#TBT

It’s Thursday. The feed floods with remembrances of babies, youngsters, bad hair days, 70s disco dress and 80s rebel wear. Proof we lived through the 80s.

Here’s one:

Seriously … bad.

I love seeing the photographs of others’ siblings and parents. The similarities in their anatomical features: the similar smiles, the same stance, mirrored features.

Last week, someone posted a photograph of her brother as a child. It was amazing to see her biological children’s faces in this image taken many years before they were born. I found myself typing about the similarities, but then, I stopped myself. She has one son who is adopted. Quickly, I hit the delete key.

Knowing her son might see my comment, I wanted to spare him the sadness of never sharing the sameness. I know that sadness; however, it was often tempered with my family forgetting my foreignness.

The birth of my children solidified my biological place in my own little family. I realize for many adoptive parents who, like my own, never thought they would see their eyes gaze up at them, that fact is so very difficult to bear. I empathize. I understand the joy an adoptee can bring to a childless couple … how we ease the pain. Yet, here I implore adoptive parents to recognize and address the added pain their adopted child experiences when she has no physical frame of reference.

Selfishly, I finally delight in the comments, “Oh, your son and daughter look just like you!” Bear with me. This time of seeing myself in another human being has brought me joy amidst the childhood pain of never experiencing this reflection of self in someone else.

My Allegiance

Expats become close; expat friendships add a sense of belonging amidst the trauma of post-war living. In the summer of 1995, my husband and I invited a South African expat to stay with us in our home in Kigali, Rwanda. One evening in the darkness of our usual blackouts, we began a discussion about America.

At that time, I was white and wholly American. As the South African began talking about America and its “fat, rich tourists,” I became flushed, angry and hurt. I explained that I came from a lower, middle class family, that my grandparents grew their food and that my parents worked extra jobs just so I could participate in school activities. I hated his generalizations and his stereotypical views of Americans. His view was based solely on the American tourists he had met in his travels.

Our visitor was shocked and amused by my visceral reaction to his criticisms. “How can you have such emotion about a country that doesn’t really care about its people. There is much racism there.” Being American was all I knew, and if you know my personality, I would defend to the end my association with this country.

But on this Independence Day, I am less enthused by my association. My head is a soup of identities and loyalties. This summer I received one of the few slots with G.O.A.’L’s First Home Trips. In August, I will make my first journey back to Korea since I left at age one. I am nervous but curious. While appearing Korean, I know little about my native country and fear that my whiteness will betray me. I fear being isolated and shunned … and simply being less Korean.

My view of the world and my place in it has changed since that evening in 1995. In 2002, The Indigo Girls’ song, “She’s Saving Me,” resonated with me, but I didn’t quite understand why.

Recently, at one of their concerts, as I coped with my identity, its meaning became clearer, and I put the lyrics into a ceramic piece.

“I’m a very lost soul. I was born with a hole in my heart, the size of my land locked travels.”

— Emily Saliers

I never feel enough.

Our family drove to Minneapolis this weekend on a quest to find out more about my adoption. The mood was jolly as we road tripped. I was excited for our first adoptee conference outing as a family.

We settled in with our Doubletree cookies and name tags for the KAAN 2014 conference. “Nice,” I thought.

For dinner, we split off: me to the adoptees-only dinner; the rest to the community dinner. I had been anxiously awaiting the dinner. As you know, I enjoyed the Adoption Policy and Reform Collaborative Conference in November. I found my family in the women of the Lost Daughters. My visions of my family and I finding our niche were on the verge of validation. 

Fitting, assimilating, blending … my entire life, I have wanted that acceptance. But my own notions scare me. I briefly said hello to a few adoptees and then sank into solitude as the young adoptees around me talked and reconnected. I was finally the majority race on this shuttle to dinner.

What should have been gratifying and fulfilling soon became oppressive. I suddenly began to feel less comfortable surrounded by so many Asians. I felt the panic I felt as a child when I was paired with the only other Asian boy.

I didn’t feel a part of this group of adoptees. I frantically texted and posted to my husband and my Lost Daughters’ sisters. I was aching. Many on the bus were Minneapolis adoptees who knew one another. Others were well-known in the KAAN circles; they had their connections. They all seemed so happy and well-adjusted. Laughter and conversation filled the bus. 

Something inside of me felt cancerous. I was consuming myself in panic; my eyes were welling with tears. I felt less Korean … less Korean adopted. 

