Separated @ Birth: A True Love Story of Twin Sisters Reunited (21 page)

Even the news stories about the
Twinsters
documentary were in my file. I wasn’t just a baby who had been moved out of the country, and my case was closed. I was still an evolving person, so that was actually refreshing. I felt like I knew exactly who I was at the moment. I knew what was in my life, and it didn’t bother me what wasn’t there. It was an
Okay, I don’t know more, and I am okay with it
sense of identity.

After the review of my records, I was as ready as I would ever be for my reunion. When I saw my foster mother enter the room, I was in disbelief at how she had not changed a bit. I had looked at her photo so many times in the last twenty-five years, and here she was! It was hard to describe. I even thought we looked similar, my foster mother and I.

She had gotten to Holt way early, so anxious she was to see me. It was so funny to see how languages worked differently in this moment. She would talk and talk, which sounded to me like she had just said so much, whereas when it was suddenly translated, it turned out to be something really short! I hoped I was getting the whole story!

My foster mother was a stranger, yet I was so relieved to see her and to see that she remembered me. I liked her immediately and felt an invisible bond with her already. I was so fascinated by her, I couldn’t stop looking at her. Her presence alone was making me feel protected in a way. She had many stories for us, like how she had started as a foster mother not long before she started taking care of me. I had been her third baby. Apparently, I used to cry a lot when I was left alone, but her son, who was a child then, helped her take care of me.

She was probably the person I interacted with the most in the days and weeks after I was born. I agreed with Sam; such a person has to have an influence on you the rest of your life. You could definitely tell whose foster mum she was, just by our bond. Sam is bonded to her foster mother, too. I was discovering someone had loved me for ages, although she had never been able to tell me before, and I never knew. My foster mother hoped I could meet her husband, who was sick that day, but unfortunately, today was our only chance to see each other. Knowing that, she invited us for dinner straightaway at a restaurant nearby. It was delicious. She fed me and my friends, literally, as in putting small bits of food in our mouths.

There was no way I could put in words my gratitude for this amazing woman. Her heart was big enough to take care of a baby that she knew would leave someday. My life had
been put in the palm of her hand, and seeing her again, I knew I trusted her completely and forever.

Foster mothers of Korea are selfless, generous, wonderful people. Meeting mine changed my point of view about my adoption. For a long time, I had felt very bitter about having been abandoned, and I thought my life started the day I arrived in France. Now I wasn’t so sad about Korea abandoning me. I realized people cared so much about Sam and me from the day we were born. That they loved us from the beginning of our lives and still remembered helped me ease my bitterness, and a part of the deep anger, which had been lingering even before the trip to Korea. People had loved Sam and me until the very moment we had been put into the Futerman and Bordier families, and those families would love us from that moment on.

I did not want to know more about our birth parents, and, in a way, I am quite happy we did not find anything. I could see it meant a lot to Sam, but I am too scared to find out something I don’t think I want to hear. But Sam and I are two, so mostly for Sam, I asked Holt to start the birth search, as Sam had done with Spence-Chapin. But I was not so keen on doing this now. With the new law, one has to fill out papers to grant you access to all your information and get in touch with your birth parents or foster mothers, etc. I guess it also felt like cheating on my parents, and I was scared to hurt them.

I still imagine crazy scenarios about what happened at our birth and our birth parents’ story, especially after learning more about the history of the country and the different economic and social crises, too. At the North Korean defector lecture and the mini–documentary film festival, we
learned that a lot of North Koreans fled to Busan by boat, and I was thinking that maybe we are from North Korean descent. It does not matter. It is not really looking back but more imagining and daydreaming. We have heard so many stories that anything is possible. If nothing else, the North Korean defector opened my eyes to how complicated my country of origin is. I now knew I had to read more about Korea and what happened to it rather than settle for the few pages in our French history books that covered the Korean War. I felt like I was learning about my own history.

We had a chance to visit the nurseries at the SWS and Holt International, which was an unbelievable experience. I had always wondered if I wanted children. When I was a kid, I always knew I was adopted and thought it was a wonderful and generous gift of life coming from adoptive parents. There are so many kids in the world without parents who need love and care that for me, adopting felt like something I had to do once I grew old. It started as a feeling of duty, to show by good example. I imagined myself like an ambassador of adoption with children who had been saved and cherished, rather than been left to be raised as orphans.

Later, I had the “adoption conversation” with a friend of mine, and we discussed how being adopted gave you a need to search for somebody similar looking to you, somebody with a close physical appearance so that you would identify with that person and know who you were. After thinking this through for a long time, I decided that I also really wanted to have my own kids, from my body, and feel that physical attachment.

