Happy Ending – P.S.

March 12, 2007 at 7:17 am | Posted in korean adoption | Leave a comment

When I posted this article from the Korea Herald I didn’t give it a ton of thought.  Especially when I entitled the entry Happy Ending. 

I visit a blog called Twice the Ricefrequently – it is written by an adult Korean adoptee and has a lot of excellent insight to the feelings of an adult adoptee.  I hadn’t given my post much thought…until I visited the blog the other morning. 

I’m wondering what compelled me to entitle my entry happy ending.  For whom?  I’m thinking for Toby Dawson’s birth father who has searched for his son since he went missing over 20 years ago.  But why did I think it was a happy ending?  It is really another beginning…for Toby and his birth father.  For the adoptive parents who raised their son to the best of their ability and supported him in his quest to pursue the confirmation of the many men coming forward professing to be his birth father following his Olympic success.

As an adoptive parent I’m learning how to embrace the complex relationship I’ll have with my son.  Each day is a learning experience and each new situation we conquer together will help us better understand each other.  Granted, he’s only 7 months old but I felt bad about calling a reunion with a birth parent an ending.  It isn’t a neat little package you can wrap up and put away or a typical movie ending where you watch the credits roll and go home.  This is real life and these are real people who are on an amazing journey that perhaps will never end.

My point?  That I jumped to a conclusion that somehow the reunion between father and son is an ending or even happy at that.  Toby had said himself that he never quite felt at home in the US with parents that didn’t look like him or in Korea where he looked more like everyone else.  This is a chapter in a long life story with  many twists and turns.