Luckily, I found two friendly faces from the Adoption Policy and Reform conference at the restaurant and began to relax. 

Sometimes, I feel my background of Southerner, Puerto Rican, Asian and white conflate and confuse me. It is as though I cannot decide what identity to wear or where I fit. I never feel enough of anything. 

This morning, I met up with my Lost Daughter sister, Kripa. She became my anchor and helped me realize that sometimes, the best thing is to be who you are in that space and moment. I’m trying!

 

A Dictionary on Adoption

In researching the Korean language for my next ceramic piece, I have learned that all words are not quite equal.

Time has altered the ideas of words. There are the words written by Koreans, the words in an old Japanese publishing of a Korean dictionary, and the words of an American published Korean dictionary.

Pause and consider these interpretations of the language.

This dictionary was given to me today by my daughter’s friend’s Korean mother.

This one was given to me early in my life by my father. He bought it during the Korean War in the 1950s, before the flood of Korean adoptees in America.

Lastly, pages of the two together. Notice that the 1950s version only mentions an adopted son. Curious about that one …

I wonder if adoption in the 1950s was an honor only granted to sons. Would no respectable Korean family adopt a daughter?

Rhetorical Roots

I am leaving on a jet plane to the District of Columbia.

In my carry-on, I have some of the most precious pieces of my life.

Art feeds me. It regenerates. It invigorates. It educates.

If you have followed me, you know I am a photographer. I capture the lives of those I love and the issues that impact our world as women, people of color and adoptees.

Lately, as I struggled with the lack of history, I began to work more intensely on my ceramics. I began throwing what my hubby likes to call “door stoppers” in the fall of 2009. It was new, and I saw that form as a way of making dinnerware.

As I began to throw more creatively, I still struggled with my need for perfection. All pieces must be symmetrical. I joke that I hate mugs with handles for this reason, but secretly, I just dislike pulling handles.

My work progressed to flowers this fall. They had more meaning to me. Growth and reproduction.

But this winter, the news of no records and the potential of not knowing my original family began to take a toll. So, I locked myself away in music and clay. What emerged were these expressions of emotion tied to my adoption experience.

With each cut to the roots, I felt progress. While it wasn’t the progress I wanted, it satisfied my needs.   Each cut became deeper, but I never seemed to cut through … I wanted to cut through and create a break to the other side. As I worked, I realized that perfection just wasn’t in the cards. My last work was a deconstruction. Even though I was going for imperfection, it still was balanced and symmetrical. Some things just cannot be cut out of a person.

Some of these pieces are accompanying me to Washington, DC, and the Living Loud event at Busboys and Poets at 1025 5th St. NW, this Sunday from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. I will be meeting up with many of my Lost Daughters sisters.

Please come and listen to the voices of adoptees as we explore our rhetorical roots.

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.

Motherless Daughters & Childless Mothers

Two days sting me … the day of my mother’s death (February 2) and Mother’s Day (May).

Another Mother’s Day. Adoptees struggle with this day. Some feel only loosely connected to their adoptive mothers; some feel the opposite and shun the idea of a first mother. Those who are connected with their first families must dance that delicate loyalty dance. Two mothers … two cards.

First mothers must struggle too. Like Philomena, they may grieve for their lost child. They are the childless mothers, the ones who gave birth but have no child to call or cuddle on that day. It’s just a day, but notice the cards, the brunches, the flowers, the jewelry commercials.

The years since my mother’s death have caused anxiety and grief on a day I would prefer to celebrate with my own children. The grief from her death has consumed me, but this year is different.

If you have followed my path this year, you must understand. My grief is doubled. Finally, I grieve the loss of another mother, and I question myself.

“Why did it take me 46 years to acknowledge the loss?”

“Why did I never want to return to Korea?”

“Why did I push my first mother back into the recesses of my mind?”

“Why did I not grieve for my first mother and the loss I must have felt here?”

“Why do I cling to the grief over the loss of my adoptive mother?”

Perhaps the latter can be answered. My adoptive mother was tangible. She was known, and she loved me. When we lose, we grasp tightly to what is left. Yet now, she is gone too.

So, I am left with sparse papers that tell me how little is “known.”

I am left with the words “no record.”

I am left with a photograph of a one-year-old in her element.

That said, I am also left with two beautiful children who share my DNA and a deep connection. We are still connected by an invisible umbilical cord that I suspect is also connected somewhere with another family in Korea. Perhaps that family has a childless mother who silently sits and wonders about the little girl she lost 46 years ago on a day in May.

