Separated @ Birth: A True Love Story of Twin Sisters Reunited (20 page)

It was time to get onstage, so I asked Anaïs if she wanted to join me, but she said she would watch from backstage. Part of me feared that I had forced her into this trip that she hadn’t wanted to make. I had told her so many times that I cared more about her than the documentary and everything else. What if she was just going along for the ride because she didn’t want to disappoint me, but that she was getting overwhelmed with anxiety?

The performance went extremely well, although I wasn’t really present onstage. I didn’t care about anything but my sister, and if she was okay. I ran off to find her immediately after we finished, and when she said she was feeling better, we went out into the audience and grabbed a drink. As the music and night escalated, we started dancing, releasing all sorts of pent-up anxiety. Thankfully, Anaïs was beginning to feel more alive. Soon enough, after a few cocktails and time together, we were both laughing and jumping around like little girls. It was fun to de-stress together. There was no question that the comfort we offered each other made hard
situations far more bearable. The next morning, I opened my eyes to see my sister lying next to me—always a joy. Anaïs was going home today, so after we got up, we headed toward the metro station, where she was catching the train to the airport. Time was slowing as we were saying our good-byes. I felt like I was in a scene from
Love in the Afternoon
, with Audrey Hepburn and Gary Cooper at the train station in the final seconds before the train departs. We just stood staring at each other for what seemed like forever. We had already spent so many years apart, and this was the first time we didn’t have an exact date to see each other again. I gave her the tightest hug I could, trying to transmit how much I cared about her through my embrace. Eventually, she took the elevator into the station. I knew she had a massive flight ahead of her, and she was probably stressed out about it. I hoped she would be okay on the flight. I didn’t know if her anxiety would come on the plane or not. But I thought she was more than relieved to be going back home, where she could speak her own language, be with her friends, and feel like herself without a camera in her face. She was heading back to her life in France, something I still hadn’t experienced. I imagined her going back to eating croissants for breakfast and riding a bicycle past the Eiffel Tower. It’s funny—she was my sister, but we were still strangers in so many ways.

korea

I wasn’t absolutely certain I wanted to go to the International Korean Adoptees Association convention in Seoul. Sam had mentioned it after she met Dan Matthews, but I had never been a huge fan of adoptee gatherings. I had attended a few in France with my parents when I was younger, but as an adult, I had been to only one program, a screening of a Korean documentary hosted by Racines Coréennes (Korean Roots), which I attended with my Korean friend Anaïs. The documentary was incredibly happy and sad, as the girl in the film meets with her birth family at the airport in Seoul (how could I control my tears when I saw that?) but then she does not get all the answers she was looking for (how could I not feel her frustration?). I enjoyed the prescreening gathering and we met other Korean adoptees, some of whom were a bit older than I, but it felt good to be with people who understood my experience and seemed very happy in their lives. Ultimately, though, I was scared to go to those gatherings too many times, as I feared they might turn into something like AA meetings, and the people were just here to sort out their problems.

As for going to Korea with Sam, I still had the same fears as I had always had. I was scared to have questions I had not yet been able to even ask myself, and then not find enough answers. I also feared getting either frustrated by the lack of information or discovering information that I did not want to have. Basically, I was scared. I had found Sam, and that was satisfying enough for me. I didn’t need anything else.

We finally agreed to do the trip. The networking angle was appealing: “The vision of the IKAA Gathering 2013 is for the leading global network of adult Korean adoptees to reach out to adult adoptees worldwide, and to provide comprehensive social, professional, and cultural networking opportunities to the international adoptee community, including interactions with Korean society,” the brochure said. The weeklong program had a lot of fun-looking things going on. I remember being in Sam’s flat, and her being all stressed out and tearing out her hair (in French,
s’arracher les cheveux
). She was saying Korea would be great for the documentary, but in the meantime I mostly wanted her to feel happy and ready to enjoy herself rather than being all neurotic and stressed. Knowing we’d be together for the experience was a comfort, because with Sam, I have no fear. I was just worried about the balance between stress and joy.

Even though I would have Sam, I wished my parents were coming with me. My sister had made her first trip to Korea with her mother, and I would have loved to do the same thing with my mum and dad. I had been to Korea as a seven-year-old, but not as an adult. I am not scared of traveling alone—on the contrary—but this time, I would be living the film
Lost in Translation
, a complete stranger in a country
that, on some level, I thought I should understand. That is the worst, when you are so far from your own attachments that you feel like you are drifting away and apart from any group and that you don’t belong anywhere. There was great importance in meeting my foster mother and visiting the adoption agency, and I would have loved to share those things with one or both of my parents. I had checked with them before I booked the trip to be sure they didn’t mind me going without them, and they had given me their approval, although they thought it was a little rushed. Even being with Marie or Kelsang would have helped. Sam would have people she already knew, as she was very close to the documentary crew. But I had only her.

