Today I also miss my adoptive mom.

Yeah, that’s the truth.  As much as she wasn’t there for me, as much as she was the most repressed person on the planet, as much as she chose to ignore the signs of my abuse or bury it once she knew, I still don’t blame her:  she had her own problems.  Little glimpses of a time when she was carefree would reveal themselves occasionally.  Little glimpses of a real person.  She could smile once in awhile.  Those times were enough.  They were rare, but when they were there, they glimmered like a jewel.

In reality, I just don’t like blame.

I know you probably think that’s crazy, since I have an entire website devoted to blaming Holt for the complicated thing that is my life and thousands upon thousands of other Korean adoptees’ lives.  I don’t blame Holt for the horrors of the past.  I don’t blame Holt for the mistakes they made then.  I blame them for the willful disregard for human beings they continue to commit today, with full knowledge of the mistakes of the past.

Yesterday a friend who has spent the last year TWO YEARS trying to get her adoption records from Holt, but instead only received documents piece-meal, each time being told they had given her everything, each time the documents not quite adding up to the data she already had.  She finally received – only through her own dogged persistence and the encouragement from us and the help of KCARE – her full adoption records, which included ELEVEN more documents than the last time Holt had told her they had given her everything.  ELEVEN.  That’s a lot of documents to over-look so many times.  I guess everything has a different meaning to Holt.  And this friend’s parents are dead.  Nobody’s privacy to protect.  No excuses they could possibly make to this adoptee are good enough.

Today I’m a little homesick.  I miss my kids, my one true family.  We’re a little strange.  I haven’t even spoken on the phone to them the whole time I’ve been here, but that’s not something that’s ever been necessary with us.  We know we’re in each other’s thoughts.  And when we’re together, we don’t have to do anything special or even talk much:  just being present is enough.  There is no obligation, no negative history.  Only love.  It is enough for me.

My stay in Korea has been…incredibly difficult.  From the moment I got off the plane and the bus driver screamed at me in Korean for something to do with loading my luggage, because he didn’t understand that I didn’t understand Korean and thought I was being rude…It’s been an exceptional and incredibly draining nine months.

But still I want to love Korea.

This weekend I go to eat Thanksgiving with many other dispossessed ethnic Koreans of the adoption diaspora.  We’ll eat turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie.  All of us here, trying to love Korea.  All of us here, separated from our families, many of us estranged from our adoptive families.   Do I go there because I love to hang out with adoptees?  No.  I only know one or two of them and don’t care to know more.   In America, some gather together just to acclimate themselves to seeing other Asian faces and get to know them as real people.  It starts as fear-of-Asians phobia therapy and then evolves into a sanctuary.  But here, that’s not necessary, as there are Asian faces in spades.   No.  I don’t have to speak to even one of them.  It just comforts me to see so many gathered in one place who KNOW. That’s all I need.  Not community, because I’m too traumatized by something so claustrophobic and distrusting of people in general;  not even solidarity, because not all adoptees agree or are in the same place in this journey.  No.  I go for the adoption awareness.

This month is adoption awareness month.  It is a time when those promoting adoption gather their collective voices to extol its virtues, increase its numbers, and lobby for its ease.

But to me, adoption awareness is the knowing of what it feels like to be adopted.  It is that unspoken thing we all share, whether we are “happy” adoptees or “angry” adoptees, we who have returned are not here for naught.  That thing we share, is a loss nobody should ever know, that those who were not abandoned or relinquished will never know,  but that binds us, like it or not, (for me mostly not) together.

Over three decades ago, America was riveted to their television sets watching the dramatization of Alex Haley’s Roots. It was not just an exploration of where he came from, but also how he came to be here.    And to my wonder, it seemed as if the entire nation finally learned to respect African American brotherhood, and to understand that being displaced against one’s will should rightly unite them on the deepest level.

However, in this adoption awareness month, there is no popular respect for our “pilgrimages,” because we appear ungrateful for our displacement against our will. We reject the notion that our loss should be something we should also be grateful about.  We are united on this deepest level.  That is why we’re all here.  My silence during adoptee functions just goes hand in hand with this understanding.  I don’t have to speak to the other returnee adoptees to know that I love them and they me.  We just know.  That’s enough for me.

And so in silence I will gather with my fellow returnee adoptees.  I go there for the ritual of thanksgiving, the pale substitute for the Korean Cheusok thanksgiving that venerates our first families, and their families, and their families before their families.  I go there for a small taste of the only ritual feast I’ve ever known, the feast of my adoptive family’s culture, in commemoration of the voluntary displacement of their ancestors.  I go here to say, “please pass the stuffing” and know others will understand what “pass” means and what “stuffing” is.  I go for the saving grace of cranberry sauce.  I go there to give thanks.  For the little comforts we have.

