Rough Draft

Intro: 

            Being adopted has changed everything about me.  I grew up in a multiracial family my whole life.  I have white parents and my two older siblings are biological.  My younger brother and I are both adopted.  My younger brother is black and was born in Arkansas.  I was born in Sungnam city in South Korea and was then in foster care for about eleven months in Seoul before I came to the United States.

Thesis:

            Growing up in a multiracial family has changed my life and continues to show me how wonderful it can be.  When I was very young, I did not think twice about it.  When I was a young teenager, it was difficult to think about and to figure out why I was adopted. I felt like my family was odd and not like the ordinary family.  I also had to deal with my parent’s separation and not really knowing how to internalize the whole situation.  But now that I am an adult, I can appreciate what my family has given me and what I have given back to them.  I want to share a positive experience about being adopted.  I’m sick of how negative people can be towards it.  But even now as an adult, being raised the way I was, has still contributed to my life positively. 

                                      

Growing up in a multiracial family:

            When I was young, being adopted wasn’t on my radar.  I did know what I was.  My parents did not hide it from me.  I just didn’t think about it.  I was more interested with playing with my little brother, Joe, outside on the play set in the backyard.  I was a home-schooled kid having fun and learning new things about this big world.  Everyone looked the same to me.  Everyone was a friend to me.  It wasn’t hard for me to make friends.  Whenever my mother (a recent single mother and raising four kids) took me and the other sibs to a home-schooling group get-together, I always wanted to play with the kids that came.  The kids that I played with didn’t even think about how our family was different.  Everything was so simple to us. 

Being young and unaware:

            But growing up to being 10 to 13-years-old, kids did start to ask.  Some would ask, “Why do you look different than your parents?” or, “Is it different having a family like that?”  I would just tell them no and shrugged.  I didn’t really know what to tell them.  Being adopted never was an issue so I had nothing to say.  But those questions started to spark my attention about how my family looked towards others.  I thought to myself, “Does our family look weird?  Am I different?”

            But when I was about 11 or 12-years-old, I started to wonder about my birth parents.  When I started asking my mom about why I was adopted, she told me that she would tell me whatever I wanted to know.  We had limited information because it was a closed adoption, but she kept all the files and papers that were given to her in a plastic box in her closet.  One day I asked my mother if we had any information about my birth parents.  So she took me into her room and took out the box.  I laid on her bed while she pulled out all the adoption information for me to look at.  It had papers about me being in foster care in Seoul, birth certificate, my baby passport, and much more.  One of the papers that were in the box was information about my biological parents.  It read that my birth mother was 5’4”, had a large mouth, and brown eyes.  It did not have any information about my birth father’s characteristics.  It did tell me where they worked as well.  My birth mother worked at a sewing factory.  MORE INFO ABOUT BIRTH PARENTS.  But everything was very vague.  I didn’t have any photographs of my biological parents either.  It was just a taste of information for me to stew on.  I thought it was interesting.  And that is when I became more aware about being adopted. 

           

Teenager being aware:

            I soon became very aware about how our family looked.  I became self-consciences about how our family looked in public.  Always wondering if people were saying crude comments behind our backs.  I don’t recall this moment happening, but my mother once told me when we all went to the zoo, a lady came up to her and asked a question.  She asked my mother if she was leading a theater group.  My older sister about maybe 15-years-old, my brother 12, I was 9, and my little brother was still in a stroller.  My mother, recently divorced, never had to deal with these kind of ignorant questions when my father was around.  When there were two parents around, people assumed that all of us were a family.  Or at least didn’t have the nerve to come up to us and ask us if we were some theater group when there were two parents around.  One day I was eating breakfast with my dad, step mom, and little brother at a restaurant called the Golden Nugget.  We were sitting at a round table all eating happily.  Then this older couple came over and this man asked my father if we were exchange students.  My dad just said, “No. These are my kids.” 

            The day I really became aware of being adopted and started becoming self-consciences was when I was hanging out with my older brother, Lee, in his bedroom.  I was about 15-years-old at the time.  My mother came in the room and told Lee and I that Joe finally asked if there was a picture of his birthparents.  She told us that she was preparing for this day and got the photo out and showed him.  She said he looked at it and just said okay and went back to his own business.  She had the photo in her hand and asked if we wanted to see it.  And so I took it from her and looked at the photo.  The photo had a woman lying on a hospital bed with a big man standing next to her.  The photo was taken after Joe was born.  I examined the picture and noticed that the parents had similar characteristics as Joe.  The mom had the same nose as Joe did and the father had the same eyes.  I gave it back to mom holding back the tears.  And then I couldn’t take it and started crying.  I knew I didn’t have any photos of my birth parents.  I hated to say it but I was extremely jealous of the photo.  I thought it wasn’t fair that he had a photo of his birthparents and I didn’t.  I didn’t understand or how it internalize the whole situation.  And to this day I am still a little envious of the picture.  But I am almost glad that I don’t have a picture.  I think it has made it easier to not wonder too much about my biological parents.  I feel like not knowing what they look like helps to diminish my curiosity about find more information about them.

Divorce:

            Another thing to add to our family, my parents got divorced when I was about 8-years-old.  We moved to Beavercreek Ohio from California.  My mother and two older sibs went back to California for a few days for a business trip.  Joe and I stayed in Ohio with my dad until they got back.  I remember seeing my dad looking stressed and going on a lot of random errands for furniture.  Joe and me came along and were running around the store, rough housing.  Our father snapped at us and told us to settle down.  It was the first time he got mad in a while.  I was really upset and embarrassed.  We went back to the apartment and my dad told us to grab our pillows.  I asked him why and he replied by saying it was a surprise.  That was when he took us to his new apartment.  It was new and clean.  It had a kitchen, a living room, and one bedroom.  My younger brother being four was very excited about the whole situation.  I didn’t know what to say.  I was confused about the one bed in the whole apartment.  I acted excited like my younger brother.  Trying to act like everything was normal.  What I didn’t know that this was the way my father told us he and my mother were getting a divorce.  My mother, being in California, had no relocation about this happening.  When I grew up and became a teen, this was just another reason why I was self-conscious about my family.  Having divorced parents and being adopted?  I thought our family was the only family in the world like this.