tip toes

I am feeling anxious about writing letters back to my Omma and Appa. I am feeling anxious overall about the current situation. I want so much to move forward. I want so much for things to progress.

But just like I didn’t develop the relationship I have with my American parents overnight, or even over several years, I can’t expect my relationships with my Korean parents to automatically emerge as though we’ve always known one another. It doesn’t work like that.

We’re not old friends who simply lost touch over the years. We can’t pick up where we left off. I was a newborn infant when my Omma last saw me. My Appa, well, he never got the chance to even look at me.

Now, fast forward almost 35 years. I’m clearly no longer a child. I'm a grown woman.

Additionally, the relationships I have with my Mom and Dad are hard-fought and hard-won, and we’re still growing. We were not always as close as we are now. There was a time when the chasm was so vast that it seemed insurmountable. The tension was so dense and seemingly irreconcilable that I would often despair and subsequently withdraw, which of course, only deepened and magnified the chasm.

We were people lost and estranged from one another due to misunderstandings, ignorance, miscommunication, and a resevoir of tumultuous, misinterpreted emotion. But we continue to work through these obstacles, and although it’s not easy, it’s certainly possible and attainable.

My Omma and Appa and I were people lost and estranged from another in the truest, most practical sense. We have no shared history. We share no common language or culture or experiences other than the loss and grief initiated over thirty years ago by a series of events. We, of course, share our genes. But nature certainly cannot compensate entirely for the absence of nurture.

Yes, there remain many things about my adoption experience that my Mom and Dad do not understand. But similarly, there remains the past 35 years of my entire life that my Omma and Appa do not know and therefore do not understand.

Truly, it is a double-edged sword that cuts going in and coming out. The wounds can be treated, but in many ways they will always be vulnerable.

* * *

I will say that it feels good to read the letters from my Omma and my Appa, to feel their love, their longing—to feel the sincerity of their desire to reach out to me and to know me. It is so hopeful and comforting. Their words, although not completely but in part, do act as a poultice to the deep pain and persistent uncertainty that writhe within.

Yet things still remain so fragile, so delicate. As much as I feel their love and longing in the letters they wrote, I also hear their sorrow and desperation, fear and anxiety.

We still tiptoe and dance around one another, testing the ground on which we gather, whether it will be solid enough to withstand the burdens we carry or whether it will split open under the weight and tear us apart once again.