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

by Anais Bordier

  The conference opened with a most moving broadcast from the president of Korea, Park Geun-hye. Even though it had been prerecorded, she was acknowledging the fact that so many kids had left the country by being adopted internationally. It moved me to tears that the president of my birth country would take the time to honor us, almost. It also felt so good to know our fellow Koreans knew we existed. Just the simple gesture of letting the adopted community know that Korean people knew we were there made me so emotional.

  The beauty of the trip was that there were blocks of time for sightseeing or visiting our own adoption agencies in between the organized lectures and events. The imperial Gyeongbokgung Palace was wonderful, even though it was absolutely pouring the day we were there. In fact, there were a lot of downpours throughout the week. When the rains stopped, everything felt like a steam bath, but when it came down like cats and dogs, it gave the country a unique feeling, like it was shrouded in something mysterious.

  The palace, more than seven hundred years old, once had 7,700 rooms. However, much of it was destroyed by the Japanese during their occupation of Korea in the early 1900s, and the ongoing restoration was going slowly. One of the main gates, Gwangwhamun, was recently returned to its original design and had just reopened in the last few years. That was where the changing of the guard took place. I loved seeing tourist things like that. These weren’t the Beefeaters in front of Buckingham Palace, in their tall Beefeater bearskin hats riding their elegantly dressed horses. These guards wore long robes/dresses in bright primary colors with primary colored pinafores and hats in the style of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. They carried enormous banners and tall traditional weapons of the sword and spear family. Something I love above all else is drumming, and the drumming during the changing of the guard was spectacular. I love drums so much that I go absolutely crazy and want to dance when I hear them. Sam loves to dance, too. Can you imagine if we had started going wild? Even the stone-faced guards would probably have smiled.

  The trip had stressful times, too. Sam had been through exactly what I was going through one year earlier, but I needed to slow down. I was in the middle of a huge city, I did not speak the language, and I was disoriented. The crew was all so worried about the documentary and speeding around, whereas I needed time to digest all I was seeing, watching, and hearing, and most important, I needed to realize what was happening. I was in my birth country, after all, and I needed to take a step back to look at things and feel clear and reassured about what was going to happen. Sometimes, Sam seemed as hung up about filming as the rest of them, and I would find myself alone and frustrated when this happened. Sam would be there for me, but there was no bringing her off her desire to make Twinsters the best film possible, despite my frustration to the point of tears. I’d just do my best and focus on the positive, like seeing Sam and her foster mother.

  I was so moved by how much my sister’s foster mother cared about her. In a way, I think it panicked me, seeing how affectionate they were. I was scared I would not have the same experience, that my foster mother would not be that cheerful or happy to see me. Maybe it was the fear of being disappointed and being abandoned again if the meeting went wrong. What if she mistook me for someone else she had cared for, or did not like me, or . . .

  So many things were happening at the same time that my brain was burning out. My sister was unhappy with some things about the documentary and the crew, which was horrible. I had a huge fear of disappointing her if I sometimes did not want to participate in all the filming. Sometimes, I was annoyed at the intrusiveness, but other times, it might be as simple as my microphone was itchy. I needed to process the events, but my feelings and my body were reacting more quickly than my brain could analyze anything.

  Having Tomas and Kanoa with us was amazing, as they really were like two friends, but it was still frustrating to know we could not just hang out as friends do. Instead, we’d be yelling at each other about the documentary. To be honest, having Sam so involved with the documentary sometimes made me feel a bit lonely. However, I understood her passion to do it right.

  On the day I was going to meet my foster mother, my emotions were everywhere. I was scared about being filmed, as I don’t like to give away my feelings, especially when someone is recording them to edit afterward. I was also scared that something would go wrong, like my reaction to her would be wrong, or the expectation was I would act like her, so I would have to act like her to make everyone happy. Or, what if I did not feel anything special about her? Would that make me a monster? Would I actually feel anything for her at all? Sam would be there, and the crew would be there filming, of course. But would they be judging me according to my behavior? Could I have a French reaction to the situation? Would the Americans tell me how to do it? It was so stressful. I was excited, but terrified that if it did go wrong, I would feel abandoned all over again. The night before, when Sam had not been in the room, I had had a panic attack that I could not control. I felt lonely and mostly abandoned, like a wet kitten mewling in the rain. I was petrified of what might happen.

  I was even stressing about the physical act of giving my foster mother her gifts. I wanted to thank the woman who had taken care of me, but I did not remember her at all. It was funny to imagine someone who knew me before my first memories, who knew about taking care of me, whereas I had no clue at all. I was excited to know how she would look, how she would look at me.

  At Holt Adoption Services, it was great to have my case worker, Franck, on my team, someone I could rely upon. He is Korean, adopted as well, and speaks French. The amazing side of that trip was that you felt protected within this community of adoptees. You feel like you have five hundred brothers and sisters, who understand some things other nonadopted people might not necessarily feel.

  Since Sam had been here the previous year, new laws had been put in place and now some information in birth records is hidden. When Sam had been at Spence-Chapin the year before, she could get the name of her foster mother, whereas with me, my request had to first go through the Holt agency, where they would contact the foster mother to get permission to give me her name, number, etc. Luckily, she had agreed to meet me, certain she remembered me.

