The Adoptation, Revisited – Part 1

The festivities from Senior Week were over and we all gathered on Fordham Road to walk to campus for the last time. We took some pictures, waited, said goodbyes, waited and then took our seats on Edward’s Parade amongst thousands of families and friends (and Alex Trebek). It was supposed to be one of the most momentous days of my life, one that marked the end of an era, but aside from being unbearably hot in my all-black graduation gown I don’t remember much from Saturday May 21^st.

I’ll always remember cheering on my peers, receiving my own diploma and—knowing that I was headed to Korea—saying farewell to my closest friends, not knowing the next time I would see them. But, for such an important day, I probably spent more time brooding over my father’s forgetfulness (he forget where he parked his car, turns out it was in a bus lane) than I did processing the imminent transition into adulthood.

That afternoon I stayed in the Bronx at my apartment, rather than head home and return to my high school bedroom, because I was headed to Lithuania the following day.  I was leading a service project to a country I couldn’t have pointed to on a map a year earlier. With undergraduates to gather and itineraries to organize I had no time to leisurely reflect on graduation.

We were off to Lithuania for two weeks and when I returned to the States I only had a few weeks to prepare for Korea. In Lithuania, at home, in Montreal (weekend adventure in June), and at the onset of Korea I kept telling myself “Eric, you really ought to sit down and think about what’s happening with your life. I mean, you’re not a student anymore, this is a huge transition that you ought to process.”

I kept telling myself that graduation was a big deal, something I had to “process,” but any time I would try and be introspective I was unproductive. I never reflected on graduation because there was nothing to wrestle with, nothing troubling. As no urge to flesh out this transition arose I realized that “hey, maybe I wanted to graduate and everything’s for the best?”

I’m beginning to think that my being adopted is running a similar path.

Africa.

The internet works here; I stream Nicholas Kristof’s sequence of short videos about sex trafficking in Cambodia while I fold my freshly laundered university sweatshirt and hang my button-down from J Crew up to dry. Kristof provides names, which, due to the finiteness of memory, I will ultimately boil down to statistics—even though witnessing a one-eyed teenage girl cry as you hear the litany of sexual abuses done onto her is supposed to personalize it. Should I get a Swatch or Skagen? I don’t like gold bands. I want a black leather band or another all chrome one. Maybe I’ll just get two faux-fancy ones from Timex. I watch another video about forced drug-addiction in southeast Asian brothels as a way to break girls’ spirits and create unbreakable dependency. My requisite irritation and head-shaking “fuck that” under my breath works like clockwork: the clock rouses me with a single resounding gong at 1, but is followed by silence and the separation of knits and delicates. I notice a “suggested video” about Nicki Minaj. I click, watch, and after the minute-long video of one of her photo-shoots I look her up on Wikipedia. She’s from Trinidad and considers herself bisexual. Well, she claims not to date men or women, so she’s says not technically bisexual—she doesn’t like getting labeled. Shit, too bad that cardigan at Express didn’t fit. I really wanted to be able to pull one of those off.

~~~~~~

I am applying to study abroad in Kenya next year. If in the small likelihood I am awarded the scholarship to go abroad I would study

Mombasa, Kenya.

Swahili and intern at a human rights or economic development NGO. The acquisition of Swahili is intended to, as USAID trumpets, inculcate and perpetuate a tradition of “Kenyans working for Kenya.” My role in that solidarity will forever be imperfect, but speaking a native tongue will allow me to get as close as humanly possible. I, as I said in my leadership interview for Global Outreach, “don’t need to save the world…I just want to be able to help someone who doesn’t have any resources to help themselves.”

My mind wanders to the thought of one of the most vile and intense crimes being committed in the world today—rape as a weapon of war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I go through a mental rolodex of my friends, a good portion of which are women. Then I think about the 3^rd grade girls I tutor; and then the kindergarten girls and how innocent they look; and how the rebels would think the same thing.

It is widely believed that the DRC is the most dangerous place in the world to be a woman; sexual abuses are astronomical and incalculable. There are clinics set up in the eastern DRC, where the ongoing conflict is most concentrated, where they try and treat rape victims. But without systemic change it doesn’t really matter. It’ll just happen again. And again.

DRC's Kivu Provinces.

I could never live with myself if I allowed these atrocities against women to happen to my friends. Knowing that these women are innocent victims of their birthplaces and not inherently useless or deserving of these crimes, how can I not work for it, in some way, to be different? Dude, check yourself. I don’t think you’re being reasonable…NO. How can I, as an adoptee and a direct benefactor of relocation to a privileged region away from a less equitable one, not commiserate? What if my parents adopted a Congolese girl instead of a Korean boy? I could have become just another faceless statistic of poverty—because of my surroundings and not because I deserved it.Where’s that $20,000 scholarship now? You wouldn’t even know what $20,000 was.

Movies like Blood Diamond and The Constant Gardner (which I enjoyed to varying degrees) at one time or another echo a similar sentiment: what’s the use if you can only help one? The intention is obviously the opposite—a moral turn that is sentimentalized with a neat and tidy ending—but I still scoff. I think that I am better than that; I think about my desire to hopefully one day work at a clinic in the DRC even if I can only help a few women. But then I withhold a donation to a prospective borrower on Kiva or Global Giving and search for a rationale: what’s the point if I’m only helping one? You asshole.

*****

I am terrified of being inadequate, terrified that you’ve stopped reading three paragraphs ago because my writing and convictions are garbage. I am not terrified of being unable to “save the world,” but rather, terrified that I am unworthy and inadequate of such an opportunity. My privileged upbringing– not in the traditional forms of excessive wealth or familial loyalty– allows me to dither between Fossil and Timex and fret about my shirt’s collar not being fully ironed. How can you reconcile subscribing to Gentlemen’s Quarterly, where advertisements for $300 watches are commonplace, when you devote your time to countries where most civilians make less than $300 a year? An advisor told me that it would be unreasonable to expect myself to be able to detach myself from the luxuries of American society. And to stop being so hard on myself. Morally, I refuse to acquiesce, to admit that societal advantages excuse me from being globally conscious, but of course I do—I’m going to buy a nice watch.

I read and read and read about it. I want to study there. I want to live there. I want to work in solidarity there. But I won’t stay in Africa. Eventually I’ll move back to the United States and start a family, buy a white-picket fence and coach my son’s Little League team. I am terrified that no matter how hard I try to learn, live, and love whatever foreign conflict I dive into my work will be incomplete, marred by my ability/ certainty of inevitable abdication.

