김치 Day
(Kimchi Day)
I’ve cried in more Korean restaurants in Korea than I’ve cried in total in my lifetime.
There’s something about being adopted that makes me feel insecure about my Korean-ness.
I cried because eating Korean food made me feel as though I had no idea how to be Korean.
And the reality is that I don’t know how to be Korean.
BUT I AM KOREAN.
And so, I taught myself how to make 김치 [kimchi], the napa cabbage variety (that is kimchi whenever someone is talking about kimchi is going to be napa cabbage kimchi, but kimchi really needs to be thought of more as “pickled” therefore requiring the mind to accept that kimchi is not one thing but many things), that is specifically named bae-choo kimchi [배추김치] being my favorite, if clarity (when buying kimchi, per se) is required.
Now, I feel entitled in some small way to claim my Korean-ness.
But it shouldn’t have to be this way. My Korean-ness is of the United Statesian + Adopted variety. Wholly unique but not nearly alone. There are more than 150K of us (not all in the U.S.).
I know many fellow Korean Adoptees, and I love you all. None of our stories are the same. They are similar, of course, and nobody will really understand us but each other, but we all have a strange relationship with ourselves (and each other). It’s unlike any other type of racial identity in these United States, and I am grateful to know so many people who do understand me.
If you had asked me when I was a child if I would still have adoption issues at this very-adult age, I would have said, “I hope not.” But I do, and I feel old, and I feel ridiculous for still having “issues” with being an adopted child, but alas, the “issues” persist.
And I get really fucking frustrated when I read the sorta shit that these insta-parents who have adopted children think of as “good” advice, when the reality is that very few of them, as far as I know, actually speak to adult adoptees about how best to raise their adopted children. Curious.
I will soon be acknowledging the anniversary of my adoption day, Tiffany Day.
Case-in-point, if anyone had asked me how I felt about re-hashing my adoption every single year, I woulda opted out, one-hundred percent, guaranteed.
But I got presents.
But nobody ever asked me anything about what I wanted with regards to being an adopted child.
I met my birth mother at the age of thirteen. Not recommended. Nobody even asked me if I wanted to meet her until the week before I found out that she even existed, and while sitting in front of a pile of presents from her, I was supposed to decide whether or not I would meet her. I call foul.
So, no, I no longer celebrate Tiffany Day because it’s a day that makes me sad. Despite whatever anyone might think about how much joy it should bring me “to be so lucky that I was an adopted orphan,” find out whether or not the adopted person to whom you’re speaking feels lucky about being adopted. Not all of us feel “so lucky.”
Of course, I am GRATEFUL, but luck and gratitude are hardly the same thing.
For now, as Tiffany Days come and go this year and in the future, I will see the day approach, and I will dig deep into my Korean-ness with the hope to someday be okay with the fact that I’m the kind of Korean only I can be, which requires that I be only me.
I’m a FREE AGENT.
Happy Kimchi Day.