And I will thank my mother for the Stove top stuffing, the Durkees freeze-dried onion green been casserole, and the Cool Whip covered Eagles’ brand pumpkin pie.   And I will still wish I had never been adopted.

Had dinner with Miwha wednesday.  She made pork and I couldn’t tell if it had been roasted or stewed on the stove, and I asked her for the recipe.

She just served the meat alone, and I imagine maybe she would save the broth for soup later.  But here is what she did:

In a pot half filled with water, add:

coffee, green tea, and lemonaide

salt, pepper, and cinnamon

Pork meat on the bone (Koreans think bone marrow is very healthy and rarely ever remove bones from anything)

garlic and onions

Stew until tender and almost-but-not quite falling off the bone.

So I made this at home, but added carrots and potatoes, turning it into more of a stew.  And I used orange juice, but the lemonaide was better.

Very simple and comforting.  Korean fusion food I guess…

I told her about the tortilla soup I used to order at a Mexican restaurant all the time, and how the secret ingredient was mountain dew.  She got a kick out of that.

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Friday I was walking home from school and the squeaky voiced, bow-legged teacher from Busan that everyone makes fun of and I were leaving together, so we walked and talked.

“Do you think I’m weak?” she asked.

I didn’t know what the heck she meant, so she explained, “Oh my voice…my hair…my body…myclothes…my character.”

Omg.  Point blank.  This, actually, is why the other teachers make fun of her, because she’s constantly fretting about her image and roping them in for comments.

To make her feel better I told her that no, she just seemed a little confused is all.  For example, I told her, today your clothing is very sophisticated.  Yesterday your clothing was very sporty.  The day before your clothing was very conservative.  You don’t seem to know what you like.

“yes!  I have no sense of style!” she declared quite loudly and matter-of-fact, to which she suggested we go get food and cook it at my house.

That was kind of abrupt.  And forward.  But she’s a sweet, odd duck, why not?  Not a good night, so tried to arrange the following week, and when we found a day that worked for both of us, she was so excited.

“It will be our secret,” she said as she waved goodbye and went into E-marte.

I found it quite amusing she felt she had to see me in secret…maybe I’m embarassing to be seen with?   ha ha ha ha!

I don’t even know what her name is…

This is for Sara, who loves her some kimchi.  But I guess kimchi is actually a more general term for fermented things, and kimjang is what we think of when we think of kimchi…

I was going to blog about this, but my friend at an acorn in the dog’s food did a much better job than I could have, so click on the image below to check it out…

Many years ago, 26 to be exact, I lived on the island of Guam.

It was a pivotal time in Guam’s history:  The U.S. was relinquishing governance of the territory to the Guamanians, and therefore there was an EPIC political campaign for the highest office.  Streets magically were paved, new jobs were created, gifts were given, festivities planned, and trucks with bullhorns wove up and down all the streets reminding citizens to vote for the incumbent.

Interviewing the people I worked with about who they would vote for, it all amounted to what degree of separation they were from the crooked governor or not.  It seemed that everyone on the island was related either to the governor or the opposition, or owed one or the other a favor.  People there liked to brag about their corrupt relationships.  One individual traced his back-scratching family history all through Guamanian politicians and all the way back to Philippine President Marcos, bragging that he could do anything he wanted to in Guam and it didn’t matter, because Marcos would help him out.

The whole provincial nature of politics on that small island was very amusing, endearingly obvious, and easy to maneuver through.

Korea, on the other hand, is not.  On the surface, it appears like any highly developed Western country:  there are rules and laws which people obey.  The infrastructure is sophisticated, and the daily operations run smoothly.  But under the surface, it appears to be not much more evolved than Guam was in the 80’s. Who do you know.  What favors can you do.  What things can you rig.  It sometimes seems like all of Asia is equally provincial and corrupt.

But Korea is also incubating like America in the 50’s.  In soooo soooo many ways.  And the 60’s are fomenting.  There is the Korean Women’s Development Institute, promoting women’s rights.  There are legal defense groups willing to take on civil rights issues.  There is, with each scandal, a public outcry for more transparency.  All very exciting.  And also terrifying when one experiences the retribution of the entrenched who are threatened by social change.

I will gladly fight for justice here, as anywhere, but I hope I don’t end up like jobless Mr. S., who sadly says, “I care about democracy, but democracy doesn’t care about me.”

Come on, Korea, make me proud.  Let’s change this place without bloodshed and citizens dying.  We will change the laws or do it one lawsuit at a time.  There is no need to be a backwater island anymore.

sukioki@gmail.com