  It’s not as if this was my first time seeing my adoption records. They were the exact same papers we had in Paris. Still, something about them brought up a lot of raw emotion. Sam and I already knew the discrepancies between hers and mine. Now that we had confirmed that we were twins, it was even weirder to try to figure out why. Even the histories of our parents were different. It pissed me off to know it was likely all a huge lie, written in black on white.

  Even the news stories about the Twinsters documentary were in my file. I wasn’t just a baby who had been moved out of the country, and my case was closed. I was still an evolving person, so that was actually refreshing. I felt like I knew exactly who I was at the moment. I knew what was in my life, and it didn’t bother me what wasn’t there. It was an Okay, I don’t know more, and I am okay with it sense of identity.

  After the review of my records, I was as ready as I would ever be for my reunion. When I saw my foster mother enter the room, I was in disbelief at how she had not changed a bit. I had looked at her photo so many times in the last twenty-five years, and here she was! It was hard to describe. I even thought we looked similar, my foster mother and I.

  She had gotten to Holt way early, so anxious she was to see me. It was so funny to see how languages worked differently in this moment. She would talk and talk, which sounded to me like she had just said so much, whereas when it was suddenly translated, it turned out to be something really short! I hoped I was getting the whole story!

  My foster mother was a stranger, yet I was so relieved to see her and to see that she remembered me. I liked her immediately and felt an invisible bond with her already. I was so fascinated by her, I couldn’t stop looking at her. Her presence alone was making me feel protected in a way. She had ma
ny stories for us, like how she had started as a foster mother not long before she started taking care of me. I had been her third baby. Apparently, I used to cry a lot when I was left alone, but her son, who was a child then, helped her take care of me.

  She was probably the person I interacted with the most in the days and weeks after I was born. I agreed with Sam; such a person has to have an influence on you the rest of your life. You could definitely tell whose foster mum she was, just by our bond. Sam is bonded to her foster mother, too. I was discovering someone had loved me for ages, although she had never been able to tell me before, and I never knew. My foster mother hoped I could meet her husband, who was sick that day, but unfortunately, today was our only chance to see each other. Knowing that, she invited us for dinner straightaway at a restaurant nearby. It was delicious. She fed me and my friends, literally, as in putting small bits of food in our mouths.

  There was no way I could put in words my gratitude for this amazing woman. Her heart was big enough to take care of a baby that she knew would leave someday. My life had been put in the palm of her hand, and seeing her again, I knew I trusted her completely and forever.

  Foster mothers of Korea are selfless, generous, wonderful people. Meeting mine changed my point of view about my adoption. For a long time, I had felt very bitter about having been abandoned, and I thought my life started the day I arrived in France. Now I wasn’t so sad about Korea abandoning me. I realized people cared so much about Sam and me from the day we were born. That they loved us from the beginning of our lives and still remembered helped me ease my bitterness, and a part of the deep anger, which had been lingering even before the trip to Korea. People had loved Sam and me until the very moment we had been put into the Futerman and Bordier families, and those families would love us from that moment on.

  I did not want to know more about our birth parents, and, in a way, I am quite happy we did not find anything. I could see it meant a lot to Sam, but I am too scared to find out something I don’t think I want to hear. But Sam and I are two, so mostly for Sam, I asked Holt to start the birth search, as Sam had done with Spence-Chapin. But I was not so keen on doing this now. With the new law, one has to fill out papers to grant you access to all your information and get in touch with your birth parents or foster mothers, etc. I guess it also felt like cheating on my parents, and I was scared to hurt them.

  I still imagine crazy scenarios about what happened at our birth and our birth parents’ story, especially after learning more about the history of the country and the different economic and social crises, too. At the North Korean defector lecture and the mini–documentary film festival, we learned that a lot of North Koreans fled to Busan by boat, and I was thinking that maybe we are from North Korean descent. It does not matter. It is not really looking back but more imagining and daydreaming. We have heard so many stories that anything is possible. If nothing else, the North Korean defector opened my eyes to how complicated my country of origin is. I now knew I had to read more about Korea and what happened to it rather than settle for the few pages in our French history books that covered the Korean War. I felt like I was learning about my own history.

  We had a chance to visit the nurseries at the SWS and Holt International, which was an unbelievable experience. I had always wondered if I wanted children. When I was a kid, I always knew I was adopted and thought it was a wonderful and generous gift of life coming from adoptive parents. There are so many kids in the world without parents who need love and care that for me, adopting felt like something I had to do once I grew old. It started as a feeling of duty, to show by good example. I imagined myself like an ambassador of adoption with children who had been saved and cherished, rather than been left to be raised as orphans.

  Later, I had the “adoption conversation” with a friend of mine, and we discussed how being adopted gave you a need to search for somebody similar looking to you, somebody with a close physical appearance so that you would identify with that person and know who you were. After thinking this through for a long time, I decided that I also really wanted to have my own kids, from my body, and feel that physical attachment.

