My Other Parent

In the six years my birth father and I have been in contact, we’ve talked on the phone just a handful of times. He used to worry that I might have trouble understanding his English over the phone, but by now we both know that I understand him fine. He’s a writer, among many other things, and I think he simply prefers to communicate in writing. At least, that’s how he has always communicated with me.

I received his first email the day I went into labor with my eldest daughter. He has shared more personal things with me in emails and letters than he has ever shared in person. I suppose I find these forms of communication easier, too, because I can think carefully about what I want to say to him, rephrase if I suspect something might come across as too casual to be respectful, delete a cultural reference if I think he won’t catch it. I trust writing in a way I just don’t trust my voice.

Still, sometimes I can’t help but wonder if the two of us miss out by talking so infrequently. In writing, everything is filtered first. We never have to listen for tone or endure too-long pauses. There’s little risk involved, no spontaneity. When we do talk, actually talk, it doesn’t feel natural, because we haven’t had much practice.

He and I are in reunion, as we say in the adoption community. You’ll notice the phrase doesn’t imply that we’re close. It’s a flexible, all-purpose sort of term, able to stretch to encompass any number of possible relationships. For instance, in reunion could mean that we see each other several times a year and talk every week and are as close as if we’d never been separated by adoption. It could also mean that we met once and it was fine and now we exchange holiday cards and think of one another only occasionally. My birth father and I are somewhere in the middle of the reunion spectrum — we live on opposite sides of the country, and consequently see each other about every other year. We’ve grown to care a great deal for one another, but of course it’s complicated, and it’s not as if there is some sort of guidebook to consult as we navigate our new relationship. My kids call him Harabeoji. I don’t call him “Dad.” He hasn’t asked me to.

I talk with my adoptive parents far more often. Last month, after our visit to the autism research center, I dutifully called my parents and told them that our youngest daughter had received an official diagnosis of ASD. After over a year of worry and wondering, meeting with one doctor who thought all would be well and another who was “on the fence,” a pediatrician and a speech and language pathologist had confirmed what we’d suspected for months. My mother immediately pointed out how bright my three-year-old is, insisting, “She might have Asperger’s, but not autism!” Dad suggested that perhaps she wouldn’t always have it: “Some kids grow out of it, you know.” We argued. I educated. They promised to read more about autism. No one cried. In retrospect, I think it was probably the best I could have hoped for.

Still, after equally draining exchanges with my husband’s parents, I just wasn’t in a hurry to rehash it with another parent — or my other parent, as I sometimes think of my birth father. Fairly or not, I thought he seemed the least likely out of all our family members to understand or sympathize. This is the same man who once asked me, only partly in jest, if maybe I just hadn’t “tried hard enough” to become pregnant with a boy. The man who worked himself through college and graduate school when his parents couldn’t afford to send him. The man who still seems to believe anything can be achieved with a sharp mind and a strong will. How will he accept my youngest daughter’s differences, the things that are and may always be more difficult for her? He is often unsure what to do with me, because I am an uncomfortable reminder to him that things don’t always work out; that there was once a situation so terrible he couldn’t fix it.

It’s a strange thing to be the embodiment of someone else’s shame. I can see my father, but not meet his friends. I can visit my sister, but not anyone else in the family. His choice to let the rest of the family believe I died at birth — believe I am still dead — is a hard one for me to comprehend, and in my ongoing effort to understand him I often find myself thwarted not by any language or cultural barrier so much as by the high walls he has built in order to guard his biggest secret (me). I think he knows that I would like to go to Korea, visit my uncle and aunts and cousins, leaf through the family book that goes back seventeen generations, see the place where he grew up. But I also care about him and respect his wishes, so the two of us live in this tension between what I would like to happen and what he feels he can share.

“You’re so curious,” he always says to me, as if that fact bewilders him — as if he imagined we would reunite after nearly three decades and I wouldn’t be curious. I don’t know how long it would have taken me to work up the nerve to meet him without my sister to be the bridge between us. She and I are in reunion as well, now as close as many sisters who grew up together. When the three of us are together, she translates as needed. Not just Korean into English, but awkwardness into graciousness, spare words and stiff body language into something warmer and more meaningful. She does her best to help our father understand why I have so many questions. I know how fortunate I am to know both of them, and to know myself better because of it.

Still, no matter how often he says that he is happy to know me, often I can’t help but feel I am imposing on him. So I try to make it easier for him. I let him map out the borders of our still-new relationship. I let him write to me first. I make myself smaller and quieter in his presence. It’s not always a comfortable role for me, but I’ve come to accept it, and to understand that what I need from him is not necessarily a relationship of equals or the kind of open, uncensored discourse I have worked so hard to establish with my adoptive parents. My father is an answer to a question I lived with for twenty-seven years, an answer I never thought would be supplied. As long as he remains in my life — even if there is physical and emotional distance between us, even if we do avoid discussing the hard things — I have that crucial link I was missing before.

And in many ways, we aren’t so different. The two of us share a love of language, a strong work ethic, a terrible sense of direction, a powerful memory. I will never forget the surprise and the strange thrill I felt the first time we met and I watched him writing as he spoke to me — writing in the air, on the nearest flat surface, tracing words and letters with his fingertip, the same way I have done ever since I was a little girl. Almost the first thing he ever said to me was how proud he was that I had attended a good university — how many fathers, upon reconnecting with a long-lost daughter, would lead with that? After our first meeting, I understood why words have always meant so much to me; why I’m unable to drive anywhere new without making at least two U-turns; why that B in Calculus bothered me so much. I like to think he also sees in me something he can recognize, something he can value. But to this day I still don’t really know if he approves of me or what I’ve made of my life, or why it matters so much to me if he does.

My sister says he was always difficult to please. I suspect he still is. Sometimes I think that our father doesn’t really understand the weaknesses and imperfections of others, which is difficult for me to reconcile with our family’s dark and complicated history. He seems to believe that if you are smart enough, focused enough, determined enough, it’s always possible to control your fate. Perhaps he needs to believe this in part because there was a time when he couldn’t control what happened to our family. The trouble is, as an adoptee, I’ve always had a hard time believing that I can control my fate. And if there is one thing I know I cannot control, it is my daughter’s autism.

When he calls me the week before Christmas, I realize I’ve been avoiding talking with him. I did write to him weeks ago, briefly explaining that we had some concerns and were going in for another evaluation, but I never followed up with him. I’m so afraid he won’t understand or accept this — I’m afraid he might even blame my daughter or me for something beyond our control, and then there will be an even larger rift between us, one I won’t be able to ignore.

I know how to fight with my adoptive parents; I can even change their minds on occasion. But I cannot imagine engaging in any sort of open conflict with my birth father. I don’t think our relationship is strong or settled enough yet to withstand a real blow. This is why I never challenge him, why I never make waves, why I never ask for more than he has already offered. We haven’t yet learned how to be a real family — how to disagree and bear up under disappointments and then move on from them. As much as we care for one another, there are times when I believe that kind of communication, that kind of relationship, will always be beyond us.

When I see his number, I think about letting his call roll to voicemail. But we talk so rarely that I can’t bring myself to pass up the opportunity. “Is everything okay?” he asks as soon as I pick up. I haven’t emailed him in several weeks, though I sent a packet of photos around Thanksgiving.

He asks — of course he asks — about how my youngest daughter is doing. And I know I have to tell him sometime. Next year he will see her, see all of us, again. If he’s not going to be supportive about our situation, it’s best that I know now.