Silent night: A seasonal greeting to my unknown parents
Hee-ra Kweon, also known by her Norwegian name Aino Rinhaug, is a Korean-born adoptee to Norway. She is a researcher on Korean studies and a documentary filmmaker. / Courtesy of Aino Rinhaug
By Kweon Hee-ra
As we approach the end of an extraordinary year, I am sitting down to write, not your ordinary seasonal greeting, but a letter to a couple peculiarly dear, yet unknown to me: This is for you, my Korean birth parents.
For all I know, you may have become complete strangers to one another many decades ago.
Your brief encounter remains ― I imagine ― a distant memory from your youth. A wound most likely, then a scar, eventually, a region of your heart which is sealed and closed forever.
But, as 2020 has shown us, this is perhaps not the time to remain estranged, indifferent or unaware of others.
Lives are, at the end of the day, bafflingly short and overwhelmingly vulnerable; losses are constantly weighed against gains; and at the end of a year like no other we have all been made to think differently about many things, quite simply, in order to save lives. I have never stopped thinking about you, wondering where you are. How are you now?
My story begins in Seoul. According to my adoption records, I was born on Jan. 11, 1974, the result of a middle-school girl's and a high-school boy's ― for lack of a better word ― rendezvous. What followed from that school outing in the spring of 1973, I am in no position to know, judge, speculate in or even imagine. If I try to look for answers, there is nothing but silence echoing back at me.
The files of the first six months of my life read as if they were some kind of a quiz, a word game or mystery story with no apparent clues. Occasionally, I leaf through those bits and pieces of scattered information, secretly looking for something that I hadn't noticed before.
Most of the report is handwritten beautifully in Korean on crispy, transparent paper and typed out in English translation for future reference. Sometimes, it strikes me, I must have the most detailed records of a life's first six months: Every ounce of rice milk, every napping hour, a baby's likes and dislikes, are dutifully noted down. It is all there ― except, ironically, a mentioning of you, my parents, your story.
The omission of this vital piece of information has fed my imagination ever since I became aware of the hollow emptiness it left on paper and in me. If Christmas is the time of carols, fairytales and make-believe, then this is the moment to mention my suspicion that in the mind of an orphaned adoptee, chances are there will always be a seed of the impossible story.
Life takes such extraordinary turns, that a six-month-old baby can travel on a ticket from Seoul to Oslo, via Tokyo and Amsterdam, and in the course of the next few months ― as if by magic ― transform into another person(a), from now on safely in the hands of the most loving family anyone could wish for. That part of the story has a happy “ending” and it also marks the beginning of my life as a Norwegian citizen.
I have celebrated 47 Christmases since I left Korea. You, my parents, should be in your 60s by now and I have decided to break the silence we have been living with since we parted. I wanted to address you, however faceless and nameless you may be to me. To others, you are, at the end of the day, of flesh and blood, somewhere. I am working my way back and forward towards you in a silent voice.
Yours has been like a parallel universe to mine. How can one miss someone completely unknown? And yet ― for a brief moment ― in the spirit of the season of merry make-believe, with a little help from the imagined fairies that your unknown grandchildren are dancing with on a daily basis, I want to bring the lines of our separate worlds together, to a point of convergence, where the plot is finally thickening and we reach the moment when I reveal myself to you in writing and well-wishing: This is to you, my Korean parents: Here I am, signing this as Kweon Hee-ra, your daughter.
Despite a challenging year, I am fine.
I hope you are, too.
K
weon Hee-ra, also known as her Norwegian name Aino Rinhaug, is a researcher on Korean studies and a documentary filmmaker. She can be reached at aino.heerakweon@gmail.com