MOTHERLAND

(Published in Artist Book ROOTS: Korean Diaspora)

I arrived at the Sunny Skies Orphanage in Pusan, Korea after our tour bus had traveled the perimeter of my motherland’s body. It was the summer of 2001, right before 9/11 and the first time I’d returned to the country that birthed me twenty years before. I thought I was here for closure. I couldn’t know it would take me another twenty years to process the deepness of roots and what happens if those roots are ripped out. Transplanted. Only to return again.

I remembered the darkness the most. Coming from the front yard, which had a huge sand box and was umbrellaed by protective trees, then stepping inside—there was no light. The color of the floor was unmemorable. You entered and it was a massive room. In New York, it would be sold as a loft with high ceilings. Expansive freedom. Here, it just meant there were no walls to separate the crying. There was no division between age groups, though I was told kids older than three were shipped to a different holding pen for the unwanted.

I was one of the lucky ones to get out. In December of 1979, at the age of 2 years and 9 months old, I flew from Seoul, Korea to the Philly airport with six other babies. We each had an escort. The minute I was handed over to my adoptive mother, a strong, independent, single, white woman, I became her daughter. I was Lynne Connor, a blank slate. A newborn toddler with no history, no motherland, no birth family, no roots.

My mother chose not to marry (or date). There were no other siblings; there would never be a father. It was just us. I grew up in the blizzard white suburbs of Trenton, New Jersey, as a perfect, all American, good girl — hair styled, well clothed, educated, fed — never hungry. Always full. I never doubted my mother’s love.

However, what I remember the most about my mother was silence. She was a librarian after all. We never talked about my Korean face, that I couldn’t take off like a scar. This created a feeling like something was very wrong. A phantom, empty black hole I couldn’t name.

Before 7th grade and being exposed to racism, that land locked me into the self-hate phase of grief, my Korean name was something I was proud of. While kids in first grade bragged that they could curl their tongue or whistle nursery rhymes, I’d whip out my cloaked Korean identity.

“Bet you didn’t know my real name is Eun Ja Kim.”

I pronounced my first name You-ne Ya, until I showed my birth certificate to Iris, a co-worker friend who was a Korean national, only in the U.S. to work. She corrected my pronunciation saying,

“It’s not You-ne, it’s Un. Like undone. Un Ja.”

She also noticed that I was born in a province near Pusan, the southern most tip of Korea, and not in Seoul as I had assumed.

We weren’t close enough for me to disclose the amount of devastation this caused. For twenty years, I didn’t know where I was born and pronounced my own Korean name wrong.

I purposely chose the Holt Motherland Tour to reunite with my birth country. The Holt Adoption Agency, the largest of its kind is credited for institutionalizing and normalizing international adoptions. In an effort to not be seen (or judged) as only selling babies for profit, Holt offered post-adoption services, such as this trip. It was one of its most popular “Mea Culpa” programs, specifically designed for the adult Korean adoptee in mind. To give them a better understanding of the history and culture where they were born. Planned activities, such as looking at your adoption file, visiting an orphanage, and going to a shelter for unwed mothers all showed the possible evolution of an adoptee’s journey from birth to relinquishment.

 Now along with twenty-five other Korean adoptees, we were collectively trying to uncover our “primal wound,” a clinical adoption term naming our first trauma, being abandoned by our birthmothers. And to untangle how this abandonment would define the rest of our lives.

As a ripe 24-year-old, I had no concept of babies’ development, their understanding, their attachment needs. I wouldn’t know this, wouldn’t be able to fully mourn this loss until I become a mother fifteen years later. But I did wonder, how do you explain that your mother was never coming back? That you were abandoned — was abandonment a feeling?

I wondered if the director of the orphanage greeted you outside, held your hand as you walked through the doorway and said, “This is just temporary. A transition, like the seasons in Korea. Don’t you like when the snow melts and flowers bloom? Life happens. You are alive. You are lucky to be breathing in crisp air. Be grateful. Stop crying. It will be okay.”

I was overwhelmed by the sheer number, the sea of orphans in this concrete vault. Just lying and crawling on coldness, without warmth. There weren’t enough caretakers to possibly handle this kind of need. I had a small, secret space inside of me, that thought, that hoped, once I was inside an orphanage, any orphanage, that sense memory would take over. So far, nothing. The sounds and smells were not my friends.

There were no instructions given to us by our trusty tour guides, as was the Holt way. No therapy or emotional support on the trauma that was adoption; that was just business for them. Our lost Korean identity could be learned like extracurricular activities. I was a two-time alumna of Holt Summer Camp in Johnsonburg, New Jersey.

In just one week, we were expected to “become Korean” by Fan Dancing, Tae Kwon Do-ing and getting our hands bloody in bulgolgi making Class.

Only the surface was addressed. Holt was never willing to go deep, to be honest, to tell the truth. They just bussed us here. One minute, we drank our Americanos with extra sugar in our cushy Hyatt digs and frolicked on the Pusan beach. The next, we were here.

I was drawn to a little girl with a dazed look on her face. I guessed she was around two and a half years old. The same age I would have been in an orphanage. Even with all the baby noise and crawling limbs and appendages surrounding her, she looked completely alone. I glanced around and my fellow Korean adoptees had their arms overflowing with two, sometimes three, babies. I closed the distance to this little girl and extended my hand, the way I would to a shivering stray cat. The girl turned her back to me and faced the wall. I placed my hand gently on her back and rubbed in circles.  She refused to turn around and cringed even more in the corner. 