  The babies at SWS were so cute . . . and fat! They looked like they were very well taken care of, for sure! We were looking at them through a glass window and saw them sleeping quietly and peacefully in their cribs.

  At Holt, the babies were not behind glass and were playing and eating their dinner. The oldest was probably two years old, tops. With a nurse’s authorization, I held a little boy, and he smiled back at me before making a very strange and distorted face! Then he began smiling again. From the smell and the contentedness on his face, I correctly reasoned he had just peed on me.

  Seeing the babies at each of our orphanages like this, happy and healthy, made me stop to wonder about my earliest days. I hoped that Sam and I had been treated that well, and even had we not been, it was such a relief to see how the babies were treated here.

  Currently, Korea is phasing out international adoptions. There are strong campaigns, some featuring celebrities, pushing for Korea to take care of its own and allow children to remain in the country of their heritage. I am very sad about this, as I do want to adopt a baby from Korea as well as have my own biological children. One upside of the policy is that it shows progress is happening, as the stigma of being an adoptee lessens and the secrecy surrounding adoptions eases. However, not all of the babies find homes. I have heard that babies or children found without any paperwork or birth certificates cannot be adopted, which means there are many orphans in Korea. Some mothers who fear being identified if they are forced to do the paperwork place their babies in “baby boxes” in churches from where the children are more than likely destined for orphanages. It was always really hard to think of any child abandoned.

  The final nights of the conference involved the Samsung gala and a dance party at the Hybrid Club Vera, and although each of us adoptees felt differently about the circumstances that had brought us all back to our homeland, this night was in honor of us. Unfortunately, my body was reacting to the emotional upheaval I had been through in the last ten days. I was not recognizing these new feelings. What I had felt before seemed like it was not right anymore.

  Sam was very patient with me. When I finally got myself together, we made our way to the very impressive dinner. Everyone was elegantly dressed in suits or dresses. The food was a French menu, which, of course, delighted me. The event the next evening was what I had been most looking forward to. The entire group of adoptees went off site to the Hybrid Club Vera for some live performances. Dan Matthews, Sam’s musician friend from L.A., was performing, and Sam was going to sing with him.

  While Sam was practicing, I went out for coffee with a friend I knew from France. She was Korean and was now living back in Seoul. She had always talked about wanting to get back to her roots in Korea, but now that she was here, she was having culture conflicts, realizing how French she was, even though she was Korean. For whatever reason, this brought up a real storm of emotion in me. Who was I? I was born in Korea, and here I was in Korea, but I was French, and the only place I had ever known was France. On top of it all, I now had an American twin sister, and here we were, together as visitors in our homeland, still not knowing anything else about our family. The emotions stirring inside of me were not going to be able to be controlled.

  When I got back to the Hybrid Club Vera, Sam had no idea what was going on with me. The last thing I wanted to do was disrupt her shining moment, but I was completely overcome by my feelings. I found myself racing to the ladies’ room to try to compose myself. I was sweaty, nauseous, and extremely anxious, not sure if I could pull it together. Thankfully, Ryan found me and seemed to sense what was going on. He sweetly took me to Sam, who invited me to watch the show from backstage. Slowly, my panic subsided, as I lost myself watching my sister’s performance from the wings.

  The show was utterly amazing. Sam and Dan wer
e so professional and such great artists, and they were so well received. Dan’s energy was boundless, probably as a result of his meeting his twin for the first time. I felt that way after my first contact with Sam. It was an energy like I had never felt before. After Sam’s bow, she and I went to the main floor in front of the stage and danced the night away.

  So much about my week in Seoul had been rewarding beyond my expectations. Besides meeting Sam’s and my foster mums, I loved hearing crash adoption stories from my fellow travelers. I learned more about how they had handled their feelings and how they had experienced adoption in many countries—Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, and so many more. Some adoptees had grown up in countries that had virtually no Asian communities. I imagined it must be harder to have been raised in a country without any Asian people around.

  Sam and my generation of adoptees in Korea was probably the biggest and was represented by many nations. We all had funny stories and anecdotes to tell. We did not have to become the best of friends forever after this trip, but it always felt good to be able to share our experience with other people, obviously going through the same things and equally happy to share.

  The gathering felt really good, like a field trip with overnights for adults. We had nights out with all the Korean adoptees, and during these times, you felt like you belonged somewhere you knew. We were not random fish lost in the ocean. We were a whole cool group of fishes, and we were all having fun together. Before I came, I had been worried that it could tip into too much drama, but everything that was happening was exciting and filled with emotions, though not the kind that made people uncomfortable.

  I must say, I still had times when I felt lost in translation, and those times were tough. When I’d feel particularly vulnerable, I liked spending time with the French contingent. You’d always be able to find us—we were the group smoking cigarettes outside in the corner. For the most part, as long as I was standing near my sister, I was happy. Sometimes, I wanted to have her for myself and keep her away from the crew, mostly because I could see her anger and frustration when there were problems in logistics or opposing opinions. But whatever was happening, I was still happy and reassured to be with her, discovering new things and starting a new life with new memories.