~~~~~~~

I love my Invisible Children shirt. It looks and fits great and all of its proceeds go to a worthy cause; it cost $20 USD. If it cost $40 I would not have bought it. I probably would have spent the difference on $8 beers downtown. That shirt reminds me, hopefully they have decent sales at the outlets next week. Gotta pick up some new stuff from BR.

She screams for help. I hear her. But I’m not there. I’ve been standing next to her for years but I’ve never been able to stand with her. The Fossil says time’s up– my flight back to New York leaves in an hour. And I’m worried that I never even left.

Korea.

…Yet our lessons come from the journey, not the destination.

Time: 1996-2009

Place: Any of your typical public establishments (eg. retail store, restaurant)

Sales Representative: Incredulous.

“How’re you guys doing today? Are you… both being helped?”

I know why he pauses; it’s not through derision or ill will, but ignorance and living in a sea of White.

Of course we are, can’t you see that other employee’s directing my dad? And what 13 year old shops at Target without a parent?

“Yeah, we’re good,” I dejectedly answer. My father doesn’t deem my response enthusiastic enough, so he subconsciously (and in the nicest way possible) says ‘fuck you’ to everyone who’s given us a crooked look, with fatherly aplomb:

“Everything’s fine, this is my son! (insert requisite parental bragging that embarrasses us yet initiates us into the realm of unconditional love)”