The babies at SWS were so cute . . . and fat! They looked like they were very well taken care of, for sure! We
were looking at them through a glass window and saw them sleeping quietly and peacefully in their cribs.

At Holt, the babies were not behind glass and were playing and eating their dinner. The oldest was probably two years old, tops. With a nurse’s authorization, I held a little boy, and he smiled back at me before making a very strange and distorted face! Then he began smiling again. From the smell and the contentedness on his face, I correctly reasoned he had just peed on me.

Seeing the babies at each of our orphanages like this, happy and healthy, made me stop to wonder about my earliest days. I hoped that Sam and I had been treated that well, and even had we not been, it was such a relief to see how the babies were treated here.

Currently, Korea is phasing out international adoptions. There are strong campaigns, some featuring celebrities, pushing for Korea to take care of its own and allow children to remain in the country of their heritage. I am very sad about this, as I do want to adopt a baby from Korea as well as have my own biological children. One upside of the policy is that it shows progress is happening, as the stigma of being an adoptee lessens and the secrecy surrounding adoptions eases. However, not all of the babies find homes. I have heard that babies or children found without any paperwork or birth certificates cannot be adopted, which means there are many orphans in Korea. Some mothers who fear being identified if they are forced to do the paperwork place their babies in “baby boxes” in churches from where the children are more than likely destined for orphanages. It was always really hard to think of any child abandoned.

The final nights of the conference involved the Samsung
gala and a dance party at the Hybrid Club Vera, and although each of us adoptees felt differently about the circumstances that had brought us all back to our homeland, this night was in honor of us. Unfortunately, my body was reacting to the emotional upheaval I had been through in the last ten days. I was not recognizing these new feelings. What I had felt before seemed like it was not right anymore.

Sam was very patient with me. When I finally got myself together, we made our way to the very impressive dinner. Everyone was elegantly dressed in suits or dresses. The food was a French menu, which, of course, delighted me. The event the next evening was what I had been most looking forward to. The entire group of adoptees went off site to the Hybrid Club Vera for some live performances. Dan Matthews, Sam’s musician friend from L.A., was performing, and Sam was going to sing with him.

While Sam was practicing, I went out for coffee with a friend I knew from France. She was Korean and was now living back in Seoul. She had always talked about wanting to get back to her roots in Korea, but now that she was here, she was having culture conflicts, realizing how French she was, even though she was Korean. For whatever reason, this brought up a real storm of emotion in me. Who was I? I was born in Korea, and here I was in Korea, but I was French, and the only place I had ever known was France. On top of it all, I now had an American twin sister, and here we were, together as visitors in our homeland, still not knowing anything else about our family. The emotions stirring inside of me were not going to be able to be controlled.

When I got back to the Hybrid Club Vera, Sam had no idea what was going on with me. The last thing I wanted to do was disrupt her shining moment, but I was completely
overcome by my feelings. I found myself racing to the ladies’ room to try to compose myself. I was sweaty, nauseous, and extremely anxious, not sure if I could pull it together. Thankfully, Ryan found me and seemed to sense what was going on. He sweetly took me to Sam, who invited me to watch the show from backstage. Slowly, my panic subsided, as I lost myself watching my sister’s performance from the wings.

The show was utterly amazing. Sam and Dan were so professional and such great artists, and they were so well received. Dan’s energy was boundless, probably as a result of his meeting his twin for the first time. I felt that way after my first contact with Sam. It was an energy like I had never felt before. After Sam’s bow, she and I went to the main floor in front of the stage and danced the night away.

So much about my week in Seoul had been rewarding beyond my expectations. Besides meeting Sam’s and my foster mums, I loved hearing crash adoption stories from my fellow travelers. I learned more about how they had handled their feelings and how they had experienced adoption in many countries—Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, and so many more. Some adoptees had grown up in countries that had virtually no Asian communities. I imagined it must be harder to have been raised in a country without any Asian people around.

Sam and my generation of adoptees in Korea was probably the biggest and was represented by many nations. We all had funny stories and anecdotes to tell. We did not have to become the best of friends forever after this trip, but it always felt good to be able to share our experience with other people, obviously going through the same things and equally happy to share.

The gathering felt really good, like a field trip with
overnights for adults. We had nights out with all the Korean adoptees, and during these times, you felt like you belonged somewhere you knew. We were not random fish lost in the ocean. We were a whole cool group of fishes, and we were all having fun together. Before I came, I had been worried that it could tip into too much drama, but everything that was happening was exciting and filled with emotions, though not the kind that made people uncomfortable.

