What is a family?

The question of family comes up not only for National Adoption Month, but also at this time of year when turkeys are basted.

Before my adoptive parents passed away, the Thanksgiving Holiday was my favorite. It meant we would gather in the homes of my East Tennessee relatives. We would feast and gossip, sleep and eat again.

The womenfolk would gather in the kitchen, as the men gathered in front of the tube to watch the game. The house was warm and alive.

Today, my heart is filled with sorrow at the sweetness of those days. I am very thankful for those moments, but not because my Tennerican family “saved” me from a “life of poverty” as the adoption agencies and lawyers would have you believe during their month of November.

I own these memories of home and love, but that does not diminish the importance of my life before them. It only enriches my lived experience.

The connection with my home country has granted me a grace I never consciously knew until my feet landed there. I have reclaimed the Korean BBQ feast, the Korean Spa experience and Noreabang. Those beloved experiences were shared with my closest friends for my fiftieth this year. Those from my pre-Korea days were able to embrace the life I so long for now.

I cherish the quiet November table where my home is filled with the smells of roast parsnips and a chargrilled turkey. There is gratitude for the table set for four and the four cats that stalk the table. Our family tradition is what it is … our tiny family in the midwest. That’s perfect for now.

Unmoored

A week ago, I collected lots of Puerto Rican music to remind me of my father.

His loss permeates my soul. He was my anchor in much of my life as a person of color. His love and caring sustained me in my darkest moments … because he understood my sorrows. He gently told me his stories of discrimination and then brushed them off. That is how he survived, and I learned to do the same.

Since his death, I feel so very lost. I need him now. His love surrounded me when I struggled with my role as a mother. He reminded me how very proud he was of me. As much as anyone else said it, I needed him or my mother to say it. As an adoptee, the love and approval from our elders is everything. In most cases, the only people who fill that space are our adoptive parents.

I have searched for the other parents … my original family and my foster family. They hold the key to many of my beginnings. They are unknowns in the crowded subway system in Seoul. In Seoul, I felt their presence in the biological resemblance that surrounded me.

In Wisconsin, I am left to create a space of safety and love. That is our home. So, a few days ago, as I listened to salsa music and did my cleaning, my daughter stopped me to take my picture in the old way … with a Polaroid camera.

There he was. My father was dancing with me as a light. I posted it, and some explained that it must have been a light somewhere or that the camera had something on the lens. But no other photograph she took that night had the same light.

Self-doubt is a terrible thing. But it sank in … the idea that there was a perfectly good explanation for the light.

Then, one of my favorite authors, Sherman Alexie, released a letter about his own loss and his encounters with his late mother. Well, now, I know my father is with me still, and we salsa through the house at all hours!

This. Is. Us.

I have been reluctant to write about the new series on NBC, This Is Us.

Because … it slays a part of me every episode. All I could muster, were tweets through the season.

This scene brought so much pain and sweetness. I am Randall. A blogpost soon … #ThisIsUs https://t.co/lSfsWyOvGl

— mothermade (@mothermade) November 23, 2016

If I found my family, I would want every minute, no matter the consequences, with them. Randall in #ThisIsUs #AskAnAdoptee

— mothermade (@mothermade) January 11, 2017

“I’ll handle this.” — Randall on #ThisIsUs 😔 As an adoptee this played in my head ALL. THE. TIME. But inside you crumble. #ImTransracial

— mothermade (@mothermade) February 16, 2017

Having lost both my adoptive parents early in life, I have some solace in not seeing them suffer. William’s pain … Randall’s loss. #ThisIsUs

— mothermade (@mothermade) February 16, 2017

I love William so, so much. Maybe because I hope for a father just like him … #whatevertime #ThisIsUs #Memphis #Imtransracial pic.twitter.com/enZJJ0Stgc

— mothermade (@mothermade) February 24, 2017

Just finished #ThisIsUs. My last memory of my Dad; he was down. @sterlingkb1: I felt we were siblings of loss tonight. pic.twitter.com/jjMmwsJMW4

— mothermade (@mothermade) February 24, 2017

This is the beauty I dream of … #adoptee #ThisIsUs https://t.co/WoZg9MWULg https://t.co/Ef7mLwChQD

— mothermade (@mothermade) March 8, 2017

The last tweet was in reference to this tweet by Sterling Brown, the actor who plays Randall.

Together again! #MyTwoDads #ThisIsUs 😊🤜🏻🤛🏽 pic.twitter.com/zqlo84N9St

— Sterling K Brown (@sterlingkb1) March 8, 2017

You see, throughout this show, Randall’s thread and mine tangle and separate and intertwine.

I wish for the moment when Randall holds William as he slips away.

My father died alone, collapsed outside the hospital where he had dedicated his entire life to not only the place, but all the people inside.

When the postman cried in the latest episode of This Is Us, I recalled those who shared their brief joyful moments with my father … they were strangers to me and these moments they had with my father were even stranger still.

As Randall and Beth discover things William has left behind, I realized I never really had those moments to quietly sift through my father’s memories. I did not get that kind of closure. The week after his death, I locked myself in his bathroom, touching his pajamas and smelling his cologne. I still visualize that last moment in his bathroom.

Now, I look forward to my trip to Seoul. I hope for the moment when I can embrace those who once cradled me in my first months. When Rebecca, Randall’s adoptive mother, points out that Randall has William’s tenderness, I ache longingly to know from where my traits come.

