Insignificant From The Beginning

I felt insignificant since birth. As an infant, I remember crying from cold and hunger in the middle of the night and no one ever came to comfort me. I yearned for someone to comfort me and to hold me and no one answered. This is the first memory establishing my insignificance.

I felt fearful of my birth mom always greeted by impatience and rage and even worst by neglect. I remember the punishments of being burnt by cigarettes if I wet myself as an infant.

I remember watching my mom with other moms’ wash laundry together and I slipped on the ice and hit my head really hard. I remembered not to cry. The smell of kimchee buried underground in a large elongated ceramic pot was comforting to my soul.

The night that blood curling screams awoke me and my older brother telling me that he is taking mom to the hospital and never returning to our tiny house with ceramic tiles on the roof. I was left with my older sister and we kept each other warm sleeping side by side on our mat on the floor and it bonded our souls forever until she too disappeared. I dutifully folded the comforter the next morning, home alone by myself.

Winters were bone frigid inside our house especially at night and I remember dreading to use the chamber pot for fear of sacrificing a second of my body heat, quietly going to my mom’s room, and feeling the ice cold ceramic underneath.

I immensely enjoyed wandering the streets because I was not alone. I spent my days with a young boy with black teeth and we bonded. One time, someone gave us coins and we went into the only junk shop and mutually agreed on exchanging our real money for lots of pretend paper money. We imagined that we were rich and we were both truly pleased with our selection because it gave us hope.

The first home that I was sent to live had two parents and two babies. My job was to take care of their babies and I remember preparing their bottles with dry goat’s milk and loving that smell. I was very good at my job even though I was a toddler. They could no longer keep me and no one gave me an explanation so I realized that I was not good enough. I moved from home to home.

At one point, I lived with an older couple on a farm and they gave me a few coins and I remember burying them under the wooden fence post deep underground to save for my future.

The last home that I remember was with Chongee and she was a woman in her 50’s and she was warm towards me and I cherished every moment with her. I trusted her. One day, she took me to the market igniting my senses. I felt so special. She took me into a tent and put a red and white polka dot dress on me over my clothes. I faced the machine and I still remember the flash. It was that moment, I suspected that it was going to happen again. My only dress was taken off of me and I was left with my only quilted top and pants. I felt tricked by the person that I trusted the most.

One evening, she read me a letter from America written by my soon to be American mom. She described that I had a mom, dad, two older brothers, a dog, and a new warm jacket waiting for me in America. Pictures were included and Chongee did her best to try to translate the English letter into Korean.

I went on the long airplane ride and spend the entire time helping the flight attendants take care of babies proving my worth. I felt completely shocked and overwhelmed when meeting my new parents for the first time. The flight attendants complimented me by saying that they could not believe how well I knew how to take care of babies at my age and that they could not have done it without me on the transatlantic flight with 20 screaming newly transplanted adoptees.

I remember they took me to an enormous shopping mall and I received one pair of black patent leather shoes and one pair of white patent leather shoes. I refused to take my shoes off when I went to sleep to make sure that it was not like the only dress in Korea that was taken from me. I went to the house and met my brothers and a large white dog. Everything was a total culture shock. I slept for hours and hours due to jet lag.

One afternoon, shortly after my arrival, I laid on the hard black entry way floor and screamed and cried. My dad took me upstairs and spanked me for my temper tantrum. Fear forced me into submission and never allowed me to show my true feelings. Years later, my dad confessed that he felt really bad about spanking me and recollected that it was my one and only time. He said that I was always good.

Thank you for reading my story @senseicat