First communication from my birth mom.

This is Part I of my documentation of meeting my birth mom for the first time. Please continue reading Part II about the face-to-face reunion here.

On May 8th, 2010, I received my first communication from my birth mom. The case worker at Holt had told me that my birth mom was visiting my blog often and was composing a letter to me in Korean. (She doesn't speak English.) I figured that this letter would come through Holt first, so you can imagine my surprise when an e-mail entirely in Korean showed up in my inbox. I was in the middle of composing the week's grocery list. It took four hours to get back a translation from my friend Alice, and I cannot thank her enough for taking the time to work on the letter in the middle of exam period.

I will not post the entire contents of my birth mom's message here. They are personal and must have taken great courage to compose. In short, she expressed feelings of guilt, love, and curiosity towards me and apologized for being unable to raise me herself. To explain her original response to my contact, she wrote:

" The person who knows your birth was only me and my sister, and that might also be a reason that I was so puzzled at your news.
However after that short moment, as times goes by, I was so badly want to see you because you're my daughter."

I also learned from this and subsequent e-mails that she has four sisters and two brothers and that her mother (my maternal grandmother) is still alive. Additionally, I have two half-siblings, a younger sister and a younger brother, who are both in college.

Most importantly, my birth mom said that she planned to come with two of her sisters to Seoul on May 26th to meet me. Over the next week and a half, she e-mailed me to say how excited she was about our meeting and how much she was looking forward to seeing me.

...Yeah, try writing a final paper on a subject that doesn't interest you when those e-mails keep popping up in your inbox...

Once I arrived in Tokyo for the first part of our trip, I received an e-mail from Mrs. Lee, the case worker at Holt, confirming the date and time of our meeting. Mrs. Lee would act as a translator for the meeting at the Holt office. She also told me that my birth mother planned to stay overnight in Seoul and wanted me to stay with her and her sisters.

While I was really excited to meet my birth mom in person, this last bit really overwhelmed me. The idea of spending the night with my birth mom, who was essentially a complete stranger, was pretty intimidating. I was afraid of the language barrier and also worried that she would do motherly things like try to bathe me and braid my hair. However, I decided that no matter how awkward I might feel, it was important to jump at this opportunity. I'm not a very big risk taker, but this seemed like an important one.

I'm sure it sounds cliché to extol the "magic" of the Internet. Nevertheless, I want to acknowledge that without my blog and e-mail, it would have been much more difficult, if not impossible, for me to meet my birth mom. Viewing my photos allowed her a safe and anonymous way to check on me and contemplate the weighty decision of meeting me face-to-face. I feel fortunate that her motherly curiosity won out in the end, and I am so thankful that through Internet communication, I am able to correspond almost instantaneously with her.

To read about my reunion with my birth mom, please continue to this post.