I received a long-awaited phone call from my social worker. But before I answered the phone I had one of those knowing-feelings and knew it would be the adoption agency telling me about my soon-to-be child.
Then on a crisp morning in Seoul, Korea, a wide-eyed baby was readied
to leave his homeland. Dressed in a pink bunting to keep out the winter chill,
one-year-old Kook Yung was carried aboard Korean Airlines, and he set off for a
new life; adoption in the United States.
When the plane
landed in California, Kook Yung was placed in my arms, and I felt awareness
deeper than the ocean, grasping the loss his first mother endured. That boy
became my son, Jay. The one who would later pick purple and yellow wild flowers
for me, and bestowed me with the title of adoptive parent and the pleasure of
being his mother.
. . .
We had three
kids. First I gave birth to our daughter and our son was
placed with us as a one-year old with special needs from Korea. Then we added a third child to our family who came to us from foster care at age ten. When we decided to add
more children to our family we wanted to make a
difference in this life by parenting children who were already born, waiting,
and needing a family. We wanted kids that were considered hard to
place because deep down inside I knew adopting children who were waiting to be
matched with parents was my calling in life. When I shared this with my husband
he said, “I've got that same feeling.” Then we tortured ourselves by examining
and delving into the myriads of types of special needs placements we wanted to
pursue. We wanted a child with a special need, but we only wanted to
take a small risk.
Looking back, I can see that our thinking was pretty much the same
as those who claim they only want to parent a “healthy child.” We wanted to
believe that it was possible to be in control of the outcome. We wanted to
chart our future and to be able to map out our children’s medical conditions.
But when I gave birth to my first child we were open to receiving our baby in
whatever form he or she was delivered into this world with. Why then when it
came to foster care or adoption did we insist on only children who would carry a
medical label that felt minor and easy for us to handle?
Today if I were to bring another child into my family, I'd like to believe I would welcome the opportunity to
consider all types of special needs, instead of only those requiring corrective
surgery. Now I’d consider receiving a child with a host of unknowns, because
the unexpected special medical need our son developed much later on, that we
did not choose, which we would have given anything to avoid, has reshaped me,
chiseled off my rough edges and softened me, made me better, and filled me with
tender grace. But back then I was looking for a guarantee that my children
would have only minor health issues.
After nearly a
year of waiting, finally the call came and we received a referral for a
one-year-old boy in Korea who was born with Syndactyly. His fingers on both
hands were joined together, bones and all, making his hands look like small
mittens. Might this child be right for our family? We wanted this child and we
began to do medical research to familiarize ourselves with what this condition
would mean. While we considered what might be ahead health-wise for our child
to be, our good friend, Bruce, who is blind and lost his eyesight as a young
adult, yet went on to become an outstanding wood craftsman and cabinet maker,
kept telling us he had a strong feeling this was going to be one of those
things we looked back on as no big deal, and that our little boy was going to
be fine.
And when my son
was placed in my arms, immediately I understood something was far beyond
ordinary about him. He was calm and centered in a way that let you know he
possessed a great amount of wisdom; his presence made skeptics believe in
angels.
There was
something extraordinary about the trauma that surrounded Jay’s early life and
how he eased his way through it. He endured the first syndactyly-release
surgery when he was eighteen months old, and the process involved skin
grafting, with grafts taken from the soft skin near his groin area. Every few
months he underwent another surgery to separate another finger, and by the time
he was five, he had ten individual fingers. Granted they were misshapen and
scared. But he had fingers. Fingers that he could now stuff into gloves, or a
baseball mitt, which delighted him, and he found his own way of making his new
fingers work perfectly for his needs.
Turned out Bruce
was right. The condition that caused Jay to be placed with us as “Special
Needs” when we adopted him, turned out to be hugely unimportant. We’d managed
to have an easy outcome, just like we set out to do in the beginning. It breaks
my heart, however, knowing that if my son had congenital heart disease, or a host of other diagnosis, or if I had looked into my crystal ball, chances
are we would have been frightened off, and might not have adopted him, causing
me to miss out on having him for my son and some of the best years of my life
as a mother.
The truth is
before we adopted Jay I did look into my crystal ball, or rather I went to the
hilltop and I got real quiet, and what I knew for certain was that if we adopted
this baby, it would be wonderful, better than anything I could ever imagine,
and that his life circle would be small. Within a slip of a moment I could feel
my joy and pain braided together, and I knew that I was meant to take this
journey. When I know something, I know. But how could I know? As a young child I discovered that often I feel things, and I know.
With my vision
tucked into the recesses of my mind, for the next six years I enjoyed a
blissful, wonderful motherhood, joyous beyond measure. Then suddenly ours life
changed forever. I learned that 7-year-old Jay had a brain tumor.
Following
surgery, radiation, and then chemo, the cancer went into remission and the
brain tumor was gone, and stayed gone for much longer than the doctors had
initially predicted. Each time Jay had an MRI, the scan came back perfectly
clear. He was back to snorkeling at the beach, and he looked healthy, if
fragile. And on the head of a pin we delighted in eight more wonderful years,
joyous beyond measure. And then the tumor came back, and Jay died at age 15.
Following my son's death, I felt the way Mt. St. Helens looked ten years after her summit was removed by a volcanic eruption. I stood under an evening sky
watching the slate blue dusk blend into ragged peaks and lava domes.
A friend
once had a cabin perched on a bluff overlooking the lake, surrounded by
gigantic pines, and now fireweed and purple-red flowers dotted the level
earthen floor, in a place where a forest once stood. My son Jay, a pole star of
my life, had passed. I knew I would never get over it. Nor would I ever be the
same. And I would not give up or given in to societies mistaken notion of
getting over grief. I’d find a way to learn to live with it and not allow it to
hold me back.
I walked, circling the crater, and saw wild violets blooming. The
mountain had been scattered and sundered into bits, and she survived. I swallow
a clotty grief deep inside my throat. A grief so wide it gives me laryngitis.
Bold and enthusiastic thoughts of my son Jay filled me.
I shuffled out into the
empty field of my mind to find enough words to make it through another winter
of writing. My life has changed into something I didn’t want, and I began
gathering the pieces that were left of me, coaxing them back into growth, and
starting again, but like the mountain I’d lost all of my big trees.
I felt
myself a part of the mountain, with hills catching the sunset through a furious
wind, dust devils kicking up dirt. All my senses became alive, out on the edge.
I imagined fireweed blooming on the burned over land in my heart with tiny
purple petals, and it was a beginning.
That was in
1999. Like a river stone tumbling in the raging water, my grief has grown
softer, and I found gold along the way, but I had to reach for it. If I had the
chance to do it over again, I would choose to be Jay’s mother and take this
journey again. Everyday I thank my lucky stars. Out of this has come an unimagined
gift. Loving Jay with all my heart and soul, and having to let go, gives me the
faith to open my arms and embrace each moment. The special need Jay came to
this earth with—was to spread his love wide.
Copyright © Terra Trevor. All rights reserved.
