As Real as Real Gets

“Don’t you ever want to know what your real family is like? Do you ever want to go back home? 

Do you ever...wanna know why your parents didn’t want to keep you?” 

3 sentences so innocently asked. 33 words so curiously questioning. No one had any ill intent, but middle school me always felt a familiar rush of annoyance and confusion every time one of these questions was asked. They didn’t get it. They didn’t understand. They couldn’t ever fully understand a lot of things. The little, but sharp poke of hurt that comes from the reminder that, yes, someone out there didn’t want to, or couldn’t, keep me. The feeling of out-of-place-ness every time the people I’m with compare exact times of birth or names of hospitals where their parents brought them into the world. The singularly odd sense of connection felt with several other young, Chinese girls spread throughout the U.S., some of whom I have not seen since I was a year old. The bittersweet acceptance that comes from walking away from doors that can never be opened. The small flare of anger every time a poorly phrased question paints me as the unfulfilled child, raised in an abnormal situation, forever longing for answers related to my bloodline, which, apparently for some people, is the only, or most obvious, determinant for what makes a “real family.” No, they couldn’t ever fully understand the complexities of the adopted daughter’s mind. 

09-11-2001. I’m sure for many of you this tragic day in U.S. history rightly brings up memories or images of horror, sadness, and darkness. But for my parents-my parents, who had been wanting a child after my mom’s miscarriage and subsequent infertility-this was a happy day-the day that, halfway across the world, they met the little baby whose name tickled their lips and whose picture had been imprinted in their minds for a solid year. Me. Of course they were horrified to find out the news about the U.S. They recall thinking that the footage of the twin towers was a scene from an action movie, revisit the panic and helplessness of that sleepless night, and remember the ghost town that the Pittsburgh International Airport had become the day that all of the adoption families were allowed to return home. But amidst the fear and turmoil, my parents viewed me as their God-given beacon of light and hope on that fateful day, and every year on Sept. 11, on my “gotcha day,” this somber, juxtaposed irony is never taken lightly, rather with the bittersweet remembrance of losing something at the same instance something else is found. 

Now, let’s go back to the opening questions-the ones that never seem to leave my mind. No, I don’t want to know what my “real family” is like because I already do know. My real family consists of two loving parents who taught me how to love and how to laugh. They were the ones who changed my diapers and watched me take my first steps. They were the ones to send me to school, meet my friends, and help me cultivate my talents. They were the ones who saw me grow up. My real family also consists of two younger siblings-one also adopted from China and the other from the Philippines. They’re just as crazy, stubborn, and annoying as everyone else’s siblings. They’re just as loving, lovely, and lively as I could wish anyone’s sibling to be. We were all unconventionally brought together, but we’re just as real as real gets. Biologically, we’re strangers, but God couldn’t have given me more amazing people to love, support, and trust in-the people I will always call my family...Yes, I would love to go back and visit China, but that’s not my home. How could “home” be a place full of an unfamiliar culture? How could “home” be a place full of strangers? A place that was historically hostile to baby girls, especially if they were an illegitimate second child. A place where I merely spent an unremembered year in an orphanage. A place unknown...No, I don’t need to know why my birth parents are no longer a part of my life. I will always pray for them, wish them well, and wonder about their futures. I’ll probably forever cry every time I think about what might have happened in their pasts. But they are ghosts whose faces and names will always remain in the impenetrable black hole that communist China often creates for the histories and mysteries of abandoned children, orphans, and children awaiting adoption. I’m not scarred, in dire need of answers, or any of the other assumptions that some people have made of adopted children. It’s not like I’m missing a very important piece in the puzzle of my life, more so like I have an itch that I just have to wait out since I can’t reach it. Others who were adopted may want to spend their lives searching for answers, and that is a wonderful, noble thing to do. But I’m ok. I don’t need to find out more. I’m perfectly content right where I’m at with the people who know and love me the most. I have a life that was given to me for a reason, one full of opportunities that, in another world, I never would have had. I have a life that feels complete, one that allows me to know who I am. I have a life that has given me a family, one that has brought me home. 

Winter 2022