Separated @ Birth: A True Love Story of Twin Sisters Reunited (18 page)

The tears weren’t the happy kind. I could feel something more going on. I didn’t want her to be sad, even if she was just overwhelmed and being emotional. We were in Korea together for the first time since our separation. Anaïs hadn’t been all that sure that she wanted to come in the first place, but here we were. The planning to get here had caused me a great amount of stress, and Anaïs had seen a lot of it during her visit to California. She was upset that I was stressing myself out and told me the trip wasn’t worth it to her unless it was going to make me happy. She also thought it was a bit rushed. I assured her that my stress was only proof
of how much I wanted to get there. And here we were, battling to take care of each other, but inside knowing how much we wanted to be in Korea together.

After the ceremony, we headed to the cocktail hour, where, of course, we met a bunch of other adoptees. Some had already heard about our story and had lots of the same questions we had been hearing for the past year: When did you find out about each other? When did you meet? Are you similar? How are you different? They were all noninvasive questions and although it was fun to share our story, it could get exhausting repeating ourselves a billion times. But, while sharing our story, we got to hear incredible stories from some of them in return.

We met a middle-aged Danish-Korean man who had been adopted as a baby with his twin. When the two conducted their birth search, they found out that there was a bit more to their story. They were triplets. The birth family had kept one boy and given the other two up for adoption. The cost of keeping so many children in the home was a real financial hardship for many Korean people, especially at the time this man had been born. I’m not sure how “lucky” twins are considered to be in Korea, maybe just the opposite. To me, I get the feeling it is not a happy thing. If you’re a twin born in the States, it seems it is always a gift, a two-for-one deal, perhaps. But in Korea it was beginning to seem as though almost all the adopted twins had been separated, except in the case of my good friend Sue.

After the cocktail hour, we all got ready to go out and experience another important part of Korean culture—the nightlife. Koreans are known to excel in drinking and karaoke, and the Koreans on this trip were no exception. It was also Ryan’s birthday, and I really cared about him, so I wanted
to be sure we got a nice celebration in. I wasn’t able to offer much because of the hectic schedule, and I felt crappy about it the entire time, so I was glad to be able to get some partying in on his behalf here. We pre-gamed in Dan’s room, and then headed out to what seemed like a sports bar in the heart of Myeong-dong. Everyone had just enough to drink and with the heat, it got to our heads fast. Eventually, Dan and I got the entire bar to sing “Happy Birthday” to Ryan. It wasn’t much—I had wanted to give him so much more—but I hoped at least he got a birthday wish in.

The next day was really huge. We were going to see my foster mother and visit the Social Welfare Society (SWS), the adoption agency where I had been taken after my birth. The trip was already a bit stressful. I was getting frustrated with my producer, James, who for some reason was depending on me to have the itinerary, addresses, and such. I thought it was his duty to handle all of that so I could focus on being with my sister. I was in no way prepared to keep track of all those details, especially while going through such an intense experience and especially on that day. Sure enough, at breakfast, we were all scrambling to figure out the best way to get to SWS. The heat making everyone sticky and agitated didn’t help. I think Anaïs could sense my anxiety level, which caused her to withdraw. For her, we were taking this trip to have fun; the last thing she wanted was for everyone to be stressed out about stuff.

SWS was near the Gangnam area of Seoul, a twenty-minute van-style cab ride away. I was looking forward to seeing SooJoo, my same social worker from the previous year, and I wanted to meet Shinhye, the head of postadoption services. But most important, I could not wait to see my foster mother again. I never imagined that seeing her so soon would
be in the realm of possibility. My foster mother was the cutest lady ever, and this time, she was bringing her whole family.

The SWS building hadn’t changed—it was small, old, and cramped. We took the elevator upstairs, and there in the office was SooJoo, looking just as beautiful as I remembered her, tall and thin with fantastic porcelain skin. She was still exuding her cheerful, kind energy, too. Soon, Shinhye came into the room and introduced herself to everyone. We talked about our story and about Ben Sommers, my social worker from Spence-Chapin, and caught up a bit about the events that had transpired over the past few months. It was really exciting to be able to sit and look through my birth records with my sister sitting next to me. We were able to take a good look at the physical page in front of us and really see what was written down. We kept looking at all the names and the facts, asking every question that came to our mind, trying to analyze and compare. Unfortunately, through no fault of her own, Shinhye’s responses were unsatisfying. We wanted answers to fill in our history, but we also understood that it was quite possible that what was written down wasn’t necessarily the truth. In our case, Anaïs’s and my records were so wildly different that we understood a lot of it could have been completely made up by intake workers.