I didn’t know what she was thinking. I couldn’t imagine, but then I did. Because when information, communication, stories are withheld, all we can do is fill in the blanks. We create our own stories. I gave her a name: Sadie. I imagined Sadie liked to face the corner. Something about the sharp, straight line where the two walls met brought her comfort. It made her think, if she looked up and up and up, that she’d see Umma again. Maybe in the ceiling. Maybe not. But she just knew that if she kept her head up, following that steady line, she would find the only link to her mother. To home. To leaving transition and seasons and change behind.

I imagined she missed her Umma’s famous dduk guk soup. The way the rice cakes were a chewy pillow of comfort, contrasting with the crunchy burst of green onions. She missed the way her Umma would wash her short, wispy hair, like she had long locks of gold. She craved for one more whiff of her Umma, a mix of earthy dirt and honeysuckle—nature’s perfume. But what Sadie wished for the most, was to be able to press her forehead in the crook of her Umma’s neck, right between the chin and collarbone. That soft, warm spot where she could feel her Umma’s breath. Which would become her breath.

 Some stranger was touching her. Was rubbing her back. Was trying to coax her back to reality. But Sadie only wanted the corner. Eyes back to her spot. Her line. Her link to home.

I let my hand fall, just as sadness seeped in, like summer humidity.

*

The only evidence I have of my former baby self is a pre-flight report that was mailed to my mother from the Korean adoption agency. 

That last line: She looks not to be bright in character as she was cared at orphanage for long? I used to wonder — how long is long? But now seeing an actual orphanage with my chosen orphan baby Sadie, it didn’t matter the length. It was the snuffing out of the light. Now, I truly believed it in my bones. Living in those waiting halls for the abandoned did that to you.                      

*

One of the very last activities on the Holt Motherland Tour was visiting the Salvation Army, a home for unwed mothers. Up until this point, I hadn’t cried.

We sat in two long rows of tables. On one side were adoptees from the tour, on the other Korean women with bulging bellies and heads bent down. Some of the women looked to be younger than I. We all sat, afraid to move, afraid to make a disrespectful sound, afraid to make eye contact with women who planned to give their babies up for adoption, women who could have been our birth mothers twenty years ago.

I gripped the sides of my chair. I didn’t want to cry. I didn’t want to be forced to think about this. The sense of loss that a woman out there gave birth to me and looked like me. The idea of her was dead to me.

I never wanted to search for my birthmother because she was never allowed into our house. My mother and I did not talk about her because then we’d have to talk about Korea. About my motherland. About my true, unknown beginnings.

International adoptions were closed, sealed tight.  The adoptive parents, the ones purchasing the baby, had the most consideration. The baby, their birth parents, their feelings or wants were never asked of, never thought of. Since I was just my mother’s daughter, my creation story only began when my adoptive mother said so. She was like God. You didn’t question God. Her word was final. So, I wasn’t one of those silly little girls with cute pink tails, being tucked into bed at night begging, tell me about my birthmother.

What my mother didn’t know, despite her silence, despite her inability to talk about uncomfortable, unpleasant feelings, was that it did not stop my need for a story. When you’re not told a story, you make one up. My version went like this. I was thrown out as trash. Garbage that smelled and needed to be discarded. And what kind of mother throws their baby away? A monster, that’s who.

Making my birthmother the one-dimensional evil queen in my adoption fairy tale was about survival. I couldn’t give her a human form. If she was real, I would start to have dreams and wants. I would become a cliched adoptee going on a birthmother search. And let’s say I did find her, which was extremely hard with international adoption. I was petrified of a second rejection. I knew my limits.

I also couldn’t make my own mom out to be the bad mother, the monster. If I lost her, I’d truly be abandoned. So, I directed all my hate toward a mythical character, my birthmother, who never existed in the first place.

The need to find her now, now that I was in Korea, that I was amongst other Korean adoptees, the feeling still refused to wash over me. The woman across from me looked like a caged rat trying to find the quickest, most painless way out—she was nothing to me.

We were instructed to show our partnered birth mother photos from our childhood. This was to visually give permission to the birth mothers that what they planned to do was the right thing. At the time, I couldn’t put my finger on how fucked up this Holt Motherland trip was. The Salvation Army visit was printed on our paper agenda after touristy activities like seeing the Korean Folk Village or bargain haggling in Namdeoum Market for cheap souvenirs to carry back to our rich American homes.

And the fact that our photos were the only means of communication since all twenty-five of us Korean American adoptees spoke English. And these birthmothers only spoke Korean. Everything was lost in transition since a translator was not part of the package. Ensuring complete silence from the birthmothers and the adult adoptees, guaranteeing there was no chance for true connection.

Holt International’s mission, that matches the damaging narrative of adoption, is that every child deserves a loving home. Anything pre and post that union, especially when it involves pain—should be hidden in the shame closest.

I flipped to the first page of the small album I brought.

I flipped.

I flipped.

I flipped.

I flipped.

I flipped.

Somewhere between childhood and graduation, my tears fell. The woman, my assigned birthmother, was also crying. Our cheeks glistened. When our eyes finally met, I understood that this birthmother, who could have been my birthmother, was a real person.

We had made a true connection, despite the odds and intentions of separation. Whether it was forced or out of our control. This reunion, this return to the motherland was not about closure. Instead, an opening towards acknowledgement, of being seen to forgiveness and one day, a complete acceptance of our roots.