Still, writing to that woman was strange. I felt like I was cheating on my parents. My parents are the people who raised me and helped me grow up. Some kids don’t look like their parents even when they are their biological children. I am speaking of them physically, but I am also speaking of their personalities. We have so many genes of our ancestors within us, and there are so many different combinations possible within all this lottery of genes and alleles.
I had watched a documentary on twins from the National Geographic channel where they were showing how some characteristics that were within you could also be deactivated or activated by your environment, which explained why Sam and I were half so identical and half two very distinct persons. In finishing our letter to the woman who gave us our genes, our structure, we let her know that whoever she was and whatever the reasons were, we were thankful she gave birth to us. That was all that mattered. Sam and I had found each other, and we had our lives to spend together now. We were not angry. When she felt ready, we could meet her, and we would still like to know what happened someday. I felt relieved once we wrote that letter. It was best to do it with Sam. Writing to her and marking her as the starting point of our life was like going back together to the moment we were conceived. I was slowly getting used to our story becoming more and more real and taking shape.
Finally, Sam and I made our decision to book a trip to Korea for the conference. I felt so happy with Sam, and was thankful she convinced me to make the IKAA trip. I felt like she was being the older sister this time, even though I usually thought it was me. It felt good for someone else to lead the way and even better to know we would see each other again soon. The L.A. trip had helped us discover more about each other, including the differences in our lives, which made everything that much more exciting. We still had so much to learn from each other. Our story was still going on, and I never wanted it to stop. I was leaving L.A., but I missed Sam already.
14
SAM
korea
I hate losing time. Already there isn’t enough of it in the day, which is why traveling can be daunting. The hours and hours on the plane getting to the destination seem wasted, especially when you are waiting to see your sister.
July 26 was going to be a huge travel day, about thirteen hours in the air to get from Los Angeles International Airport to Incheon International Airport in Seoul. I was meeting Anaïs in Korea, the place where we had first been stripped from our birth family, the common factor for all internationally adopted Koreans. This was the last place I had contact with my sister before our separation. Anaïs and I were coming back to explore our history and experience it alongside the five hundred other adoptees who were attending the IKAA conference.
Before leaving my apartment, I did what I always do—I woke everyone in my family, wherever in the country they might be, and told them that I was going somewhere. My brother Andrew especially hates it. I always call him enough times to wake him from his deep, bearlike slumber and say, “I’m going to _____.” He usually replies, “That’s cool, Stinky,” in a groggy, half-impressed, half-cavalier voice. After Andrew, I call my grandmother and my parents. You never know what might happen when you get on a flight, so you have to make sure to tell your loved ones that you love them.
James, Ryan, and I were traveling together. At the airport, we found out we were on the same flight as Dan Matthews, the friend who had turned me on to this trip. He was a musician, and he worked for an Asian-American entertainment company that had a huge YouTube presence. His musical talents were even going to be on display at the Hybrid Club Vera in Seoul, as he had been selected to take part in the closing concert, which, in his words, was the most epic and fun night of the conference.
Dan and I had met for the first time over brunch a few months earlier, right before I met my sister for the first time. He hadn’t known it when we first met, but unbelievably, he was also an identical twin separated at birth. He discovered it right after my trip to London to meet Anaïs. When I got back, I hung out with him a second time and showed him the pictures of Anaïs and me together. They totally blew him away. He said he had started a birth search of his own to put together the pieces of his own bloodline. He hoped to be finding out a few details quite soon.
A few weeks later, at the very moment Anaïs and I were picking out souvenirs from a shop on the Venice Beach boardwalk, Dan sent me an e-mail with the subject line, “Sam . . . I think I have a twin, too.” His message read: “Hey, Sam, read below. I’m not even fucking kidding, but I was just told that I might have a twin as well. We need to chat soon. Dan.”
Wwwwhhhhhhatttt?! The person who had told me about the conference, my Korean adoptee confidant, was a twin, too?! It was insane, like a Dr. Phil–worthy coincidence. According to what Dan had learned, his birth parents hadn’t been able to afford to take care of both him and his twin brother, so he had been given up for adoption. His twin still lived with the birth family, and Dan was going to meet all of them for the first time when we were in Korea.
I was so honored that Dan was able to share such intimate information with me that I was literally moved to tears. But I also tried to imagine his twin brother’s position. How do you process that information when your mother gives it to you? Guess what?! You have a twin brother who I gave away, and he will be here in two weeks to meet you for the very first time! Yay! Although I had been through something strikingly similar just a few months earlier, both Anaïs and I had been given away, so we were more on equal ground. I was stunned by Dan’s story.