I must say, I still had times when I felt lost in translation, and those times were tough. When I’d feel particularly vulnerable, I liked spending time with the French contingent. You’d always be able to find us—we were the group smoking cigarettes outside in the corner. For the most part, as long as I was standing near my sister, I was happy. Sometimes, I wanted to have her for myself and keep her away from the crew, mostly because I could see her anger and frustration when there were problems in logistics or opposing opinions. But whatever was happening, I was still happy and reassured to be with her, discovering new things and starting a new life with new memories.

I often wondered where Sam had spent her first three weeks after she was born since her foster mother had said she had started taking care of her when she was three weeks old. At Holt, they had a theory that the mother wanted to keep one baby, but only one. They thought she gave me up first, right after birth, then came to terms with not being able to keep Sam, either, and brought her back to a different adoption agency later. Our records said we were given up for adoption the next day after the birth, so we might never know what transpired next. We were born together, me first and then Sam, and then we were separated.

I have many theories how we came to be, like we are
robots, or clones sent from outer space, but apart from that, the story could be anything from the simplest to the most complicated dramatic story ever. I guess I used to need to know why I had been abandoned. Now, Sam is here, and nothing else matters anymore. We found our way back. We lived the same story once, and now we can go ahead and live happy lives together. We don’t really need to look backward. That is their story, not ours.

birthday trip to paris

In retrospect, there were parts of our trip to Korea that weren’t fun. At some points, I wasn’t sure if anyone was actually having any fun. But Anaïs and I had a life-changing nine days together and had learned a lot about each other and ourselves. I was seeing my birth country with my identical twin sister. We struggled through a lot of it, but we had come out the other side closer than ever. Now we were going to be spending our birthday in Paris together, and that was where I was putting my focus. I couldn’t be apart from Anaïs too long, and I couldn’t imagine spending our first birthday since finding each other over Skype or social media.

The plan was for me to fly to London, spend the night with Marie, and hop a Eurostar to Paris the following morning, a train ride of only two and a half hours. Whoever would have thought that something this lucky was possible: spending a birthday with a twin for the first time in twenty-six years. Even luckier was the fact that Jacques paid for my flight. I was going to hang out and tour France.

My flight was Sunday, November 17, two days before
our birthday. Tomas and Kanoa were coming with me, which was a treat for both Anaïs and me. My two friends had been incredible throughout our trip to Korea, and our birthday party in Paris was going to be far more relaxed. Getting our bags from Heathrow to the Finsbury Park Tube station wasn’t fun, but at least I had two handsome men to help me. It was so good to see Marie when we arrived at her flat! And to my delight, Kelsang arrived at the apartment right as she was serving her three Asian-American guests Chinese chicken with black bean sauce. I truly adore Kelsang. Without him, and his finding me on the YouTube video, none of this would have been possible. It was so nice to see him, too!

All through the evening, I was texting or Skyping with Anaïs. It was so weird to be so close to her, yet still so far away. That night, I stayed in Anaïs’s old room, which was strange and funny. Marie said it was like having my sister back in the apartment. She was coming with us to Paris, partly to be with Anaïs and me for our birthday party, partly to spend time with her family.

What could be more fantastic than boarding a train to Paris on my birthday?

Anaïs had told me to expect her mom at Gare du Nord, so was I ever shocked to see an adorable little French version of myself in a cute fur-lined coat at the end of the platform in Paris. She looked so pretty and happy and French. She was in her element and at her best.

Apparently, Neuilly-sur-Seine is a pretty ritzy part of town. Should I ask again how much luckier could I get? At the apartment, the three Americans all settled in. I hoped Anaïs wouldn’t get too stressed with so many people setting up camp in a one-bedroom apartment, but she seemed thrilled to have us. She took us on a short walk in her neighborhood,
and while out, I searched the scenery for some healthy green juice, my favorite L.A. veggie beverage. Well, there was no green juice, so the two stops were the bread store for some croissants and pastries, and the “health food” store for a coconut water, which pretty much tasted like water and a splash of Earth.

The Bordiers didn’t live far from my sister, but we still drove. It was so crazy to see Anaïs’s tiny royal-blue Mercedes. In L.A. my RAV4 looked average-sized. Here, it would look gargantuan. It was so funny watching my sister drive. Even though her car was semiautomatic, it drove like a manual car, so she had to change gears. It was so enlightening to see Anaïs in her own environment. Up until now, I had only been able to imagine the Bordiers’ apartment, but soon I’d know exactly how it looked. It was comforting, yet I also enjoyed the mystery of letting my imagination run wild. Maybe that was why my sister never wanted to know about our birth mother. She wanted to have a beautifully painted picture of what she looked like and what happened, because sometimes reality can be disappointing.

