The Application...and the meaning of the title of my blog

The application came together quicker than I imagined. My mother was able to send me a ton of documents that were really helpful. I also owe major thanks to my sister for helping me with the rest of the application.
Here's some of my background information that I included in the application.

Relinquishment Details: According to my background information, I was relinquished by my natural mother (who was 36 years old at the time). I have at least three older step siblings (even though the documents say two, it is noted in other places that my biological mother had two sons and a daughter in her previous 18-year marriage, before she was widowed approximately 10 years prior to my birth). My biological mother and biological father were unmarried, and had no intention of raising me, as I was an unwanted, unexpected baby. My biological father (who was 30 years old) was a boilerman at the time of my birth.

Search Effort History: I was introduced to G.O.A.’L about four years ago, when I was living and working in New York City. I signed up on the website to receive emails, and in 2010 I began correspondence with [---] about starting my birth family search. Unfortunately, I did not get very far in the process before I ended up moving out of New York City to start a family, and I had to place the search on hold. As far as physical traits, I do not have any birthmarks or scars, although I did have a small Mongolian spot on my back and I have a freckle on my left eyelid. I reached the average standard in height and weight for my age. Since I was adopted so young, I do not have any memories but I do know that I was born in a maternity clinic, and my mother did not have any diseases nor took any medicine during her pregnancy. I was kept at a foster home located approximately “40 minutes by bus” from the Busan Branch Office of Holt Children’s Services. The foster mother had been taking care of Holt’s babies for four years prior to her time with me.

And finally, my essay. The prompt was, "What motivates you to apply for this trip?" Thanks again to my sister, C, for her immense help.

As I put my youngest son, E, to bed, I read him a book, sing him a song, and watch his eyes close, his breathing steady, then quietly shut the door. I cannot believe how sweet one can be at only nineteen months old. I go to my almost four year old son T’s bedroom, to say goodnight, tell him a story and teach him something- our bedtime routine. With both boys asleep, I enjoy the quiet that fills up the house, a quiet that says everything is okay, that another day was well spent as a stay-at-home mother of two beautiful boys. I touch my belly, pregnant with our third child, and even though we still have a few months before we can learn the gender, I dream that it’s a girl. Downstairs I clean up the living room, the cushions and blankets having become a fort from when my brother’s three children came over as they often do. As I put things back into place, I think about this application. About why at 30, as happy as I am with both the family I was raised in and the family I now have with my husband, why do I want to go back to a country I don’t remember and find a family I have no memory of?

Normally I wouldn’t even consider leaving my family for that long, but as soon as I find out about this program I can’t help myself, I keep thinking about it, and I discover that going to Korea with the possibility of meeting my birth family is worth moving mountains for. I put things in motion, my husband is in full support of me going, my Mom will take care of the kids for at least a week, my sister could fly in from Los Angeles to help out- somehow everything will come together.

I sit down and look at my baby photos and the documents that my mom has sent over that tell a small portion of my story, of the family I never got to know in Korea. I have no idea what my birth mother looks like or if my three half-siblings look like me. Do we share any mannerisms, features, the same laugh? And what about my birth father? They had me out of wedlock and made the decision to give me up so I’d have a better life. I’m overwhelmed with how thankful I am that I don’t have to make a fateful decision like that, to give up one of my children. I love both of my sons more than I thought was possible to love. It would break my heart to lose a child but if I had to give one up for adoption, I know I would think about them for the rest of my life. I would want to know how they were, hoping that they were being raised by a loving family, that they had everything they needed, and were happy and healthy. I would pray that I made the right decision, and they indeed were living a better life.

My children are half Korean, one-eighth German, one-eighth Irish, and a quarter Lithuanian. But they do not know anything about their largest portion of genealogy. As they grow, I want to be able to tell them about their heritage, where I come from, and their relatives back in Korea. Of course, I can tell them what it was like for me growing up in Pennsylvania, with my Irish-Italian mother and Italian-Greek father, my two adopted siblings (who are also from Korea, related to each other but not to me), and our plethora of Golden Retrievers, but there’s a big piece missing from my cultural heritage and history. I am extremely close to my sister, who I lived with in New York City, and my brother, who I now live only a mile away from; we are raising our five collective children together practically every day. I can tell them about how I met their father in preschool, and we experienced our First Holy Communion together, went on our first date, danced at both high school proms, and all about our life together after college and beyond. But I want them to have a deeper understanding of their Korean heritage, past the kimchi and japchae that I make on a monthly basis.

A few years ago a friend explained my birth name, Han Bo Reum to me. She said that literally the string of last name plus first name means “one spring” but colloquially it means “once upon a time in spring” and that she believed my mother put a lot of thought and care into my name. Maybe it’s fanciful thinking, but that really touched me; I felt that in my name, my birth mother stored her love for me, and that even though she knew she’d have to give me up, I was special to her.

The answer to what motivates me to look for my birth family is simply this: I want to let my birth mother know that I am okay. I want to meet my birth mother so she can see that I am a healthy, happy, proud mother of two with a third child on the way. I want to show her pictures of her biological grandchildren, and tell her that if she’d like we can keep in touch, I can send her pictures and videos so she can see them grow and even meet them in person one day. I want to go to Korea because I believe that not only will it heal something inside of me, but it will heal something inside my birth mother. Our reunion would be a testimony to the love and courage her fateful decision bore. And one day, I might be able to tell my sons at bedtime, the ending to the story that begins with, “Once upon a time in spring…”