Page 58 of Free Fall
“Explain,” I say, scooping up chili with my chip, and putting it into my mouth. The flavor isn’t as smoky as when I’ve made it over a campfire and not a stove, but it’s still tasty and hot.
“Like…okay, a year or so ago, I was watching some KPop music videos on YouTube and this related video came up in my Recommended. It was called something like ‘Korean Kids Adopted Into American Families: The Truth,’ and I thought, ‘Oh, this is about me!’ So, I watched it…and, I don’t know…”
He shakes his head, eats another nacho, and then shakes his head again. “It just made me feel more isolated and alone than I ever had before.”
“Why?”
“Because a lot of those young people were angry about their adoption. They had all kinds of big feelings and thoughts about it that I’ve never had.” He flips his ponytail to the other shoulder. “Like, for example, there was this one guy, eighteen or so, and he was distraught over questions about why his birth mother had given him up, and if she was okay now, and whether she was worried about him. Maybe I’m an asshole, but I’ve literally never thought that much about my birth mother? It’d never occurred to me until that moment that Ishouldmaybe worry about her or wonder if she’s worried about me. I couldn’t help but think maybe there’s something wrong with me that I’d never considered it. Do I lack empathy? Am I selfish?”
“Ah.” I can relate in a way. I never give a lot of thought to my mother or any of the foster families I’ve left behind. Probably for different reasons, but I don’t find Sejin’s lack of worry for a woman he’s never met to be any evidence of a lack of empathy or a character flaw. “Maybe you were just a happy kid with a happy family, and worry wasn’t something you tended to do much of anyway.”
“You’re right. I wasn’t a very worried kid. I don’t think I ever spent a truly unhappy day until my mom got sick. Even when things were less than perfect, I was just…happy inside. I shrugged things off. Moved on.”
“Some people are just like that.” From what I’ve seen of him, Sejin doesn’t seem like a man bound by doubts or worries, even if he is uncertain about my free solo plans.
“How about you? Do you shrug things off?”
“No,” I answer earnestly. “I sure as hell don’t.”
He laughs. “Ah, you hold grudges?”
“With both hands.”
Sejin laughs again, and my heart flutters. It’s a rare feeling for me. One more typical of having sent a particularly difficultroute, and almost never due to another human being, but I can’t deny Sejin’s done something funny to my insides right from the start.
“Did anything else make you feel alienated when you watched the video of adopted kids?”
I’ve got a lot of practice at feeling estranged, but I’ve always assumed if I were in a room full of former foster children, we’d have plenty of resentment to bond over. I guess Sejin had assumed something similar about being a Korean adoptee.
“Ah, it’s weird. I’m a little embarrassed to admit it.”
“Why?”
“Maybe it means I’m not very smart?” Sejin says it like a question, and he finishes up his bowl of nachos, reaches for the bag of chips, and starts a second helping. I feel oddly proud, like I did more than warm up a can of vegetarian chili and throw it in a bowl over chips and cheese.
“You seem plenty smart to me.”
He shrugs. “Or maybe I just don’t have the right priorities in life.”
“Priorities like?”
“Well, okay, so a lot of these adoptees were disappointed at what they’d lost, you know? A bunch of them were angry that they’d lost their Korean culture, family, and the language of their birth. A lot of them felt like they didn’t fit in here in the States, and never would, because they aren’t white, and they aren’t Korean—at least not in a way where they can mix well with first, second, or third generation Koreans here. And I get that. I do. Because I’ve met plenty of Asian people now—Korean and otherwise—who assume that I’ve got similar background experiences as they do, but I just don’t. You know, like…like this one woman made a lunchbox joke at me, sure that I would get it, and I didn’t.”
“A lunchbox joke? I don’t follow.”
“So, apparently, a lot of first-generation kids, maybe even second-generation, I don’t know, get made fun of at school for having quote-unquote ‘weird stuff’ in their lunchboxes. Like kimbap.”
“But you had PB&J.”
“Right. Every day. No one ever thought my lunches were weird.”
“And these other adoptees in white families wish they’d had lunches other kids made fun of?”
“They wish they had their birth culture,” he clarifies. “And if that means having lunches that others made fun of, I guess they believe all the rest they’d have gained would have been worth it.”
“You don’t think it would have been?”
“I’ll never know. Until I watched this video, I admit I’d never thought about it much. I mean, sometimes, yeah, my grandfather would be telling me about some family history like, ‘Your great-great-grandpa built that house,’ and it would occur to me that my biological great-great-grandpa hadn’t built it, or whatever. But I didn’t linger on the thought, or feel hurt by it, or wonder what my biological great-great-grandfatherhadaccomplished…” He scoops more chili onto the chips, adds cheese, thinks a moment and says, “Though now that I’ve said that, I do wonder what he did with his life? It’d be cool to find out. But if I never do, then that’s all right too. I’m fine with some stuff being a mystery. Like, I don’t know where my mom who raised me went when she died—like if there’s a heaven, or if there’s just nothing, or if she was reborn. And there are things about her life I will never have a chance to know now that she’s gone. Little things and big ones. There’s so much in death you have to just learn to be okay with not knowing. Otherwise the questions can paralyze you.”