I knew two people going on the trip, although they were only acquaintances. I had met them briefly at the Racines Coréennes documentary screening. Hélène was the president of the club, and Charles was the treasurer. The entire roster of the more than five hundred people going to the IKAA Seoul event had about a dozen French adoptees, including Hélène, Charles, and me. It was nice to know some Frenchness would be part of the party. I don’t know how weird it might sound to say that we would all be back where we had come from, but I did feel community with other French-Korean adoptees, and home for me was the small French team that would be at the gathering.

The weeks leading to the trip went amazingly well. The week of July 14, I had my interview at Gerard Darel. The head of leather goods liked me enough to ask me to draw a project for her and send it the following week. My graduation ceremony for Central Saint Martins was July 17, and I sent the project a few days after. The day before leaving for Korea,
I noticed a missed call and a voice mail from a human resources person at Gerard Darel. It was unfortunately too late to call back.

The day I left for Seoul was also the day I was officially giving up my share of the flat on Stroud Green Road in Finsbury Park, so I had to pack everything and clean my room in the morning. When that was done, I packed the rest of my suitcase and opened my voice mail one last time, where I heard the message from Gerard Darel telling me I had been hired. Even though I was now running late, I was jumping with joy as I raced to Heathrow to get my flight to my birth country. When I arrived at the airport, the lady at the British Airways check-in desk told me I had been upgraded, and that I was now flying business class. I hadn’t been this lucky since Kelsang discovered Sam. I still deplore the fact that I could not find a single place to buy a lottery ticket in the whole airport!

It didn’t matter. I looked forward to meeting Sam in Korea. It was funny—I quite enjoyed the feeling of arriving in a distant city somewhere on earth, and with a preplanned meeting point, I would find my sister. It felt like I could go anywhere, and we would always find a way toward each other. I love flying, my favorite parts being when you start going into the sky and when you see the ground and you are about to land at the other end of the planet. This time was to meet my twin sister again, and there was nothing more exciting than this. All throughout getting ready and during the flight, I was thinking of what she might be doing at the same time—packing, being late, running to the airport, etc. The excitement of traveling took away my fears. I felt really emotional as the pilot made his announcement soon after touching down in Korea. “We wish you a pleasant stay, and for those
who are coming back, welcome home.”
Home
, he said. Wow. I was both modes of passenger—the one coming for a visit, and the one coming home.

I was fortunate to have Oliver, a second-year student at Central Saint Martins and a friend of friends, pick me up at the airport. He was Korean, and he was back in Korea for a visit with his family and was kind enough to collect me in his mum’s car. It was a good thing, too. I had the wrong hotel name, and my sister had given me the wrong address, so with his help, we could figure it all out.

Right near our hotel was the Myeong-dong market, which was a fascinating collection of stores, stalls, street food, restaurants, touristy stuff, and everyday goods along blocks and blocks of the city. I was fascinated by the nail polish stands, with so many colors. The market was a girl’s paradise, and I could now understand how Korean girls could be so girly compared to me. Seaweed, my favorite, was everywhere, too! I wanted to eat all the time, as the seductive smell of greasy street food got more and more irresistible every time we passed a stand without getting something.

The conference opened with a most moving broadcast from the president of Korea, Park Geun-hye. Even though it had been prerecorded, she was acknowledging the fact that so many kids had left the country by being adopted internationally. It moved me to tears that the president of my birth country would take the time to honor us, almost. It also felt so good to know our fellow Koreans knew we existed. Just the simple gesture of letting the adopted community know that Korean people knew we were there made me so emotional.

The beauty of the trip was that there were blocks of time for sightseeing or visiting our own adoption agencies in between the organized lectures and events. The imperial
Gyeongbokgung Palace was wonderful, even though it was absolutely pouring the day we were there. In fact, there were a lot of downpours throughout the week. When the rains stopped, everything felt like a steam bath, but when it came down like cats and dogs, it gave the country a unique feeling, like it was shrouded in something mysterious.

