It surprised me how effortlessly conversation flowed. We talked about her upcoming wedding, her dog, my sisters, and Clara. We even started to talk about “Pachinko.” I found myself not wanting the conversation to end, and felt that the feeling was mutual as it was past midnight in Korea. Finally, she had to say goodbye and go to sleep but promised to message me again tomorrow.
She also told me that my birth mother wants to send me messages on Thursday because she is off work that day.
But since “coming out of the fog” I would say that overall, the forecast has been cloudy at best. There are many rain showers, hurricanes, tornadoes, the occasional tsunami, and maybe, on a good day, the temperature reaches a mere 65 degrees with a light breeze instead of a cold, damp, and gray 42. Sometimes I honestly think that comparatively, the fog wasn’t all that bad. I mean, what’s a little blissful mist compared to standing in the middle of a thunderstorm with an umbrella full of holes?
I went from feeling like my childhood was hard because of racism, to feeling like my childhood was hard because of my adoption.
Today is May 1st, and boy do I feel like May is a loaded month–this year in particular.
May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month (APAHM). It is also Jewish American Heritage Month. May 9th is Mother’s Day. And this May is the month I will give birth to my first child.
Not surprisingly, all of the above things are really blending and meshing together into one very complicated, mixed up ball of emotions.
If this blog entry reads as angry, frustrated, or desperate–it’s because it is. I am. I feel as though I have been screaming my entire life and my screams have been silenced or quantified as a direct result of being an adoptee.
People don’t understand what it is like, and I suppose I don’t expect them to because I’ve never come flat out and said some of these things, but I am going to now. I am going to now so there is no question, and in the hopes that anyone who reads this will reflect and can no longer feign ignorance.
We are happy to announce that Baby R’s name is…
Just kidding! Sorry, but you all are going to need to wait until the little one makes her appearance earthside to find out what her name is.
But in all seriousness, I knew that the business of naming your child was probably not something to be taken lightly. However, I didn’t know how many feelings and emotions it would bring up as a transracial adoptee parent.
It happened.
This past Tuesday, in the car on the 25 minute car ride on the way to the OB, I asked my husband the question.
“What would your response be if our daughter came home and told you that someone called her a Chink?”
I will never forget the moment that I first saw her face. I did not expect to be hit with the wave of emotion that I was when I could finally put not only a face to a name, but a face to my face.
But why did I, an Asian-American Korean adoptee, not find out that there was a month designated to represent my people until I was 30 years old? And even moreso, why could I not remember learning about one single influential Asian-American in school?
Seeing myself wearing this fabric mask makes it impossible for me to maintain that distance and has created a complex, complicated inner-conversation. On the one had, I am still assimilating by wearing a mask just like everyone else in America. On the other, by doing so, I embody a stereotype of Asians that so many in the world despise.
Becoming Boulder