Ultimately, I know my day may never come. But from the legacy of my father’s love for others, I hope to bring the same joy to those around me … and spare them from the pain I feel every time I see someone resemble their family members.

I think I hide it well.

But damn! Can Randall bring it out in the privacy of my own home!

Jesse describes William as “Soft armrests for weary souls to lean on.”

And that is the best I can do.

Twinkie Chronicles: I gather family wherever I can.

Christmas Day is not the holiday I fondly remember. No more does my father’s Spanish-sprinkled “Ho, ho, ho! O’ Christmas Tree, O’ Christmas Treeeeeeee!” ring out over FaceTime. It’s quite silent here now.

This is the first Christmas in my home without my father’s infectious laugh and his many unnecessary packages.

My father was a work-a-holic. He loved his job as, first, an ER nurse, then as a nursing supervisor. His co-workers were the family with whom he spent his holidays. He always worked Christmas. I would beg him to take a holiday off and spend it with us when we were closer; he did so only once after retiring briefly. (He returned to work shortly thereafter.)

That last Christmas, he gave his co-workers all flashlights, his trademark gift. My sister and I, plus our kids and spouses, always received new flashlights. On New Year’s Day, we FaceTimed, and he told me how tired he was. I, again, asked him to take it easy and rest. He told me his time on the Earth was shortening. Daughter deafness overcame me. I told him not to talk about death and that he would be around a long time, just like his mother. That was the last conversation I had with him.

This summer, I decided to try working for national retail companies.

Since moving to the midwest seven years ago, I was finally able to secure a job. For seven years, this white liberal town was closed to me, a woman with a Latina name and professional roots in the South. My years of working as a college professor and a graphic designer meant nothing.

My curriculum vitae would be looked over and tossed aside. Few letters of rejection arrived. The occasional form email might come, and when I responded asking for frankness in what I lacked, I was met with the “we had so many qualified applicants.” I had two interviews in the seven years of my searching.

One year, I would receive an email asking me to set up an interview time with a local technical college. I had submitted my CV in response to a call in the Chronicle of Higher Learning. This was exciting! When I responded with my preferred times, an email quickly responded …

“… This is difficult.  I’ve never had to do something like this before.  I accidentally selected your name to send the interview for and it should have been someone else.  I selected from a long list and just grabbed the wrong e-mail address.  Unfortunately, you were not selected to be interviewed for this position.  We had an extremely competitive pool of over 50 very well qualified candidates.  Bringing this down to a small number to interview was very difficult.”

I would bounce back and cause a stir on a national level. The national community would look to me for my words as an adoptee, but once again there would be no reimbursement. My adoptee voice was useful … but not enough to cut a check.

After a soul-searching, extended time in Seoul, I went underground, still talking but now, wounded by my life in the United States … past, present and future. It was time to be compensated for my work.

This holiday season, I worked on Christmas Eve. It was busy and stress-filled. But through all this, I found a new family in my co-workers. As an adoptee, I have learned to find family where I can, but I am reminded of my father’s love for his work “family.” I recall that he, too, was far from his childhood memories in Puerto Rico.

My soul swims in sorrow on the holidays. There is a silence in my home without the voices from my childhood. There are no more cards or calls from Mama and Papito. They are no longer here.

I reflect on two people who gave all they had to leave me joyful memories. From here, I pass my father’s joy and spirit to those at work who have welcomed me with hugs and jests. They filled my days this year with the joy I have been seeking for quite some time now. It is nice to finally have found a home with them.

Happy Holidays.

Death, the Bookmark

My life is marked by death.
Stickies on the worn pages.
Each a misaligned tab to start a chapter
Of a life filled with loss.

August 16, 1977, I watch Hogan’s Heros.
My mother in the kitchen cooking Chicken A La González.
The black ticker tape … The King is Dead.
My mother runs and locks herself in the bathroom.
Sobs seep from underneath the door.

February 24, 1987, I wake to a phone call.
“She had been sick but seemed better … ”
And I sob, why didn’t you tell me she was sick?!
I would have been there for her!!!
The first significant death of my little life.

February 2, 2001, I hold my infant son, as the phone rings …
“She died in her sleep. She did not suffer.”
The only Mom I knew was gone.
All mothers are erased …

October 30, 2010, her salsa is silenced.
The view of the casket, I handle.
They close the casket, and I collapse as
My sobs echo throughout the small parlor.
Todos las abuelitas se desvanecen …

January 3, 2015, a late night call …
“He fell outside the hospital, on his way to work.”
Ever the humanitarian, the lover of others.
His life dedicated to alleviating their suffering,
Comforting families, healing with laughter and love.
But now, I am enraged; he was mine, not theirs.
Daddy, Papito, Papí.

January 2, 2016, the decision to stop the pain.
He was my furry, purry comforter in Korea.
He warmed my chest when the weight of loss
Suffocated me. He was bright and loving.
He never asked for anything, but he wanted me …

As they take him from my arms,
His weak body uses the last reserves
To scream for me with pleading little eyes.
They shut the door.

I ride an hour to the demilitarized zone.
They ask if I am Christian or Buddhist.
The service with only one mourner in a closet-like room,
Incense burning and English Christian music pipes in.
His stiff, small body there for me to pet one last time.

The door opens the cart is rolled to a window.
I am placed on the other side of the glass …
For one … last … look
At this sweet body.
The furnace door is shut.
The flames dance above the furnace in bright colors.