Jacques and Patricia, as always, were so kind and sweet. Sometimes I get nervous that I’m going to be too outrageous for them, with my wry, rude sense of humor. But all my fear of disapproval goes out the window when I see the joy in Patricia’s eyes. When someone gives you that much positive and genuine happy energy, it’s pretty difficult not to reciprocate.

To get to the Bordiers’ apartment, four of us had to squeeze into the smallest elevator I had ever been in. When we emerged, I was curious as to whether Eko, their American Cocker, would confuse me with Anaïs, but animals are not fooled. She could smell the difference, but she was sweet to
me, nonetheless. The apartment was beautiful, with incredible lighting, elegant wood and glass bookshelves, and insanely comfortable leather chairs and sofas. The glass dining table was covered with what I could only assume were our birthday presents. I don’t remember if I had ever seen a display of gifts like this one. There was a beautiful bouquet of flowers in the middle of the table, and then the gifts were perfectly mirrored on each side.

The kid in me wanted to jump on the table and shake every single package and rip it open without care, but the timing was wrong. We first needed to take seats in the living room part of the apartment for a toast. On the TV stand were pictures of Anaïs throughout her life. It was so strange to see myself in all those photos, in a life I hadn’t lived. I guess it could have made me wonder about what my life could have been had I been adopted by the Bordiers, but I don’t really think about our situation in those terms. This was Anaïs’s childhood, and these moments were the defining factors in who she was. They were little glimpses into the pieces of her puzzle. They were not lost years of my own life, but the moments that had helped Anaïs flourish and grow into an amazing young woman. Anaïs and I were the first to exchange gifts with each other. I had bought her a dress and a shirt. Our styles were quite different, and although I thought I would look awkward in the outfits I selected, I knew that she could make them work and look as classy as ever. Buying clothes for your identical twin is pretty easy—you just try something on, and if it fits you, it fits her. I also got her some small cosmetic products from a brand I love, but I chose a shade lighter for Anaïs, as her skin is a dab lighter and pinker.

Anaïs had bought me a French sailor shirt, white with blue stripes. She was trying to make me French! What would
I open next, a beret? Yes, a beret—how did I know? She had also bought me a luxurious candle from Paris, personalized with our names engraved on the back.

After all the gifts were opened and the photos were taken, it was birthday dinner time and my chance to experience Korean food in France. To be honest, I was skeptical. L.A. had the most amazing Korean BBQ, but of course, this was France! The traffic getting to the restaurant was insane, but the sights were more insane. One minute out the window, there was the Arc de Triomphe! The next minute out the other window, there was the Eiffel Tower! It was unbelievable. I had always fantasized that I was underneath the tower with a baguette and a bike having the kiss of my lifetime, romantic mush that I am. Strong and stubborn was just a cover.

When we arrived at the restaurant, one of the hostesses, a middle-aged Korean lady, began to stare. Anaïs smiled and introduced me. She seemed to enjoy telling people the news. To be honest, I loved revealing it, too, and seeing the reaction on people’s faces. It is like a little secret and we are the keepers of the key, with the power to reveal it at the moment of our choosing.

Throughout the first six months of Anaïs’s and my journey, I had concentrated on all of our similarities, but now I was beginning to notice the differences. I was starting to see insecurities in my sister. She had not grown up with brothers who had constantly teased and tortured her, and she seemed to have a little bit of low self-esteem. Every time someone said something even slightly negative about her, she would mull it over to decide whether or not it was true. If my brother called me fat, I would make sure to booby-trap his room, or embarrass him the next time a girl came over, but I wouldn’t
believe him. That’s a rule in families, right? No matter what others say or do, you love and stick by them without taking them too seriously. Through “in-house” training, I had developed thick skin and learned how to walk away from insults. But what about Anaïs? She didn’t have the torturous days and nights of big brothers. So I guess we developed a different sense of confidence and resilience. Even the creative outlets we chose as adults seem to reflect this. I chose a more outwardly creative field, and Anaïs’s was much more inward. I put my energy out, and Anaïs pulls hers in.

Jacques was the patriarch of the birthday dinner. He is so knowledgeable about languages, and he greeted the Korean hostesses in Korean as he gave them a slight bow from the waist. Patricia was sweet and warm, too, and, fortunately, familiar with the fusion-style fare this restaurant served. I’ve been to many Korean restaurants. In both L.A. and Korea, there is an extensive range of entrée choices that are eaten family-style. Everyone double dips his or her spoon into the shared meal. Here, there were very few choices and everyone ordered his own.