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!”

Only two pieces of paper

Forty-five years ago in Japan, my parents began and finished their adoption experience while living in Tokyo.

Today, I finally received word back from Holt. A couple of months ago,  I received a few pages from my American Holt file. Since that time, I have waited to hear from Korea. The email today said this:

“Attached is a copy of all the information about you from your file in Korea.  A copy will remain in our files for future reference.  Let me know if you have any questions about these documents.  

Unfortunately, the staff of Holt Children’s Services of Korea was unable to locate enough information regarding your background to begin a search for your birth family.  We regret that Holt Children’s Services Korea and Holt International Children’s Services cannot assist you in a search but will be happy to help you plan an independent search.  We received the following email: 

According the child report from you, and also the release paper in the file, the adoptee was placed in CBH from the Chong Yang ri police station on May 24, 1968.  She was later referred to Holt adoption program by CBH on the same day which was in cases of abandonment.  

I am afraid that there is no addition information to learn more about the background. Cheongyang ni is the correct spelling now, and it is a neighborhood located in Dongdae mun gu, Seoul city. 

Once admitted to Holt, 숙현 was placed in the care of a foster home, but there is no information about the foster mother in the record. 

The attached is a copy of the adoption file (only 2 pages). The adoptee’s current contact information will be updated in our file, and she may feel free to leave photos in the file for the future reference. 

I’m so sorry that we aren’t able to assist you with your search.  Because we want to support you any way we can, please feel free to contact us to talk about this assessment with one of our post adoption counselors.  Having a good support system, through friends and family, as well as Holt, is very important.  There may be many terms or references that are unfamiliar to you within the assessment, so please don't hesitate to contact us with questions or if you’d like additional information regarding the history, culture, or record keeping practices of the time.”

While Holt may have some sympathy for how I am feeling, I am baffled by an adoption that occurred primarily overseas but leaves only two small sheets of paper. See for yourself.

How can an agency place a baby with a foster family and have no record of said foster family? I like to think Holt vetted its foster families, and if so, that they had a record of what babies lived with which foster families. They had an address and names, because the couple who kept me those months before my adoption, took photographs of me, fed me and loved me. They cared enough to take photographs of my first birthday and portraits of me in my hanbok. They sent these photographs via the adoption agency to my parents … and yet, there is no record.

I am saddened by Holt’s response (and that I paid $25 for so little information), but I am determined now to seek more answers without Holt’s assistance.

Rwanda, Inshuti

Tomorrow marks the twentieth anniversary of the genocide. In the summer of 1995, newly married, my husband and I made the long journey from Tennessee to Rwanda.

I have so many memories that it is difficult to type them out. (I have journals but am afraid to read them and face the naiveté of my youth.)

As a photographer, my ambitions were to capture life in Rwanda, post-genocide, but in reality, I could not. The stories and faces of Rwanda are forever imprinted in my mind, where they should be. Their stories should be theirs.

The people of Rwanda had lost so much … something I could never fully grasp and capture. So, instead, I spent my time connecting with people and listening to their stories. The Rwandans gave me joy and grounded me in a way I would never learn in the US.

With my Rwandan acquaintances, we created our own way of recording their truths … their lives, their losses and their triumphs.

In those days, I was able to have disposable cameras mailed to me. I handed them out to my Rwandan acquaintances and friends, and they recorded their lives. These images became precious to them, and some had never used a camera.

I am only in contact with three Rwandans from that time. Two have email, and one I am only able to contact him through an expat. Of the Rwandans I originally knew, two were murdered before we left the country and one died of AIDS in 2000. The other stories are silent except for the messages they wanted me to pass on to the world.

I failed them. Returning in 1997, I contacted Granta, Doubletake, the Guggenheim Trust, the Smithsonian … none took their causes. Today, I am reminded that the internet has afforded me a forum. Perhaps it is time to publish their words and struggles, but first, I will try to connect and ask permission again. Twenty years is a long time to wait.

As you reflect on Rwanda tomorrow, please don’t watch Hotel Rwanda, Hollywood’s glossed over account. If you want to know the truths, see HBO’s Sometimes in April.

For reading, try Fergal Keane’s Season of Blood. In it, you can understand the complex history behind the genocide. While race was a factor, there were other things at work … politics, power and class, enacted by the early Belgian colonists and based on the pseudoscience of phrenology.