In thirty brief moments, I stand again at the window.
The solemn Korean men use gloves to pick up …
His tiny bones. Fragile and light.
Lines of white that once held flesh and fur.
The whirr of the blade, and I am sent off on the bus.

His lovely ashes folded meticulously in hanji paper
Placed in a celadon urn, and
Wrapped carefully in a white handkerchief.
My body is numb on the two-hour journey back.
No more loss, please. 

I cannot keep comforting myself with
Legacies of lives well-lived.
I feel alone, as lives must continue.
School, a birth, work …
We continue. I hope to strengthen with time.

No more loss, please … 
please … please …

A sweet baby face. The joy is returning.
A text … “Are you sad?”
A second text … “Prince.”
My heart jumps to my throat.
I choke.

Do not tell me he was “just a singer,”
“A celebrity,” “a person in the public eye.”
“How silly to cry over someone you do not personally know.”
Shut the fuck up.
You know nothing of his role in my life.

He gave me pride to be me,
While you told me I was “almost normal.”
His songs taught me to love my body,
Not loathe my small frame, my “exotic” hair and eyes.
His music … intravenous strength and sensuality.

His words: “You have to live a life to understand it.”
No one around me lived my life in the 1980s.
But Prince Rogers Nelson empathized.
His lyrics lay my low self esteem on a bed of acceptance,
Just what a young woman needed.

Now, as the door shuts behind me,
I can sob as my mother did just shy of 40 years ago.
Her King died and left her to a life of existing for her family.
My Prince has died and left me to exist, but as a stronger woman.
His life’s work … leaving doors wide open
For us to run outside and dance in the purple rain.

Love is enough, until it’s gone.

Blocked from knowing my history, a product of the Baby Box theory, I only remember the love of one family. It wasn’t the choice of my adoptive family (or what I will refer to as “my family” in this post) to keep me from my first family. The members of my family believed for all legal purposes that I was an orphan that became their daughter and sister.

I have very fond memories of my family. As I sit in Seoul, peeling chestnuts and eating them raw, I remember the chestnut orchard of my grandfather. I would hang and swing from the branches of those mighty trees in the fall weather of East Tennessee. It was idyllic and comforting. I loved breaking apart the prickly pods to reveal the raw meat of a nut no one else loved as I did …

In Seoul, I bought a bag of corn chips, much like the Bugles my grandmother bought for me from the vending machine where she cleaned rooms at the local hotel. My family’s life was simple. We lived simply, just as I imagine my first family did. It seems fitting that I would become the daughter of a set of parents who grew up poor as well.

The days of reminiscing with my parents are gone. My mother passed just as I was becoming the mom she had taught me to be. For years, I struggled with the loss of her.


My father and sister stood with me when my mom died. Their grief was mine and mine, theirs. We spoke among ourselves about her impact on our lives. I shared with them the pains of feeling alone in my parenting.

My younger sister would soon have a little one of her own. Feeling comfortable with infants (after having my two), I cherished the time spent with her as she struggled to wrestle motherhood to the ground. One day, she said, “You have done the very thing that would have made Mom so very proud.” That was a golden moment in my life. I was “Mom.”

My father’s family became the strength in the lives of my children as they grew up only really knowing my father and not my mother. We made many trips to Puerto Rico to connect. They feel they are Puerto Rican.

But our time with my father was also fleeting. His death this last January was a blow we never imagined at the time. He had been my link to Korea … his time there, his love for the country and his honest interest in my original family search. He was my supporter when the world’s eyes saw me as a disloyal adoptee.

In the following months, I would learn more about my father’s time in Korea and his short love affair that resulted in a son … a man only two years older than me and the physical embodiment of the identity I had spent my entire life building.

What I wish adoptive parents would consider is that once they pass on, the adoptee is truly alone. We are left with a family that is only ours by association. In my case, my extended family works to stay connected, but deep down, I feel separate. My children and I long for a connection to the one man who embodies my father and my biological Korean side.

My writing is not for my late parents. My writing addresses me as a person, a mother, an adoptee, my parents’ daughter, my original family’s lost daughter and as the foster child to a foster mother I can only see in faded pictures.

This post was originally published on the Lost Daughters blog for National Adoption Month.

Once you know, you cannot unknow.

I sit in our small apartment in Korea … my shoulders tense.

Each walk outside our door brings me deep anxiety. Lately, I have reflected on the days when I began my blog. Those were the salad days … the sunny, joyful days. I began this blog in 2007, six years after my mother’s death. I had always meant to write a book to tell about my experiences growing up as a Tennerican with slant eyes and chemically curled big hair.

As my life was changing from the me-focus to my children, I realized that I wanted them to know the oral stories of our family. I had written countless black journals, but who wants to comb through those? So, I decided to begin my life story in a blog. It seemed a good way to document our small family’s history … what little I knew of it.

The first three posts were picked up by my adoption agency and featured in its magazine. I was a proud “chosen” one. That was the language my family was taught to use to describe me and make me feel special.

Oh! The posts we had! So much fun and fluff! I met my two Asian friends in Virginia and wrote of the antidotes they shared with me about my Asian culture. We talked of our “Caucasian” husbands and how our children were often interchangeable.

I would continue to struggle and ask, “Who was I?” … a Tennerican, a mom to two “Hapas” but definitely not really Korean.

