Seoul Mates and the Trip of a Lifetime!

We began our adoption process in January of 1998, and got the referral of our son in May. Two long anxious months later, on a Monday in early July, "The Call" finally came. After we got done dancing around the living room, we called our travel agent, and that very Friday we were at the airport, ready to go.

As excited as we were, we were very nervous about leaving our other four kids, even in the capable hands of my sister and her husband. As we kissed the kids good-bye, John and I both blinked back tears. In a decade of parenting, we had left our kids overnight exactly twice. And now we were leaving our precious kids and going half a world away to pick up a 4-month-old son we'd never met. It was hard to believe. I don't think I'd done something that enormous in my whole life.

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The first leg of our trip was just a hop- an hour flight to San Francisco. Then came a 12 hour flight non-stop to Seoul. Though we arrived in Seoul a whole day later, the sun didn't set until we landed in Seoul.

Walking off the plane we were struck by the foreign smells wrapped in a blanket of humidity. Feeling very far from home, we collected our luggage and headed out of the airport, hoping it would be possible to find a cab driver that knew where our hotel was. The minute we stepped out the doors, the decision- and our luggage-was snatched out of our hands by an over-eager cab driver that was now heading rapidly toward his cab. The only logical thing seemed to be to follow him. Minutes later, we were off, weaving in and out of traffic as if we had 9 lives. The city was enormous and modern- sky scrapers and high-rise apartments and billboards and everywhere the roar of traffic. At first the driver told us that our hotel was 3 hours away, but when I pulled out my map and started calling out street names, he gave in, and got us to our hotel in 20 minutes, only about $18 poorer.

Though we were exhausted, sleep that night was hard to find. The air conditioning was weak, and our jet-lagged bodies knew very well it was daytime- in Idaho, anyway. At 5 am, after a few hours of sleep, we gave up and got dressed. First stop- breakfast in the restaurant downstairs. Our friendly waiter tried to talk us out of trying the subway- it was way too complicated for foreigners, he said-but we had heard from friends that it wasn't too hard. Besides, after our wild ride the night before, we weren't eager to risk another cab.

The subway turned out to be one of the most enjoyable things about our trip. The signs and overhead announcements were in both English and Korean, and thanks to all the helpful Koreans, we probably couldn't have gotten lost if we tried. Whenever we'd stop and look at our map, someone would always come up and ask us in English if we needed help.

We made it to our first destination, Kyongbokk Palace, feeling very pleased with ourselves. We spent the morning touring the grounds of this ancient palace (built in the 1300's) and the museum next door. School children ran by us saying "Hello," then laughing as we answered them back. I was tickled to see a bridal party (in typical Western wedding garb) getting their pictures taken at the palace, just as our guidebook said we might.

Lunch was snow cones and leathery hot dogs from a vendor's cart. The snow cones were pure heaven on a hot day like this, but first bite of my hot dog turned my stomach and I handed the rest over for John to gobble. Thankfully it didn't make him sick. The afternoon was spent shopping at It'aewon, an enormous and popular outdoor market near the American military base. Carts and stands and minuscule shops were everywhere, selling anything you could imagine.

I was on a mission- I wanted to buy 18 birthday gifts from Korea for Joshua, one for each of his birthdays while growing up. For awhile I was handing over money so fast that John got worried. "Hey, that money has to last 3 days!" he said. "You'd better slow down."

At one tiny cart a woman grabbed my arm fiercely, begging me to buy something off her cart. I looked but didn't see anything I wanted. I wasn't sure if the look in her eyes was true desperation or a practiced sales pitch. The strength of her grip scared me, but a stubborn part of me refused to buy what I didn't want. Looking back, I wish I had at least spent a dollar or two. I'll always wonder if her desperation was real.

The afternoon was ending as we rode the subway back to our hotel, laden with packages. It had been such a busy day that I hadn't had much chance to think of Joshua. The challenge of getting around a foreign city had taken all our energy. But the day wasn't over yet. We had been invited to eat dinner at the home of a friend. He had grown up in our hometown, and was now living here with his Korean wife.

After getting cleaned up, we walked to the Holt office where we had agreed to meet him. Even on a Sunday, traffic was hectic. Car after car whizzed by. At one point a car pulled over to the curb, and out hurried a woman with a bare-bottomed toddler. She stood him on the sidewalk and let him pee. Then she grinned at us, hustled him back into the car, and off they roared. John laughed at my shocked expression. "It's better than peeing in the car!" I picked up my purse off the pavement.

Soon Jeff picked us up, and off we went to his high-rise apartment for the wonderful Korean dinner his wife had prepared- bulgogi, rice, chicken, seaweed, fried zucchini, and of course kimchi! It was all delicious, and they were very kind hosts, but I found myself staring at their beautiful (adopted) children and remembering the main reason we were here on the other side of the world. We were going to meet our son tomorrow!

We slept better that second night, but still woke very early Monday morning. Breakfast was oatmeal and coffee in our room. Then John sat looking out our 11th story window at the traffic roaring below- we're not in Idaho anymore, Toto! - while I nervously laid out the gifts we had brought for the foster mother and our social worker. It seemed a long time before it was time to leave for Holt. We started off much earlier than we needed to, and arrived a good 20 minutes early.