Then it was time for my foster mother to arrive. Within a millisecond of hearing her walking down the hallway, the blood rushed to my face from excitement. But when we saw each other, my adrenaline spiked. She came running into the room with her arms spread out and hugged both me and Anaïs. Like everyone else, she thought Anaïs was me at first. I was filled with pure joy. I was with my sister and with my foster mom, my first caretaker. She had brought her second daughter and her adorable granddaughters with her. They
brought us gifts: necklaces, earrings, and K-pop posters and CDs. I brought them gifts, as well. I had gone to Kitson, a very “L.A.” store, the day before leaving, and I’d bought my foster mom two vases from L.A. and nail polish and sunglass cases for the girls.

It was still strange to sit with someone you can’t fully communicate with. I cared so much about my foster mom, conveyed in our smiles and hugs, but I had no idea how to actually say anything to her in words. Communication was happening in a time lag, the words in the conversation and the reactions delayed. The first time I had met her, she held my hand and talked directly to me, pouring her heart out, it seemed, and although I understood the general feeling, I couldn’t understand the words. Then I would hear the social worker’s English translation in my ear. The funny thing was that social workers don’t necessarily translate completely accurately. For example, in a written letter, my foster mother wrote that she hoped I would find a nice white man, but the translation read she hoped I would find a nice man. Our first meeting had been quite intense and very emotional, but now that I knew my foster mom, this meeting felt like a true reunion and was much more joyous. Everyone was thrilled to be together, despite any language barriers. I promised myself I would learn Korean, mostly motivated by my desire to speak with her. I love her, and one day, we will talk without translators.

Anaïs seemed pretty happy and comfortable to be witnessing the reunion, seeing that someone who really didn’t even know you cared so much about you that she had to meet you. I hoped this would calm any anticipation she had about meeting her own foster mother in the next few days. I hoped she saw that she was surrounded by love from the day she
was born, whether or not she originally thought of our early days in that way.

For lunch, the adoption agency treated us to the amazing bulgogi. My foster mother, seated next to me, started spoon-feeding me like a baby. It was so funny! I have a pet peeve about being fed like this, but in this instance, it wasn’t weird at all. I doubted she did it because she once fed me like this, although I’d like to think that that connection still remains today. I think of it more as a symbolic connection, that she was nurturing me again after twenty-six years of being apart.

My foster mother told me that when I get married she wants to come, and the next time I come back to Korea, that I must stay with her at her house, and she will cook for me. My God, that sounds amazing, so much fun to me. I would love to see where and how she lives. It’s like I have a Korean mom, and at every turn, my family is expanding. Too soon after lunch, it was time for my good-bye hug, and I didn’t want to let go. Although I knew it wouldn’t be the last time I saw her, I didn’t know when I would hug her again. I loved being there with her. She calmed me and made me happy, like any mother should.

The next morning began on quite a stressful note. At breakfast, my sister revealed to me that she was unhappy. She had been talking to me about it a little on the way to the Lotte Hotel, but when the crew joined us at the table twenty minutes later, I sensed that she hadn’t said everything she needed to say. With one glance, I noticed that she was about to burst into tears and we quickly went to the bathroom, as I didn’t want her to cry in front of anyone or to make her uncomfortable. We needed a private moment and a private conversation, with no cameras and for no ears but mine. We had
made a pact with ourselves to be honest on camera about all of our emotions because it was for a greater good, but in this moment, we didn’t care about the pact—I only cared about my sister’s feelings and wanted her to be happy. She was more important than any documentary or project.

