. 

This is the youngest version of my face that I've ever seen.

Another picture of my early life that I had never seen. The woman holding me was my foster mother, who most likely isn't around anymore, as she would be in her 90s now. She took care of me for several months.
Try as I might, I just couldn't get good lighting.

Now it is time. The social worker leaves to bring my birth mother, who has been waiting in the cafè downstairs since 9:30am. (It is now nearly noon.) She arrived so early because, as I would find out later, she doesn’t come to Seoul much anymore, so she was worried that she’d get lost and be late.

I honestly can’t remember her initial entrance, but when she entered, I rose, and we met in the middle of the room, hugging and sobbing for a long while. She sob-spoke Korean to me (or the universe?) and when I asked the social worker what she was saying, she said, “Are you healthy? Are you healthy?” Then, I got squeezed and rubbed all up and down my arms, my face, and later in the day, even my tummy (!). 

We sat on one of the pleather couches together, she grabbed my hand and held it for a long time. New information now began to emerge.

My beginnings, according to the adoption paperwork: 

My birth parents “met and broke up after a few dates. After that, the birth mother was found to be pregnant with [me].” My birth father was listed as a transient laborer. I was surrendered at 10 months, fostered for 8, and adopted to my parents at 18 months. The people who took me to Eastern were my birth mom, her mother, and her older sister. The listed reason for surrender was financial hardship. Chang, Hee Jung was a name given to me by the social worker. For nearly 40 years, these papers held the Facts to my origin story, erasure and rejection of my Korean life, and roots for my subsequent Americanization. These documents were my only link to Korea for so long. I assumed most of the information was accurate.

Page 1 of my Eastern records.

Page 4 of my Eastern records.

Over the course of the next few hours, I learned that they weren't. 

After I was born, my birth parents and I lived together for a couple of months. However, her parents wanted her to continue her studies, (she was only 17 or 18) and it was also stigmatizing to be an unmarried mother, so they told her to come back home with me. She brought me back to them, (I believe this is when my birth parents’ relationship dissolved?) but rebelliously went to stay with a friend. When she came home, I was gone. Her parents told her that they found a rich Korean family to adopt me. Since domestic adoption is taboo, she never bothered to look for me because she knew that nobody would tell a secret of that magnitude. My birth mom didn’t know that I had been adopted to white Americans until about six weeks ago when Eastern informed her of my birth family search. 

To hear her speak it, she remarkably bears no ill-will toward her parents. At that time Korea was, according to her, “just terrible,” and while they had a successful textile business prior to my birth, it went bankrupt sometime either right before or during my first breaths. They couldn’t afford to feed me. And they both died a few years ago, never revealing to her the truth about where they sent me. 

I want to understand. I want to believe this was a loving gesture. I want to think that they would have rather borne her anger than watch their daughter see her baby starve. This makes sense. But this is a hard way for me to understand love.

Chang, Hee Jung was not a name given to me by a faceless social worker from 40 years ago. My birth mother’s father, my halahbojee, loved me enough to give me a name. And not just right before surrender. This was my name from birth, what I was called for nearly a year. My birth mom said he took care of me quite a bit and even suffered a bad burn on his arm from warming my bottle. He died of dementia just a few years ago.

I am still trying to wrap my head around the difference between the information in my file and what I have just learned about my birth father. He was not just there for “a few dates,” but apparently made an effort to be a family. For several months after my birth, we lived as a together as a family. He was a barber who came from a village in the southeast. My eomma said she would try to find him. He would want to know that I am OK.

Eomma. I wrap my mouth around this word again. I stick out my tongue for a small taste. I will try to come back for more. 

Walking to a restaurant for lunch. It's common to see friends and relatives holding hands in public. She grabbed my hand without prompting and held it as we walked. It caught me off guard at first, but felt comfortable later.

My birth mom isn't ready to tell her other children that they have a sister, so I will wait. For now, they think they have a long-lost relative in Florida, but that's pretty much all. I will be patient. After all, I've waited 40 years. At this point, having my questions answered feels like enough.

Our first meal together. As I ate, I saw from the periphery of my left side, a lettuce wrap coming at my face. This happened a couple of times. I'd heard about this, but it still caught me off guard. And it was kinda funny, to be honest.