The palace, more than seven hundred years old, once had 7,700 rooms. However, much of it was destroyed by the Japanese during their occupation of Korea in the early 1900s, and the ongoing restoration was going slowly. One of the main gates, Gwangwhamun, was recently returned to its original design and had just reopened in the last few years. That was where the changing of the guard took place. I loved seeing tourist things like that. These weren’t the Beefeaters in front of Buckingham Palace, in their tall Beefeater bearskin hats riding their elegantly dressed horses. These guards wore long robes/dresses in bright primary colors with primary colored pinafores and hats in the style of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. They carried enormous banners and tall traditional weapons of the sword and spear family. Something I love above all else is drumming, and the drumming during the changing of the guard was spectacular. I love drums so much that I go absolutely crazy and want to dance when I hear them. Sam loves to dance, too. Can you imagine if we had started going wild? Even the stone-faced guards would probably have smiled.

The trip had stressful times, too. Sam had been through exactly what I was going through one year earlier, but I needed to slow down. I was in the middle of a huge city, I did not speak the language, and I was disoriented. The crew was all so worried about the documentary and speeding around, whereas I needed time to digest all I was seeing, watching,
and hearing, and most important, I needed to realize what was happening. I was in my birth country, after all, and I needed to take a step back to look at things and feel clear and reassured about what was going to happen. Sometimes, Sam seemed as hung up about filming as the rest of them, and I would find myself alone and frustrated when this happened. Sam would be there for me, but there was no bringing her off her desire to make
Twinsters
the best film possible, despite my frustration to the point of tears. I’d just do my best and focus on the positive, like seeing Sam and her foster mother.

I was so moved by how much my sister’s foster mother cared about her. In a way, I think it panicked me, seeing how affectionate they were. I was scared I would not have the same experience, that my foster mother would not be that cheerful or happy to see me. Maybe it was the fear of being disappointed and being abandoned again if the meeting went wrong. What if she mistook me for someone else she had cared for, or did not like me, or . . .

So many things were happening at the same time that my brain was burning out. My sister was unhappy with some things about the documentary and the crew, which was horrible. I had a huge fear of disappointing her if I sometimes did not want to participate in all the filming. Sometimes, I was annoyed at the intrusiveness, but other times, it might be as simple as my microphone was itchy. I needed to process the events, but my feelings and my body were reacting more quickly than my brain could analyze anything.

Having Tomas and Kanoa with us was amazing, as they really were like two friends, but it was still frustrating to know we could not just hang out as friends do. Instead, we’d be yelling at each other about the documentary. To be honest, having Sam so involved with the documentary sometimes
made me feel a bit lonely. However, I understood her passion to do it right.

On the day I was going to meet my foster mother, my emotions were everywhere. I was scared about being filmed, as I don’t like to give away my feelings, especially when someone is recording them to edit afterward. I was also scared that something would go wrong, like my reaction to her would be wrong, or the expectation was I would act like her, so I would have to act like her to make everyone happy. Or, what if I did not feel anything special about her? Would that make me a monster? Would I actually feel anything for her at all? Sam would be there, and the crew would be there filming, of course. But would they be judging me according to my behavior? Could I have a French reaction to the situation? Would the Americans tell me how to do it? It was so stressful. I was excited, but terrified that if it did go wrong, I would feel abandoned all over again. The night before, when Sam had not been in the room, I had had a panic attack that I could not control. I felt lonely and mostly abandoned, like a wet kitten mewling in the rain. I was petrified of what might happen.

I was even stressing about the physical act of giving my foster mother her gifts. I wanted to thank the woman who had taken care of me, but I did not remember her at all. It was funny to imagine someone who knew me before my first memories, who knew about taking care of me, whereas I had no clue at all. I was excited to know how she would look, how she would look at me.

At Holt Adoption Services, it was great to have my case worker, Franck, on my team, someone I could rely upon. He is Korean, adopted as well, and speaks French. The amazing side of that trip was that you felt protected within this
community of adoptees. You feel like you have five hundred brothers and sisters, who understand some things other nonadopted people might not necessarily feel.

Since Sam had been here the previous year, new laws had been put in place and now some information in birth records is hidden. When Sam had been at Spence-Chapin the year before, she could get the name of her foster mother, whereas with me, my request had to first go through the Holt agency, where they would contact the foster mother to get permission to give me her name, number, etc. Luckily, she had agreed to meet me, certain she remembered me.

It’s not as if this was my first time seeing my adoption records. They were the exact same papers we had in Paris. Still, something about them brought up a lot of raw emotion. Sam and I already knew the discrepancies between hers and mine. Now that we had confirmed that we were twins, it was even weirder to try to figure out why. Even the histories of our parents were different. It pissed me off to know it was likely all a huge lie, written in black on white.