My blog has become a study in how one comes to terms (albeit very late in life) with the struggles of identity as an international, transracial adoptee. There have been landmarks in my later life that have influenced my thinking about who I am.

One of the first was meeting my first Korean adult adoptee … happenstance in a tiny cafe in Madison, Wisconsin. It was life-changing. I met others as well. Each one was a curiosity to me. One in particular shared so many similarities (including adoption decrees signed just days from one another). We began a quick, yet fleeting friendship.

As I limped along learning, I began to understand more fully the complexities of adoption and how it intersected with other aspects of my identity.

One evening at a Korean celebration, this Korean adoptee friend and I sat at a table with another younger, adult adoptee. There was a discussion about how a four-year-old Korean adoptee was wanting blonde hair. While I saw this as a feminist issue with a basis in the princess phase, my adoptee friend argued it was a race issue. I shared that my own daughter who had a Korean mother as a role model wanted Ariel’s red hair at age four. But my friend burst out that I was “ignorant” about adoption and my own identity issues. She angrily said, “You have only started your journey and have no idea. I will ask you when you finish your journey.”

Reflecting on that now, I realize she jolted me. Her words struck me like the cold shower on an drunk’s face. Having lost a crucial friendship that day, I sought the help of the younger adoptee to process the conversation we all had had. He introduced me to the work of Susan Harris O’Connor. Her work validated me. Her work made me more than a one-dimensional person. Another landmark passed.

Then, I became an adoptee with a mission. I wanted to help others like me, but what I didn’t realize fully was that I needed the help. I needed my eyes open; I needed an education. The beginning of this education came in the form of a panel; here I met John Raible. He encouraged pride in my narrative and in being Asian. That would be my last agency panel.

In walked the Lost Daughters. These women have seen me at my most vulnerable. They listen and reflect. They are honest and respectful. I could ask for no better support.

My work with the Lost Daughters began in the fall of 2013. This relationship has pulled me through some of my darkest moments. My search for my family began after seeing the film on Philomela Lee. I realized that searching was not solely about me as an adoptee, but also about the mothers I left behind in Korea.

This search became problematic as I petitioned for information and traveled to Korea. I have learned of the injustices adoptees face, the roadblocks by agencies, the power of the adoption industry and the deep shame in the Korean culture.

I have learned that single mothers in Korea are given a mere $59 a month while orphanages (like the Baby Box operator) receive $900 a month for each child in their care. All these things, I cannot unknow.

I can no longer be the blissful adult adoptee who only focuses on the beauty of her life with her adoptive family for somewhere one woman grieves for me on my birthday and another remembers the fleeting seven months I spent with her as my Omma.

I can no longer walk around ignoring the racism of both of my home countries for somewhere my half-brother faces racism as a half Korean-half Puerto Rican and knows little of his birthfather’s life.

I cannot forget or lie. I cannot be silent or politely hold in the frustrations I have. To care for myself and my family, I need honesty and transparency. We all deserve that faith in humanity.

Your Daddy’s Gone

This week, my father’s birthday came and went.

Birthdays, as you know, are very difficult for me. My birthday is a fabrication, a lie, a secret that only my original mother could reveal.

My father’s birth certificate says that he was born on September 20, but in fact, he was born on September 21. The story, as told by my grandmother (Abuelita), goes like this …

On the day my father was born, my grandfather was overjoyed, so much so he celebrated to utter inebriation. When he finally appeared to register my father’s birth at the town office, he gave the wrong date to the registrar.

My father honored his mother’s words and her story. He knew she would never forget the day he entered the world. His connection to her was sealed that very 21st of September. So, throughout my father’s life, he used September 21 as his birthdate.

This year, the sorrow of losing him mixed with the comfort of knowing him. His life was one of suffering, silliness and sweet moments with his family. I hope to have as many of those moments, whatever they hold, as he did.

As I walk the streets of Seoul, just as he did in 1965 and 1966, I think of him eating rice for breakfast and sweating as he ate kimchi.

Korea: The Ghost Walk

We are in a sea of me’s. Everywhere, people walk about not knowing the scrutiny I subject them to.

Anyone could be a relative … a parent, a sibling, a grandparent, an aunt, an uncle or a cousin. But none of us know it. We are secrets wandering and searching for the key to the box that will set us free to love those who are biological relations.

I think of my domestic adoptee friends in the United States and realize the torture they have felt from the very beginning. You are a stranger to those who share your DNA. You study those who have your traits and long to know if there is a connection between you … an imaginary thread that connects you.

In their first week as Koreans in Korea, my children are learning this as well. My goal this week was to take them to the haunts of my last trip … places that bring me comfort and center my soul. For the most part, it has been a joy to revisit the wonder I felt and watch my children feel the same.

We visited Insadong, Gangnam and Hapjeong. By their third day, they seemed comfortable.

Yet, their minds were playing similar earworms. After the trip to Gangnam, my daughter said, “I just saw a man that looked like Papito.” She is searching for my half-brother, an uncle that would bring her Papito back. Just seeing his features or his mannerisms in a Korean man comforts us. If we found him, we would come full circle in this crazy, complicated thing called adoption.

My son is quieter and shares when it is overwhelming. When a middle-aged man in the Burger King took his tray to clean up, he shared that he felt a connection to him. He recently had a job as a bus boy, but he was struck by the fact that this man was older and doing his former job.

Here we talked about how I felt connection to them as an adoptee … how my imagined story of poverty and desperation lead to my adoption … how I imagine that these “others” are me.