I’m glad that I pulled Anaïs away, since the production of the documentary was the source of her discomfort. She didn’t understand why we had to stop and do an interview the moment after anything happened to either one of us. In most instances, she was unsure how she felt and she certainly didn’t want to make it up on the spot, especially if it was going to be shared with the rest of the world. She told me that although I felt comfortable expressing myself on camera, she preferred expressing herself by drawing or sketching a cartoon. I told her that was totally okay. It was my objective to tell the story creatively, how we wanted it, what we wanted to say. This was not just facts, it was us! More than anything, I wanted her to be comfortable. “If you are feeling crazy and cannot pinpoint an emotion, then that is what you are feeling,” I reassured her. When she told me she was so unhappy, I felt awful. I wanted her to be okay. This documentary was for her as much as it was for me. I wanted to show her our country and give her an experience that she would remember and be grateful for. My intention had never been to bring her to Korea and stress her out. But she wasn’t comfortable. The Hotel Biz wasn’t inviting or relaxing, we were both completely out of our element, she always had a camera stuck in her face on what was to be a trip of great importance, and to top it off, the next day was her reunion with her own foster mother. It seemed as though the circumstances had really begun to weigh down on her, and her anxiety had spiked.

The next day, the first of August, was the day we were
meeting Anaïs’s foster mother, so it was going to be my sister’s most intense day yet, and she was getting nervous, especially about the filming. I sat down privately with Ryan to explain that Anaïs was upset with the way we were documenting everything, so we had to be a bit more aware of her feelings from here on out. From what I could decipher, Anaïs was finding the experience intrusive and complained of a lack of privacy in certain situations—particularly those that were emotional and overwhelming. I am an actress and found comfort in being in front of the camera, but Anaïs is not. Ryan didn’t want to change our approach, because he thought he knew exactly what the documentary needed. Although I trusted him, the safety and comfort of my sister, who was my family, took precedence in that moment. I warned him that he risked having her shut down entirely, and he reluctantly agreed to take a more gentle approach to filming.

I crept back into our room to see how Anaïs was doing. She was changing her clothes a few times, figuring out what she wanted to wear. As she was getting her gifts for her foster mother together, she started asking if I thought they were sufficient. They were beautiful teas and chocolates from France, and I assured her they were perfect and her foster mother would appreciate them.

We were going to be meeting her at Holt Children’s Services, the adoption agency that had placed my sister with her French family so many years ago. Holt was located a cab ride away in the heart of downtown Seoul, so we decided to eat lunch in Namdaemun Market, an outdoor market, on our way to the agency. We had cold noodles—
naengmyun
—Anaïs’s and my favorite shared dish. On a hot day, these noodles have the most cooling effect. They are noodles made from buckwheat, so they are chewy and rubbery, and the
broth is a mixture of cold beef stock, vinegar, cucumber, and a variety of other things. After lunch, Anaïs found a shop that sold mass quantities of salty dried seaweed snacks, which made her ecstatic. There was no such shop in Paris! She bought way more than she could possibly carry, but she was happy. She was like a kid in a . . . dried seaweed store?

Then it was time for Anaïs to meet her foster mother at Holt. Despite her nerves, I hoped that this was what she wanted. I didn’t want to force her to do something she wasn’t ready for. I had been through it before, so I hoped she found some relief in my experience. Maybe I was being selfish, wanting to be there for her, because it made me feel good. I couldn’t help second-guessing my motives, because if they were causing her to be unhappy, I was unhappy. I wanted to be doing these things for her. I imagined this was what a mother felt like when she hoped she was doing the right thing by her child when she made decisions. In the cab downtown, Anaïs ended up falling asleep, which was adorable and quite typical for both of us. When things get stressful, we nap.

Seoul is an amazing city, a complete mix of different time periods. One block can be from one century, and the next block can be totally modern. Some of the streets are crowded with older buildings, where everything looks quite brown, and the next street has beautiful, massive contemporary buildings most likely built by Samsung or Hyundai. Holt was in a smaller building, a little run-down with a big green sign saying
HOLT POST ADOPTION SERVICES
. When we walked in the door, a most kind older gentleman stopped us to tell us to take off our shoes and put on slippers. My heart started to beat hard, and I knew my sister’s was, too. It was all becoming real. What if her foster mom was there already? What if
she showed up right behind us? What would she look like? Would my sister be okay? Would she be ready?