Another thing I had never experienced before was the pairing of Korean food with a bottle of rosé wine. I would never have paired a rosé with marinated beef, but, oddly, it worked! To be at this special restaurant with Anaïs, eating Korean food on the day we shared our first birthday in twenty-six years, will be one day that I will always remember.

I woke up in the morning next to my sister. Funny, twenty-six years apart and I was so comfortable sharing a bed with her. It was like balance restored. Usually, I must be fairly intimate with someone before I let him share my bed. And I pretend that it’s fine so as not to insult my suitor, but toss and turn and never get a good night’s sleep. With Anaïs,
I slept like a log. We always sleep in the same pattern when we share a bed: Anaïs on the right and me on the left. I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I ended up on the right. When we were in bed together, it made me picture us as babies, poking each other’s noses in the womb, me on the left side and her on the right. Dr. Segal had said some reared-apart twins might be more similar in some ways than those raised together because they weren’t fighting for separate identities. They were letting nature take its course. I was seeing that she was right.

Anaïs had to work the next day, but she gave us an entire itinerary. She planned for us to visit the Eiffel Tower, and then head toward Notre Dame by walking along the Seine. From there, we would go to Saint Germain and the Rive Gauche. She suggested we have lunch at Saint-Sulpice, a trendy square near Saint Germain, and then walk over toward Hôtel de Ville for some shopping, with a final stop at the Centre Georges Pompidou, the contemporary art museum. There was a lot to accomplish in only one day, but we were ready.

We were kind of dragging by the time we met Anaïs and her six friends at the end of the day. She had made dinner reservations for us, and we were going to meet her at the restaurant. Only when we sat down in the window and were drinking a glass of wine did we realize that we were in the wrong place. We looked across the street and saw another restaurant with the same name. When we arrived at the right restaurant, Anaïs was with Marie; two Korean French adoptees, one whom I had spent time with at the IKAA conference in Korea; and a couple of other good friends of hers from Paris. I loved knowing that because of Anaïs, I now had so many friends and family around the world. The next day our first stop was the Louvre. The two things that struck me
most when I was trying to see the
Mona Lisa
were how pushy the Chinese tourists were and how many security cameras lined the ceiling. My sister loves art. She could spend days looking at paintings. She said she spent so much time at the Louvre as a child painting and drawing that it was old hat to her. Can you imagine? Someone who has had too much Louvre?! I like art and painting, but I prefer TV and film. If I’m in a bad mood, I can sit down, watch something, turn off my mind, and feel better. I need more interaction, more of my senses participating to be satisfied. I guess that was the introvert/extrovert manifesting itself in Anaïs and me. Dr. Segal’s study had shown that I was more extroverted than my sister. (No surprise there!) Of the Big Five Personality Traits—openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and extroversion—this last trait was where we differed the most.

After lunch with Anaïs, we went to her parents’ shop. It was in such a beautiful part of town. High-end boutiques and beautiful Christmas lights lined the narrow cobblestone street. Patricia was happy to see us, but she was very busy. She kept glancing over to me and smiling while talking to her customers, and I could tell she was beaming on the inside. When she did have a moment, she excitedly introduced me to the rest of the staff, who, by their enthusiasm, had been hearing a lot about me.

Our next stop was Anaïs’s office in the headquarters of Gerard Darel. The building was on Rue Réaumur, right in the heart of Paris’s fashion district. Anaïs introduced me to her boss, who was as awestruck and amazed as everyone else who had first known only one of us, then met the other. I loved seeing Anaïs’s workplace. I had only seen her office in selfies, with rows of pocketbooks in the background. Now, I
could see exactly where she sat while she designed leather accessories and pocketbooks for the label.

Our big birthday bash was taking place the following night at a bar, where Marie had reserved the back part for us. As the guests started to arrive, there was way too much kissing on the cheeks, the way the French do, for my liking. I hate when people touch my face, especially strangers. But I had to be a good sport for my sister. As the evening wore on, her friends started to pour in, people from every part of her life—her internship, her childhood, her college, her work . . . It was amazing. Even two friends of mine from Boston University came. One was in Paris on business and the other was there to visit her.

I got a good kick out of how many of our guests couldn’t tell the difference between Anaïs and me. They’d stop and stare at me, and I’d make eye contact long enough for it to be awkward and then point to Anaïs. One of Anaïs’s friends gave us baby toys to mark our “first” birthday together.