‘Did she feel guilty abandoning me in a parking lot? Did she wonder about me? For the first time in 30 years I thought, ‘I have to find her.’: Adoptee reclaims identity in search for birth family
“An endless black hole. Nothingness. Question marks. This is what marks my past, before I came to America as a 2-year-old orphaned Korean child to my new country, new family, new home, new name, and new identity: Kara Mee Bedell.
A Caucasian middle class Christian family in Michigan adopted me. They had 2 biological children of their own, but due to complicated pregnancies and desires for a larger family, they decided to adopt. This is when I came into the picture. Adoption has always been known as something good. There isn’t any question about it when someone mentions they are adopting. They are often times met with a smile, and praise for the good deeds they are offering to the world. Rescuing an ‘impoverished child,’ who wouldn’t see it as a good deed (I put ‘impoverished child’ in quotations as we’ll be coming back to that later). For many children who are adopted it becomes one, at least in the beginning; these children are given a home, education, healthcare, and most likely opportunities that would never afford them if they had been left in their countries of origin. However, was that the case for me? Let’s travel back to my childhood and adoption story…
I was, as I said, adopted when I was 2 years old from South Korea, found at a bus terminal in Goesan (a province 2 hours South of Seoul) crying, saying only my name Kang Misuk and my age 2 years old. I was brought to an orphanage in Cheongju on November 18, 1983. 10 months later, September 1984, I was flown to Detroit, Michigan to meet my new family, The Bedells. I have fond memories of my early childhood, as I was treated just as a sister by my siblings, in the shelter of my family protected from any ‘differences’ and only seen as one of the family. However, as I grew older and went to school is when the ‘differences’ became more prevalent. Kids would ask, ‘Why is your nose so flat? Why is your face flat? Where are you from? How did you get here?’ Some would even shout out, ‘Hey you, Chinese dude!’ I was a fighter though, and those kids didn’t usually win those arguments as I would retort, ‘Don’t you know an American when you see one?!’ This is how I saw myself, and I was proud to be able to say it.
Growing up in middle class rural America, the pride of being American is instilled in you at a young age. So even at the tender age of 4, I was yelling out these proclamations from the bottom of my belly. Being outgoing, and with a rather strong character, I was well liked among my classmates. Being different on the outside, in the end, didn’t affect my popularity in my early years of education. However, as the outside beauty changes and forms as a child grows older, I started to dislike my small eyes, short eyelashes, dark hair, and flat face. I tried out a perm in order to have the wavy caresses I saw in other girl’s hair, but it turned into a disaster as my aunt used the same type of perming solution as she did on her hair…I will leave this to your imagination, but yes, I looked like a poodle. I never understood why boys didn’t want to go out with me, as only when I looked in the mirror did I remember I was different – Asian.