In the airport, Dan was filming, too, which made for a subtle battle of the film crews. Luckily for Dan and me, their territorial issues were very much secondary to the events unfolding in our lives. I had already met my twin, so I had my experience to share with him if it could be of any comfort. “This is crazy, Dan,” I cautioned him. “Once you step foot on the plane, it becomes real. After this trip, your life will never be the same.” Anaïs and I had been lucky to learn quickly how to just breathe and let life take us where it would. I wanted Dan to feel the happiness and joy in his new adventure in life, not dwell on all the potentially negative aspects of his situation. For a second, I saw myself in him. “Don’t be scared,” I told him. “Life will never present challenges to you that you cannot handle.” He started to smile as he heard my advice, and by the time he was rocking back and forth and spastically scratching his chin with a nervous energy, I knew he’d be just fine.
Incheon International Airport, Seoul’s gateway to the world, is unbelievably organized and very high-tech. Anaïs had landed before us, but Oliver, a friend of a friend, had picked her up and was taking her around Seoul, and she was meeting us at the hotel. My friend Sue was picking me up. She had been my homeland tour guide the year before, and with her motherly energy, my mom, she, and I had established a very strong bond. She made me proud to be Korean by showing me the strength and determination of the Korean people, the people whose blood runs through my veins. Although Korea may not have meant much to me in my childhood, it did now. After seeing how large a role nature plays in our lives, as per my ever-growing relationship with my sister, it meant even more to stand proud and say, I am Korean. Plus, Sue always fed me the most AMAZING Korean food, and everyone knows food is the way to my Seoul—I mean soul.
I had truly never imagined that I would be back in Korea so soon. Yet here I was, and there was Sue, emerging from the crowd of Koreans in the terminal. Sue isn’t a genetic relation, of course, but I consider her family.
On our trip from the airport to the hotel, Sue and I talked about the entire past year. She had seen Anaïs’s and my story on the news and had even showed me the video clip from a Korean national news program. It had pulled some of the footage on our Kickstarter trailer and pictures on our social media platforms. It was really both bizarre and thrilling to see that so much care and effort had been taken to tell our story, especially by people who had never met us, let alone ta
lked to us. In fact, my lack of privacy was terrifying, but I quickly got over it, since I had made the choice to publicize the private part of my life. Press is a funny thing. Although it is quite invasive, it allows us to reach many people in what is a very positive way for us. In return for going public, we received messages via all our social media outlets—Kickstarter, Facebook, Twitter, and more—from adoptees who had been moved by our story. Some have decided to start their own birth searches just because of us. Sue even begrudgingly granted Ryan permission to film the two of us together, for the sake of the story.
Sue was no ordinary tour guide. She gave tours throughout the year, but the roots tours, like the one I had been on the year before, were the most dear to her. In fact, she specifically requested to be the Korean leader of that tour group every year. She took so much pride in showing adoptees their homeland. Besides being a guide, she also served as a translator for reunions between adoptees and their birth family and/or foster family. It took an incredibly strong human being to loan herself as the main support in such intense situations. Without her, the families would never be able to communicate. She devoted her life to making others happy. Of course, she is a twin, too. Sue’s identical twin sister lives in Oregon. They hadn’t been separated, but her sister had met a man from the States and moved there to be with him. Incredible how my life kept putting me in touch with twins.
Sue took us to our hotel right near Myeong-dong, the busy, hip shopping district in Seoul. It was not exactly the Times Square of the city, but sometimes it felt like it. Our hotel was Hotel Biz and was most definitely not the Ritz. We reached it only after turning down three or four alleys off the main road. Right outside the entrance was a heaping pile of cat poo. Believe me, in the Korean summer heat, it wasn’t pleasant. The concierge inside was remarkably hospitable, telling us where our rooms were and what hours breakfast was served. We put our bags in our tiny rooms with rock-hard beds. The wallpaper in the room was patterned with landmarks of London. How funny is that? Of the thousands of hotels in Korea, we stay in one with London-themed wallpaper. My eye was immediately drawn to the image of the London Eye, reminding me how much I had experienced in just the past five months.
Korea in the summer is brutally hot and humid, with temperatures climbing to what feels like a billion degrees. By the end of the day, you are salty, sticky, and sitting in a pool of your own sweat. I was already drenched by the time we got the bags to the room, so I took a quick shower and waited for Anaïs. When she finally got there, we hugged and jumped up and down a hundred times. I loved seeing her. She felt like . . . my sister. Even though we were in touch daily online, that wasn’t even close to being with her in person.
