Not quite family

I had a phone call from Cindy a few weeks ago, detailing further drama with the birth family. Cindy had just returned from a visit with her father and stepmother, and while she was there her parents got into a big argument with Cindy’s stepbrother. David had the upper hand in the conflict until his stepson started in on him about me, and then apparently David was so shocked and upset he didn’t know what to say. He had never told his stepson about me, but Cindy and her husband had (Cindy: “He’s family; he has a right to know about family”).

I try not to judge, but it still seems bizarre to me that now, over three years after we made contact with each other, David is still keeping my existence a secret from even his closest relatives. It’s a reminder to me that we aren’t living some kind of Lifetime movie here. Just because we’ve met now and he likes me and I like him and Cindy and I are very close doesn’t mean that our lives fit together like pretty puzzle pieces. Nor should they, I suppose.

But it bothers me that my birthfather says he cares about me and is proud of me, yet clearly doesn’t want to acknowledge me as his daughter to anyone but me, his wife, and Cindy. It bothers me that he still wants to hide my existence from other people. I know he feels shame over what he did and not who I am. Still, I wonder if he sometimes thinks about how much simpler it would have been if I had remained a secret.

Trickier than how I feel about him or how he feels about me, though, is what place I have, if any, in his family. If he doesn’t claim me as a daughter, can I claim any part of them? This is another issue I wonder about – where do I fit in, among the eighteen generations recorded in the family book? Is there any place for me among those people, if not on the page beside them? It’s an impossible question to answer right now, and reminds me that these are strange and unfamiliar waters we are all attempting to navigate.

Cindy and I often talk about going to Korea together; she wants to introduce me to aunts and uncles and cousins I have never known. But it’s hard to imagine doing that if they have no idea I exist. I can’t very well just show up there with my sister and pretend I’m just a friend of hers – nor would Cindy be interested in that type of deception. Her attitude is that things are out in the open now, where they should have always been, and she doesn’t think she or I have any responsibility to maintain any kind of cover-up or lie. “What Dad thinks or doesn’t want to tell them shouldn’t prevent us from going to Korea together,” she says.

But I’m not so sure. I talk a good game about privacy, and respecting it in adoption – but can I truly be said to respect my birthfather’s privacy if I go knocking on the door of my long-lost Korean relatives, even if Cindy is standing right next to me, ready to introduce me as her sister? I imagine if I ever wanted to meet other members of the family, our father would understand that, and tell them about me himself. But how awkward for him, how embarrassing – is it fair to put him through that so I can make this trip someday?

Yet how can I not go to Korea? How can I not meet these people, when I’ve wondered about and wanted to know my Korean family, where I came from, all my life? Is it fair to have to forgo that journey and that knowledge just because my birthfather told a lie of omission a long time ago, and still wants to maintain it?

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