Adoptivus: What View of What If

Seoul Tower is awesome.  The panoramic views of Seoul are seriously unreal.  I simply could not get over how far skyscrapers stretched in every direction.  I looked out over Seoul and imagined where my son was, where his birth mother and birth father were, where my older son grew up, and where his birth parents were.  With views like those, it seemed completely uncomplicated to imagine a world where we could connect with those special people and places.

That is not the memory that sticks with me from Seoul Tower.

Instead it was all the children from the school field trip that giggled and pointed at us or yelled "HELLO" before blushing and ducking their heads in laughter that kept capturing my attention.  I stared so often I started worrying that I was being creepy, actually.

I watched them joke and laugh or snark and grump at each other as only 10 year olds can.  I saw the popular kids and the studious ones.  I saw the giddy girls and the awkward boys.  I heard Korean roll off their tongues and imagined the type of lives they must go home to at night.  What they eat, what their parents do for a living, how to get home, what they watch for fun.

This was the life my sons should have had, and I was fascinated and so very heartbroken to see it playing out before my eyes.

I have never believed my sons were meant to leave Korea and live in America.  I love them and am so thankful to be their mom, but adoption blows in a million ways for them and this is one of the big ones.  The entire time I was in Korea I keenly felt the loss of their rightful chance to live in Korea as a cultural majority.  To see all those children who didn't have to loss their Korean culture, language, and traditions broke my heart for my sons and their field trip to Seoul Tower they will never get to take.

It was this moment when it crystallized for me that I would do everything in my power to help them learn Korean and bring them back to Korea as often as we could.  I mean, everything and anything.  I can't give them back the life they should have had, but I will try my hardest to bridge that gap just a little bit.