When his dossier came with his cute picture and the limited information about his mother and her pregnancy we went over the scant details with our social worker. Other than her height, weight and age, most of the other comments had to do with how she met the birth father and general lifestyle information. In response to our avalanche of questions our social worker told us that a lot of the information was nearly boilerplate. She’d seen the same comments in many other dossiers. Whether they were translator’s shorthand or the product of some bureaucrat’s typing we will never know.
And then he arrived. The first three months with him were absolutely wonderful. Having only one easy baby was so nice. We introduced him, joyfully, to our families and friends. We went places and walked around with him strapped to back or belly. We were enveloped in a happy little cocoon, imagining the world from his perspective, delighting in every coo and smile.
Then there was September 11, and the big unwelcome dose of reality. Pain, uncertainty, smoke and the never ending white noise of the scrambled fighter jets making their giant circles above DC, all day and all night, for weeks. I started looking at our boy differently. What had we done? What was this world we were raising him in? I still didn’t give much thought, though, to the world he’d come from.
Another few months and we found out that our assumption of infertility was wrong and by next September the twins came. Now life was more surreal than magical. Our little house got smaller and our time, money and energy evaporated. But as the twins approached four months and older boy was coming up on his second birthday we began to emerge from this fog, at least a little.
Then one evening we got a call from our social worker. That was unexpected, as at this point we’d done everything with the agency we needed to do, although we hadn’t completed all of the paperwork for finalizing the adoption.
She asked if we were sitting down. Using her measured mental health professional voice she explained that our older boy’s mother had just had another son, almost two years to the day from the birth of our boy. This new boy had immediately gone into the Korean adoption system where the records flagged him as having a sibling, our son. Korea contacted our agency and strongly suggested we adopt this boy to keep the siblings together. Neither the Korean adoption system nor our agency was aware that we had twins now. Surreality returned.
The few close family members and friends we confided this news to all shared the same opinion. We could not be considering adopting this boy, our fourth child two or under. All of these people had experienced our family, our harried existence, up close. They were not without compassion; we just seemed so over our heads already.
But this was our son’s brother. He was, in the strange and rubbery way adoption makes this, family. How could we not adopt him? But we could not. We had to. We couldn’t. We didn’t.
Our agency was understanding. Our social worker let us know that the Korean system would probably not even allow it once they found out about the twins as it violated certain regulations about number of children within number of months, let alone the number of square feet in which we were all crammed. This mitigated the grief and guilt for me, somewhat. Our agency was also willing to place our boy’s brother with a family that was nearby and would be interested in having a relationship with us.
Little brother arrived and we met him and his family, all of us trying to be happy and playful while being near tears. And soon after we made the decision to move down here, away from little brother and his family. We saw them again, shortly after we moved. The boys were about three and one and, although curious, really didn’t have any way to understand who they were to each other. Then too much time went by until we finally went back to visit and stayed with little brother and his family, and then again too much time went by.
I found myself getting mad. We kept going up there – why weren’t they coming here? Why were they always gone when we made our summer trip to DC for camp and visiting? But the anger wasn’t really about them. I know I felt, feel, guilt and anger about not stepping up to adopt little brother when we had the chance. And then moving away. Even though it truly was the right thing that we did, or rather didn’t. I know we would have coped somehow but it would not have been a good thing for our kids, for our marriage, for us, to have brought in another baby at that point.
And so we went up there and visited little brother and his family this fall. The boys are old enough now to know exactly who they are, at least in relation to each other. And little brother is so obviously and beautifully in his family, where he is loved, cherished and nurtured. I still feel some sadness and regret but I am also feeling the wonder of it all. How strange these families work! Siblings that share no blood and friends that do. Strange interrelationships like little brother’s friend from down the street who came over to meet our older boy because he couldn’t wait to meet his pal’s brother. Marvelous. Mindboggling. Magical. So there it is. Our family has three kids, and our older boy has two brothers and a sister. New math at its crazy best.