As we neared the building, I was hyper-aware of every mother and baby I saw, wondering if each one could possibly be our son. It felt strange to think he might pass me without me even knowing him. Once inside Holt, we were shown past the clinic waiting area, upstairs to a tiny waiting room. A couple of vinyl couches. One small high window. And an enormous bulletin board covered with pictures of kids adopted from Holt. The social worker left us to go get our son. John and I looked at each other wide-eyed and shook our heads. "Can you believe this?" he said to me with a grin that told me he was just as excited as I was. No, I couldn't.

Not much later, the social worker poked her head back into the room, saying, "Your baby is coming!" Then the door opened fully and there he was, sitting up in his foster mother's arms and peering bright-eyed into the room. Our baby. He was much balder than in his referral picture, though a thin fluff of hair stuck straight up at the crown of his head.

"He's so big!" John said. He'd been only 4 lbs. at birth, and had still been thin on his referral pictures. We were both happy to see that now at 4 months he had chubby cheeks and round arms. He was beautiful. I was aching to get him into my arms. It seemed a long time before the foster mother sat down and handed him to me, but in reality it was about 15 seconds.

I had been sure I would cry when he was handed to me, but I was so awestruck that instead I just looked at him and soaked in the feel of his strong little body in my arms and the brush of his fluffy hair against my face. He wasn't especially interested in me at first, ignoring my attempts to make him smile. But his daddy instantly fascinated him. John set the camcorder down to hold Joshua, and soon Joshua was smiling at him.

It was an incredible moment, watching the two of them together. In all the months of waiting for Joshua to arrive, though I knew I would love him, I hadn't been sure that the feeling would be exactly like loving a birth child. But it was. Those first precious moments, holding him and watching him with his daddy, are engraved on my heart just like the moments in the delivery room after our other children.

He began to fuss after a few minutes, and his foster mom reclaimed him to feed him a bottle. For a few more hours he was still her baby. I was happy to see the bond between them, and sad to think of the parting that would be tomorrow. At one point, as we talked to the social worker, the foster mom stood up and held him close to her face repeating something over and over again in Korean. Later a Korean friend translated her words that we'd recorded on video. "You are going away," she was saying in a sorrowful singsong. 'You are going away."

Soon we were following the foster mother downstairs for Joshua's visit with his doctor. Incredibly the doctor knew him and his habits, even though by the looks of the busy waiting room, she must see dozens of children every day. Then all too soon we were saying good-bye till tomorrow. It was strange to leave him, but tomorrow he would be ours for keeps. We walked back to our hotel room, talking about him all the way, then called our family and talked about him some more.

That afternoon and the next morning were filled with more shopping and sightseeing. Our favorite market was Namdaemun market. The variety was incredible. Backpacks and rain boots and baseball caps next to ginseng and garlic and corn on the cob. Live eels in aquariums and dead octopus on trays. Big turtles floating placidly in metal washtubs and turtles the size of peppermint patties scrambling wildly in plastic dishpans. By noon on Tuesday we had all 18 of Joshua's birthday gifts, and decided we had just enough time for a quick trip to Olympic Park (where the 88 Olympics had been held) before we packed and went to Holt at 3:30. By now we felt like old hands at the subway, though John said he was getting a little sick of the way everyone stared "like I have a dead cat on my head" he said. The park was huge and hot, and a little sad in its emptiness, but I could imagine how it might have looked swarming with crowds of people 10 years before.

Lunch was hurried pizza ordered from the Pizza Hut just down from our hotel. Then we somehow crammed everything into our bags and hailed a cab to Holt. This ride was almost as wild as the one on our first night in Seoul, but we made it there in time.

At Holt everything seemed to happen double-speed. The social worker brought us into the 'good-bye room' and showed us all the paperwork we'd need for both babies to leave Korea and enter the US (we were escorting another baby back as well as our own) and then went over the well-provisioned diaper bags that each baby would take home with him. Dozens of similar blue bags lined the walls in this room. So many babies.

As I watched the foster mom dress Joshua for the last time, my tears began to flow. Joshua's foster mom gave me a gentle smile, and as I futilely dabbed at my eyes, I thought, oh, she is such an expert at this- she is taking it all in stride. But then suddenly the Holt workers were putting front packs on both John and me, and gently but firmly taking the babies from their foster mother's reluctant arms. Both foster mothers were instantly sobbing and wailing. Joshua's foster mom followed us all the way out to the van. She stood outside the van window with her hand pressed to the glass, getting as close to her precious baby as she could. Joshua was already sleepy, and she motioned for me to pat his bottom. As soon as I began to pat, his eyes closed, and her last view of him was of him sleeping peacefully in my arms. I leaned on John and sobbed most of the way to the airport. The babies slept, oblivious, on our chests. Though I knew we were providing Joshua with the home he needed, my heart was breaking for the loss of his foster mother and of his beautiful homeland.

The flight back to the US was busy. Keeping two babies content didn't give us much time to sleep, and we were unbelievably grateful when our wheels touched down in Boise. Between the families of both babies, our welcome was huge. It was oh, so sweet to hug our older children once again, and to share tears of joy with our family.

As bittersweet and as exhausting as that trip was, we would not have traded it for anything. It was utterly incredible to see our son's homeland, and to meet his foster mother and see her love for him. When Joshua asks about Korea somewhere down the road, we will be able to tell him with certainty-yes, Korea is a beautiful land filled with many kind people, and while you were there you were very much loved.

Credits: Mary Ostyn