The Birthright

“Nobody’s Perfect.”

This was the line that echoed throughout my childhood. My sister and I had matching nighties with this phrase emblazoned on them. One evening, my three-year-old sibling put hers on backwards. She grinned and said, “Nobody’s Perfect!”

Imperfection runs amok in society, but we try our damnedest to cloak it … mask it … shroud it … bury it.

I was once someone’s secret, the personified shame of some encounter. I am still hidden, but there are now more treasures to be found.

Many times in my life, my father reminded me of the country from which I came. He gave me his 1961 Korean dictionary. He sought out Korean restaurants. He insisted I read books on the post Korean War Comfort Women. The latter always disturbed me. It was as though I had insulted him for dismissing a book I couldn’t stomach at the time.

When my son was seven weeks old, my mother suffered a stroke. This event brought our small family together; my parents had been legally separated for more than 18 years. On our first evening together, my sister, my father, my infant son and I shared a hospital hospitality room.

As a new mother, I couldn’t settle my son down. His infant screams were piercing. We all tried various tricks, but nothing worked. Suddenly, my father shouted, “Can you shut that baby up?!”

My sister quickly whisked my father out the room. The outburst seemed to work, and I was able to eventually calm my child. Sobbing uncontrollably and asking for my forgiveness, my father re-entered the room. I tried to calm him and told him not to worry, that we all were tired and stressed, but he kept insisting that he was a bad man and that my sister and I had no idea what a bad person he was.

This scene always lingered with me. My heart broke for my father. He turned around and cared for my mother until her death some eight months later. She fell in love with him all over again as he made her every meal for the remainder of her life.

Last summer, as I searched for my birth mother, my father called me each morning to check in and see what I had done. He was living vicariously through me as I enjoyed the experience of being Korean in Korea. The day I visited my agency to receive nothing, I begged him to come to Korea with me and help me by asking on my behalf for my file. His response was peculiar … “They didn’t tell me anything either.”

When my father died in January, my heart broke into an infinite number … I felt fully alone in my quest. My most fervent supporter was gone.

Five months later, I discovered the cornerstone, the piece that fit all the others together. My father had been stationed in Korea. In my mind, this fact was the reason why he loved Korea, longed for it and was so determined to keep me Korean. I was his connection to a time that meant a great deal to him.

I unearthed that his connection to Korea went beyond me and my connection. He had a secret too. He fathered a son. Somewhere in Korea or beyond is a Korean Puerto Rican who has my identity as his birthright.

Brother/Uncle, we will soon be in Korea to search for you as well …

What stopped me from adopting.

In my third year of undergraduate studies, I read the most heartbreaking story.

Four Korean sisters, ages 6 to 13, made a suicide pact to relieve the burden they believed their parents shouldered as a low income family of seven on $350 a month. This became my view of my birth country and my driving force as an adoptee and a young woman.

In those days, I had finally fallen in love with a young man from Appleton, Wisconsin. I was making plans. In them, I wanted to have a biological child and adopt a young girl from Korea. I wanted to save a young girl from that feeling of uselessness.

This Wisconsin love of my life crumbled as I found he was promised to another back home. My trust was broken, and I vowed that I would stay single and possibly adopt on my own.

Life throws punches, and we roll with them. My parents fell in love, moved to Japan and tried to start a family. But tragedy struck. My mother delivered a stillborn infant son in January 1968. My parents sunk into sadness. They wanted to be parents. After realizing they could not be biological parents, they ventured into the land of Harry Holt. (Here’s where I come in. I know you knew that!)

On their application, they submitted this photograph of themselves. Don’t they look proud and excited? (Holt will not allow me to have the hard copy of this photograph, even though they have an electronic copy of it with my file. It belongs with me, my sister and our children, but never mind.)

Five years after they adopted me, my parents were able to have a biological child. From her hospital room each night of her one-month bedrest stay, my mother cried as she watched me, a purple-coated dot, in the parking lot. Then … my sister arrived. She was cute and cuddly. I wanted to name her Penelope, but my mother decided against it.

My mother would dedicate her life to her girls. She stayed home, volunteered at school, nurtured us to adulthood and with my father, she would console me when the Appleton man left. I told her I wanted to be a single mother with a job. I wanted my life to play out differently from hers. I wanted to seem strong and independent.

Years later, I would meet the man. We married, and my parents asked about grandchildren. My husband agreed with my initial plans, a few years as a couple and later, parents to a biological child and an adopted one. We lived in Rwanda one year after the 1994 genocide and witnessed so many children displaced by war but happy in their home country. My adoption plan was beginning to crumble.

As I turned 30, my GYN asked if I planned to have children. “Yes, of course!” was my reply. She went on to explain that sometimes women might take years to get pregnant, and that I should discuss this with my husband. This reminded me of the pain my mother felt with numerous miscarriages and the still born son. She shed tears every January for that little boy.

Within two years, I was pregnant. The moment my son’s bony hand touched mine through my stretched skin, I was in awe, and the thoughts of any others fell away.

When the moment came for me to finally meet my first biological relative, he was placed on my chest, and I exclaimed, “He has my square-mouth cry!”

We were a happy threesome, and as that joy set in, my mother passed away. I felt lost. I felt I had hurt her as my sister and I found a letter my mother kept. In it, I had written that I wished I had never been adopted. I felt the pain I had inflicted on her in my teen years. But my sister quietly said, “You know, she was so honored that you decided to stay home and be a mother.”

