Separated @ Birth: A True Love Story of Twin Sisters Reunited

by Anais Bordier

  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?

  Upstairs in the main office, we asked for Franck, the social worker handling all of the correspondence relating to Anaïs’s adoption. He was the one in constant contact with Ben at Spence-Chapin, as the two tried to put the pieces together for Anaïs and me. Like Ben, Franck was an adoptee as well, except he was adopted to France, which, I was sure made my sister feel all the safer.

  Franck did not match the image I had in my head. He was shorter with longer hair and bold jewelry. I hadn’t expected him to be so cool and casual. The craziest part about him was that he was speaking English to the crew and me, French to Anaïs, and Korean to the other social workers. It completely blew my mind, and I think my sister was impressed, too. Finally, someone was speaking French. Anaïs had been so out of her element, surrounded by Americans all the time and in a country she had never been to before. But now she could breathe, feel like herself, and speak in her native tongue.

  Franck brought us to the room where we would be meeting Anaïs’s foster mother. It was nice, a bit more comfortable than the one at SWS, with light green walls and big comfy couches. Anaïs sat down with Franck to look over her records. She had seen most of them before, but there were a few pictures that were new to her. They were photos of her on the day she was born. I guessed that I must have looked like that, too. For a hot second, I wondered whether or not my picture was taken right next to her, or if we had already been separated. Was I there? Were we split up right after being born? Was one of us put down in the wrong bed? But I snapped back into the room and told myself this wasn’t about me, it was about my sister. This was her experience. So there I was, watching my sister and Franck review her records in French, and every once in a while politely turn to me to tell me something in English.

  There were discrepancies in Anaïs’s records, as we had discovered even the few days after we had made contact. It is partly frustrating that I may not ever know the truth about my past, yet comforting in a very dark way to think that someone spent the time officially typing up these records to give the adoptees a feeling of importance. None of it had anything to do with the social workers that were currently working with us, so there was no reason to have animosity toward these people.

  Finally, it was time—Anaïs’s foster mother had arrived. My sister stood up and patted her clothes. I imagined she was feeling what I had felt the year before, wanting to be calm and able to handle what was about to happen. For me, the second the door opened, even just a crack, my stomach dropped into my butt and my nerves went crazy. Then, once I saw the face of the woman who first took care of me, my body went calm, the anticipation was over. I was with her again, the person who had given me so much when she would receive so little in return. Like my foster mother, Anaïs’s foster mother was a hero. And here she was!

  From the instant I saw her, I was awestruck by the similar energies she and Anaïs generated. Like Anaïs, she carried herself in a calm, shy, reserved way. Could it be that our personalities had begun to develop even in the few days, weeks, and months after we are born? How possible was it that the very base of our personalities had been solidified by these two women? I knew genetics played an important part in our lives, but there was an energy that I shared with my foster mother, my first nurturer. When she had come into the room at the Spence-Chapin the day before, she had screamed and hugged us super-tight, even playfully slapping me on the arm. She was touchy-feely, and she had been like that even the first time I had met her.

  But Anaïs’s foster mother was different. She was shy, happy, and warming up to the room much more slowly. When she was standing next to Anaïs, they were staring at each other as if they were communicating. How could it be that our foster mothers reflected so much of what we saw in ourselves? To me, it was becoming clear th
at every person in my life had affected me in some way, even the people whom I may not remember. These women were caring for us as our brains were quickly developing and our bodies were growing. Of course we would be similar to them! They had been the base and strength of our development as children.

  When we all sat down together, my mind exploded. Three languages were going on. Franck was translating from Korean to French, and on occasion someone would turn to me and speak in English. I felt awkward. I felt like I was Anaïs sitting there and watching herself have a reunion. I sat staring in awe. Although I could not understand the languages, nor understand at which point they were speaking French and when they were speaking Korean, I still understood the connections. The only language I understood was the body language, and it was saying so much. It was like trying to translate a Spanish soap opera. I was observing and thinking to myself, Okay . . . Anaïs’s foster mother is pleased to be sitting in her company. Anaïs said she’s happy to meet her. Her foster mother is upset. . . . No, wait . . . she’s happy. . . . She’s astonished that one of the children she cared for thought enough about her to come back to meet her . . . and now Anaïs and Franck are telling her how good foie gras tastes. . . . Damn, I’m good. I imagine that most foster mothers do not get a chance to meet their grown foster children. Even if my translation of this conversation is not spot-on, I think Anaïs was incredibly grateful for the experience.

  After talking for a while in every language possible, Anaïs’s foster mother invited us to dinner at a Korean BBQ place around the corner from Holt. She was thrilled to be showing off her turf. She ordered everything for us and sat us down on the floor. The best part was, she started feeding my sister like a baby! She also did the same to me and even to Ryan and Kanoa. She was so motherly that she had to take care of all of us.