Being apart didn’t feel wrong, per se. But when we were together, it was like a fairy tale, a honeymoon, so right that it was almost too good to be true. Our bond has been hard to explain. There were so many things in the past that we still didn’t know about each other, yet there was almost no need to discuss them. We had a much deeper understanding of each other that completely surpassed having experienced everyday communication for a consistent twenty-five years. In life, there exists sympathy and empathy. I have both of those with Anaïs, as I am certainly able to relate to, identify with, and have compassion for the feelings she is going through. But what I have with her is beyond that. I have literally felt in my body what she is feeling. I know exactly where in her throat she gets choked up when she gets upset and the blood rushes to her face. I know how hot it actually feels. It’s not telekinesis that we share, but the ability to recognize and fully experience what the other is going through. Don’t get me wrong—it’s not all the time and obviously the situations differ, but the raw feelings of emotion that are evoked inside my twin can be felt in the exact same places in my own body.
Our hug fest ended when I said I was starving, so we headed to the Myeong-dong market, where the prevailing population of shoppers seemed to be young Korean couples. Everything seemed brand-new, colorful, and vibrant, with street vendors selling every kind of merchandise and food in the world. We met Sue at a Korean BBQ that she recommended, where we indulged in steak and beer while she got to know my sister.
The next morning, we headed over to the Lotte Hotel, the venue hosting the conference. It was a beautiful, upscale hotel staffed by exceptionally beautiful and hospitable people. It was only a ten-minute walk from the Hotel Biz, but in the Korean heat, I felt like I was trekking across the Gobi Desert. On the way, it started pouring and in no time, my shoes were ruined, Anaïs’s shoes were ruined, the equipment was in danger, and the rain kept coming. We stopped into a convenience store to grab some inexpensive umbrellas, rain boots, and ponchos. Some advice to those who might find themselves in this kind of predicament in the future—don’t wear a poncho in the sweltering heat of Korea when it rains, because your own stench gets caught under the plastic and you smell for the rest of the day. We could all smell Ryan mixed with plastic for days afterward, and we didn’t let him live it down, and thus we coined him as the smelly friend. (There is always one.)
After we had registered and signed up for a few seminars, we took one of Seoul’s inexpensive cabs to Gyeongbokgung Palace, a massive tourist attraction that gets extremely crowded, especially on Sunday afternoons. The beauty of the place was that when you were facing it, you could see only the mountains in the background, so you had no human artifacts to detract from what it must have been like hundreds of years earlier. Then, when you turned around to face the city, you see an ancient palace wall backlit by massive Samsung buildings and water fountains in Gwanghwamun Square. It is a lovely reminder of how far and how quickly the country and city has built itself up, a true representation of old and new. I had been to the palace the year before, but I wanted to show it to my sister. I wanted to imagine us running around the grounds in a past life together. I guess a girl’s dream of being a princess never goes away.
That night, Kanoa and Tomas arrived in Seoul. Tomas had seen my stress over the documentary production, and he offered to pay for Kanoa and him to join us and help out. His support was so incredible that my gratitude was beyond words. Kanoa was not only my best friend, but my sister had a teenager-like crush on him, with his handsome hapa face, so his presence made her all the happier, too. The four of us were quite hangry, our way of saying angry from being hungry, so we found a random Korean restaurant, the only one that seemed to be open. No one in the establishment spoke English, and the food was so spicy that Anaïs and I, who have a pretty high tolerance to spicy, couldn’t even finish. The only way we could communicate with our server was by playing charades.
The next day, the IKAA conference got under way. It was sponsored by Samsung, so we could expect a highly professional, very carefully planned agenda beginning with the opening ceremonies. When we arrived at the Hotel Lotte, there in the lobby was Dan being followed by his film crew. We had a pretty good laugh about how both Korean adoptees from L.A. had film crews following them around. I was like a living stereotype—I was an actor, which meant I was a waitress; I was Asian, which meant I was a terrible driver; and I was from L.A., which meant that my life was a reality show. At least I broke the stereotype by being bad at math (and I would soon have the IQ test to prove it).
The conference’s opening ceremonies included a pre-recorded speech by the president of Korea, Park Geun-hye. So much care had been taken to make this conference special, and to have someone as important as the president of Korea welcoming us home was so moving. It reinforced the thought of how much love went into the process of adoption, even though at many times, the conversation was about the negative. All the important people from the adoption community were there, too, including representatives from all the adoption agencies. I was so engulfed in the ceremony that I had no idea Anaïs had begun to cry until I glanced over at her.
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.
Separated @ Birth: A True Love Story of Twin Sisters Reunited Page 17