After all those years of pushing back against my mother, years of ridiculing her life’s decisions, I realized that motherhood was my job. I relished it and was proud to be “Mom.”

I would feel my mother’s pain again a couple of years later as I miscarried my second pregnancy. I felt lost again. I felt a failure and decided I was happy with being a mother to one. My husband revisited our earlier plans of adoption, but at the time, we were three on the salary of one, and adoption just wasn’t financially possible.

We would eventually welcome our daughter into our family. I must admit that I beam when my children say they are like me. I waited so long for a chance to compare myself to another human being who shared my DNA. I also share their sadness when they realize that they don’t share biological similarities to my side of the family.

Now that my parents are gone, I wrap myself up in the comfort of my little family. We still do not have the financial means to adopt, but I am content. My initial well-meaning, youth-driven intentions of saving another little Korean girl like me have disintegrated with each adoptee narrative.

Even if I could adopt a Korean girl, I couldn’t add to the pain of a single mother in Korea feeling hopeless to the point of believing her child would have it “better” in a place where material wealth trumps family.

Instead, my focus turns to learning from the past … my past, looking to the future for my children and the future of other adoptees and their children as we navigate the confusion and complexity of adoption.

Infinite Loss

“It’s like Papito is on a trip. I miss him. 
It’s different when you are traveling, you have the hope of seeing them again.”

These sorrowful words came from my 11-year-old daughter as we waited for our plane to Tennessee. So much wisdom comes from my children. I wanted her with me that day. Traveling alone seemed too daunting.

Less than two days earlier, my father collapsed on his way into work; he was 76.

As we waited, we jotted down the things that we would miss about him …

How he loved the Iced Lemon Pound Cake at Starbucks …

How he could sleep just about anywhere …

How he used his fart machine to bring us to tears …

How he loved Halloween …

He brought us our piano so that my children could learn to play. He loved music.

My daughter insisted on playing her Papito one last lullaby.

The pain is almost more than I can bear. The loss of my father follows many losses that many are able to identify in their own lives. I acknowledge their losses too. But I ask that you understand the profound loss as an adoptee. I have lost many times over. I lost a first set of parents, I lost a foster family, I lost my grandmothers, my mother and now Daddy.

While I still hold the option to search for my first family, I am unable to bear any more loss or rejection right now.

I am alone. Some try to comfort me by mentioning my husband and my children. I know this. But who knew me before? My sister, yes. But my parents, all of them, held their memories of me. Their love sustained me for 47 years.

I will miss the man who intervened when others had questions about our public hugs and affection. At the funeral, an acquaintance asked if I were my father’s widow, then moved on to ask the same of my sister. Daddy wasn’t able to protect us from that pain.

He wasn’t there to accompany us to the local Walmart to pick up goods. We are too identifiable as different. I wanted a cloak of invisibility, so my brother-in-law drove us to the next big city to shop invisibly.

He can no longer be there to FaceTime when I feel weak … when words wound me.

He can no longer reinforce our story of family when strangers doubt my loyalty to him.

He can no longer comfort me in his love and support.

He can no longer show pride in my abilities to elevate my voice.

I am holding on to the last birthday card he sent me. He loved Hallmark and read many cards before choosing the one that said perfectly what he wanted to say.

This year, when I tried to form my identity without the lies of the agency, he was there, sending his approval and love, not on the fabricated day, but on any day in November.

I felt lost this summer when the agency had nothing for me. I called Dad. I mentioned that I wanted him to come with me. He just said, “They won’t listen to me, and they won’t give me anything either.”

Today, I am truly lost.

I am still wandering around … looking for him, but knowing.

Fear of Being Korean

Every time I look into my children’s eyes, I see pieces of me that I feel I do not know. In August, I journey to Korea with the help of G.O.A.’L, a Korean organization of adoptees who advocate for other adoptees.

I love finally having a physical connection through my children, but I struggle. I don’t want to make it about me. They are their own people. They are entitled to their own identities.

That said, as they have gotten older, they do question, and the tie to me is more evident. They suffer the ambiguity that I feel; they question this unknown family because frankly, it comes up almost every time we enter a clinic or hospital.

We are working through all this at a faster rate than I expected. The trip to Korea is in 43 days. My children are reluctant about my trip. They fear something … losing me … losing Papito (my father) … losing themselves in a family they want to know but are afraid to know.

I feel the same. I have had questions for so long, they live in my mind like all the other nerves that function as a part of my being alive. I have grown accustomed to them and kept them quiet for fear of hurting my parents. However, what I know now as an adult is that my father has always wanted this for me.

He wanted me to know the culture and history of Korea. He wanted me to know the food, the language and the customs. Yet, rural Tennessee was not the place for such knowing. Tennessee is a place of survival … a place to cherish kin and the Bible.

Once more, I see more clearly my father’s Puerto Rican culture was suppressed there. He jokes that when patients at the hospital where he works say, “You got an accent,” he retorts, “I didn’t have one until I got here.”

I see him feeling the ambivalence of being Puerto Rican, yet not … being Tennessean, but not. He knows too well my fears, and I take comfort that whatever happens in August will never break the tie I have to my family at home.

But I fear being Korean. I fear being Korean yet a stranger in my homeland. I fear being Korean but unable to converse with my Korean family. I fear being Korean because that might mean I am less Puerto Rican. I fear being Korean, but not recognizing the part of me that has tormented me my entire life … the part that kept me separate from others … the part that made me different … the part that elicited prejudice.