Me: Different.

~~~~~~~~~~~

My journey back to South Korea began in Latin America. I had not fallen into $32,000 like Will from http://www.amazon.com/You-Shall-Know-Our-Velocity/dp/1400033543 and wasn’t in El Salvador for a day en route to Korea; instead, I was on a two week trip with peers from my university, sponsored by Global Outreach. In San Salvador, unofficially nicknamed the “Murder Capital of the World,” I first legitimately considered returning to my birth country.

Digging the foundation for a school in Zaragoza.

Eugene (a senior from Villanova who came down to El Salvador with similar intentions): Hey, can I ask you a forward question?

Me: Yeah, go for it.

Eugene: Are you sure? Because I don’t want to offend you…

We’ve been staying in the same house in San Salvador for several days now, sleeping in the same barracks with a dozen other guys. This is the first time Eugene and I have spoken.

Me: Trust me, lemme have it.

Eugene: Were you adopted?

Me (impressed that he was able to surprise me, even with his disclaimer): Woo, nice to meet you too, Eugene. But yes, I was adopted.

Eugene: Because (insert other girl’s name) said that you were Korean, I don’t know how she knew that, and I work with a foundation that sends overseas adoptees back to Korea to learn about their heritage and search for their birth parents.

Me: Heh, thanks Eugene. Real nice of you, and ballsy, but that doesn’t really bother me—the biological parents stuff—too much. I’m not really interested. I’m too Americanized.

The conversation continued on egg shells, not fearing that we would offend each other, but more from futility; a stranger, in 15 minutes, wasn’t about to tear down the fortress that’s kept me contentedly white for 20 years.

Eugene: In case you change your mind, here’s my contact information. I’ve had buddies who felt the same way as you did and they went and came back so different. Lemme know.

Me: Thanks.

Suddenly, the thought of being in an environment where I wouldn’t be different, where I wouldn’t have my niche carved out by stereotypes and cinematic caricatures, immobilized me just as much as my fears of never fitting in did.

~~~~~~~~~~

I decided to stay in contact with Eugene after the trip. We emailed periodically, discussing the probability of my getting to Korea through his program, and the improbability of my winning a scholarship to fund its $3,000 price tag.

Simultaneously, my internship in the finance department at RandomHouse was starting and my three bosses—Kim, Tang, and Wong—all greeted me warmly. On my first day they took me out to lunch to get sushi. Ed and Oui, both in their early 30s, were bombarded with my precocious viewpoints on marriage and ‘how old is too old to have children (for the sake of the child)’. I’m exhausting like that.

I half-heartedly applied for the scholarship and found out that I didn’t get it via Facebook; in class I noticed a student who spoke frequently every class wasn’t there, and I, diligently and industriously checking my newsfeed rather than engaging in discussion, noticed that said student had just “won the Tobin Study Abroad Scholarship. And will be studying in Israel this summer!” Fuck that. Fuck him. Who needs Korea, anyway? I’m fine here.

They're all on Facebook. And the ones that aren't are looking at the people below them that are.

Ed, Korean with the same birthday as me, was my primary supervisor. He taught me the basics of Excel and promoted the thievery of books around the building. But what I’m most grateful for was his ability to thaw my frigid rejection of all things Korean.

Enthusiasm towards Korea increased during my time at RandomHouse, unfortunately, I was without an option to get there now.

~~~~~~~~~~

Hopes dashed, I randomly got an email from the Korean Boston Consulate sometime in April. The woman I was also emailing with from Eugene’s organization forwarded it to me. It alerted me of some “Korean Homecoming Program” for overseas adoptees, sponsored by the Korean government, that was all expenses paid. Obviously I wasn’t going to get it, nor did I need it, so I let the application deadline pass. But three days after when the Consulate emailed me, saying they would accept a late application and sponsor me, I frantically wrote out a melancholic personal essay about my life, dug up my passport, and filled out my first half-English / half-Korean form.

I went to Korea, for 10 days. It took a direct thirteen-hour flight over the North Pole to get there.

My back hurts thinking about it.

I didn’t look different, I didn’t talk much about being adopted, and I don’t remember the names of places I visited or the food I tried. And I didn’t try to. Those didn’t matter.

It would be ludicrous and inevitably unfulfilling to try and recapitulate my experience, especially with the ignoring of tangible detail and focus on personalized emotions—a person would be forgotten, an interaction overlooked. Instead, I remember the steps that got me there and the people I met, not my destination. And the realization of why I needed it:

Time: 7:00pm on July 11^th, 2010.

Place: Across the street from 2496 Hughes Avenue, my apartment in the Bronx.

Local neighbor: good-natured.

My dad and I just went food shopping. With him pushing the shopping cart I didn’t have to add up the cost of things constantly in my head. We drove back with heaps of groceries and started unloading them from his car.

“Whoaa, someone’s gonna eat well tonight!”

“Heh, yeah. Thanks. I rarely get to eat this good,” I replied.

“Can I come on over for dinner? Cook me up somethin’ special,” he said in the friendliest, and least perverted way.

“Yeah sure, haha!”

“Who bought you all that?”

I point to my father, a portly man who’s 2 inches taller than me and 70 pounds heavier. Brown curly hair and a propensity for burgers and television over mathematics and manners.

“And who’s he?,” the local man unashamedly asks.

“My father.”

Me: Me.