When I said I was “Korean, not Chinese” as a child, I had no idea how complicated that was.

The Lengths of Loyalty

At this moment, my father is intubated and riding in an ambulance to Knoxville, Tennessee. This is the man who I highlighted in this tweet.

Seriously, I have THE. BEST. DAD. EVER. What you say? You do? Uh, NO. Te amo, Papito. #adoptee
— mothermade (@mothermade) May 21, 2014

This tweet came about after my last conversation with my father about my adoption search. As always, he reassured me and punctuated my right to know about my original country and family.

Loyalty is a legacy. While I had discussed my search with my father many times, my husband wanted me to discuss my open search with my father one more time. My husband feared that such actions would hurt my father.

I knew this to be untrue. Too many times, my father and I had discussed the possibility of my search. Books on Korea, his Korean dictionary, his affinity for Korean food were shared with me. I have never felt that I was not his or he mine. But loyalty works its way into my entire family.

Earlier this year, as my daughter was lamenting how far we are from family, she sighed and said, “Mom, I wish I had cousins.” I, of course, began rattling off the names of my sister’s daughter and my sister-in-law’s children. My daughter said, “No, I meant genetic cousins, like in Korea.”

And yet, after our visit to Puerto Rico, my daughter’s loyalty began to show.

“I want to know the heritage (Korean), but I don’t want to know my genetic family. I have cousins already. You can’t neglect the family you have. I don’t need to be blood-related to have family,” she told me.

I asked her how she felt in Puerto Rico.

“I felt out of place at first … as a different race. But then, I realized they (the Puerto Rican family) are enough. What if they (my original family) don’t want to find you? What if they don’t like you or are bad? I don’t want to see you hurt,” She continued.

Obviously, the media, adoption agencies and some adoptive parents reinforce this idea of “being loyal.” Adoptees are asked why we can’t be “grateful.” We are told that our adoptions are “gifts.” Perhaps it is a level of guilt that all families have. Guilt, loyalty and love are all wound up in the fabric of family.

Take for example, the movie, August: Osage County.  I saw the pervasiveness of guilt and loyalty spill out in these quotes:

“Mama was a mean nasty lady. That’s where I get it from.”
“Smug little ingrate … ”
“Your father was homeless for six years!”
“Stick that knife of judgement in me. You don’t choose your family!”

I am realizing that we all have this level of loyalty. My father’s loyalty to me is that he wants to shield me from hurt too. Just before my mother and my grandmother died, both my mother and my father withheld their medical conditions from me. They wanted me to enjoy my life and not stress about things they felt were out of our control. But in the end, the white lies hurt more. I couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t tell me. 

Now, I realize so much more. I have that loyalty. The loyalty to lie. The loyalty to protect. The loyalty to love.

The Box

Our family ditched the dull, dreary weather of Wisconsin for the sunny smiles and pleasant primos of Puerto Rico. A much needed break and connection with my family was long overdue. We had visited briefly with my cousins and their children last summer, but that was a fleeting day at Dollywood.

This was a full week of relaxing and reconnecting. Our broken Spanish and their broken English meshed well. Outside, I could overhear my children and their cousins trying on the language of the other. It reminded me of my days with my cousins and learning those words that children need … “mira, oye, cuidado … ”

My children came back to Wisconsin with a new-found confidence in speaking Spanish. The time with this side of my family always rejuvenates me. Their love is more than I could ever express in typewritten words. Simply, I am a “Gonzo girl.” My children are engulfed by the infectious love of the Gonzos.

This joy stays with us, but when we return, the reality of our identity sinks in.

This week, the boy and I had our annual physicals. They correspond because since his birth, my physical has been timed with his birthday.

There are numerous forms, but I was very excited about this box.

Yesterday, my son wore this shirt from the Uniqlo’s Pharrell Williams line “I am other.”

We also talked about my check up report. It states that I am white and Hispanic. It reminded me of the time in college when an admissions researcher had changed my designation from Asian to Hispanic. My son was appalled! He knows I would never check the box that says “white.” “You should get that fixed, Mom,” he said.

We had a nice visit with my son’s Chinese pediatrician, and he printed his check up report …

Our response? “¡Ay, Dios miyo!”

What’s in a name?

This video really spoke to me via Upworthy:



I recalled my father’s early days in Tennessee. “Enrique” was hard to say, so he always told people to just call him “Jim.” So, all the newspaper clips read “Jim Gonzalez.”

This video got me thinking, and of course, when I think, I tweet:

The changing of names. #Whiteout. My dad went from “Enrique” to “Jim.” HT @RococoCocoa http://t.co/7DOmHonRm4 #American
— mothermade (@mothermade) March 8, 2014

Always mispronounced my name. “Roserita” “Rosalita” “Rosetta” It’s hard to #Whiteout a Puerto Rican name. #adoption
— mothermade (@mothermade) March 8, 2014

BTW, it’s Rosita … and no you can’t call me “Rosie.” #Whiteout
— mothermade (@mothermade) March 8, 2014

My tweets feed into the Facebook account which I maintain for my friends and not the general public. The last tweet brought a flurry of conversation. Unfortunately, not everyone had read the entire thread. 

Commenters tried to console me by letting me know that they too suffered from the name shortening. When I tried to explain the entire thread, a commenter asked this question: “Is everything about race to you?” 

I responded this way:

“Race is a huge part of me. Not just my Korean self but my Puerto Rican self too. I don’t expect you to know that, but I do expect you to try and understand that. Again, I have been called ‘Roserita, Rosalita, Risotto …’ then, when I correct them, I have been asked, ‘Can I just call you “Rosie”?’ I hate shortened names for that very reason. My children’s names were chosen to be short so they couldn’t be butchered. (But alas, they have been shortened even further.) I get that people like to shorten names often as a expression of familiarity, but that hasn’t always been the case for me. I have had new acquaintances ask to call me ‘Rosie’ and I have accepted that politely … ”

The conversation continued both on my Facebook page and in messenger. The commenter continued that my full Puerto Rican name was as “American” as his. I responded that this is very dependent on what our definition of “American” is. I explained that, to me, the melting pot was a middle class fallacy. 

I doubt my commenter understands that I am profiled and assumed by many just on the basis of my name. This commenter’s name is as generic as John Doe. It is difficult for me to explain my experience to someone who has never experienced what I have. My British husband realized this early in our relationship. When we lived in Tennessee and began our hunt for a new apartment to share, I would call and leave a message about a place leaving my name. No one called me back. Then, he would call the same number, and he would immediately get a call back.

If you have followed me for some time, you know how idyllic my life was in Virginia. I had two very dear Asian friends, my kids had friends who resembled them racially. Our community was less segregated, and I was blissful in my everyday life, but there were hints of a longing for an identity. This commenter met me during this time in my life. I was the model minority. Married to a white man, living in a middle class home and going about my daily life as a mother … that was how I was living. I wasn’t questioning the injustices that most likely happened all around me. I was white by default … having a white mother, a white family and white friends.

The commenter’s final words were these: “… it does concern me that you’re so obsessed with race; I think this obsession is a self-defeating waste of energy.” He’s confused. Trust me, I’m still confused, but clarity is coming. My children are the catalysts for change, that is why I spend my time and energy writing about race and adoption.

It seems the further I distance myself from my white identity, the more I am called, “angry.” As long as I stay silent about the prejudices I feel and experience, the less threatened others feel. But why should they feel threatened? I am not angry, but frustrated and motivated to change how we are viewed.

I cope with my racial identity, adopted children cope, my children cope. But why should we just cope? I want to see our communities recognize and address racial inequities instead of saying “It’s better.” I think it is time for those in places of power to cope with the realities of race. 

As my fifth grade teacher taught me, “Good, Better, Best … never let it rest, ’til the good is better, and the better is BEST.” 

What sucks about being adopted?

Here I go, down to the depths.

But before I take you there, I want to tell you that it isn’t that I am unhappy with my adoptive family. I am not angry at them or as some might say, “ungrateful.” Far from it. You can read about my mother, my father, my sister and my extended adoptive family in past blogs to understand the extent of our love.

Now, I want to tell you what sucks about being adopted.

1. I have no birth certificate. —This frustrates me to no end. Every time, I needed proof of my birth, I had to dig out my naturalization papers (from age 5) and my adoption papers (from age 13 months). Well, that is not proof of my birth. Neither list my birth family or birthdate. This leads me to number 2.
2. I have no true birthdate. — Yes, I have one, but it isn’t my true birthdate. It’s an estimate, a fabricated birthdate based on how I appeared on May, 24, 1968. 
3. I have no birth story. — This never really bothered me until I had children of my own and realized how elemental it was to celebrate that moment when you take your first breath. I love telling my children’s birth stories, and they love hearing them. It bonds us all as a family because we were there at the creation of our family.
4. I have no medical history. — This one is a true pain in my rump. With every move or change of health insurance, we must have that initial first meeting with the new doctor. It goes, “Any history of heart disease?” There, I stop them, “No history, I’m adopted.” This happens for me and my children, because obviously, the mother’s family medical history plays into the children’s health.
5. I am not really Korean. — This one is complicated, and I have written about it numerous times. While my dad fed me kimchi, and my mother sewed hanbok sets for me, I really wasn’t exposed to the Korean culture in the way I would have been had I grown up in a Korean household. So, I find it irritating when I am viewed as Korean, spoken to in Korean, asked about my “real” Korean family, asked if I know Tae Kwondo … well, you get the picture.
6. Reading or hearing the phrase, “like you’re adopted” (insert snarky, teen voice) — Language. Why must people joke with the word “adopted”? Listen, it isn’t funny, and I don’t appreciate being the butt of a joke. I am #notyourbadword. Adoptees are people with feelings, so refrain from using that word in jokes. Got it?
7. Being referred to as an “adopted child/children” — Even as we grow into adults, we are referred to as “children.” This is especially prevalent in the media’s headlines and news stories. Someone please add this to the AP Stylebook!
8. Being left out of the adoption conversation — Big one related to number 7. As adult adoptees, this perception of us as children seems to exclude us from the adoption dialogue. The fear that we might say or write words that might hurt adoptive parents is insulting. If an adoptive parent is hurt by the words of an adult adoptee, that parent is a grown up, remember? Adults should have the maturity to take someone else’s words, understand them and learn from them. 

Now that I have all that off my chest, carry on believing what you want of me, but understand that it might be an assumption by you, dear reader, given your history with adoption. Realize that every adoptee is different, has a unique narrative, and struggles with her own demons.