By Blair King
I ’m fuzzy on the details. I’m not even exactly sure of the year, but I recall the essential elements of this story with clarity. The emotions are crystal clear. I think it was the summer of 1976, on a “motherland” trip, I discovered a mysterious and unexplainable truth about love and connection.
In that summer, as a mixed-race Korean adoptee, I had the opportunity to return to Korea as a nineteen-year-old young adult. I was mildly curious about my birth country, and the cost of this organized tour of Korea was very reasonable. The airfare was made affordable due to the fact that I would be escorting newly adopted children back to the United States to be delivered to their new families. Accompanying the children meant that I was responsible for their safety and well-being on the trans-Pacific flight. Using escorts for adoptees meant that flight attendants would not need to spend as much time with them, and would be free to attend to their usual and customary duties. I didn’t receive any special training, other than an hour or so of instructions.
We learned how to strap the children into their seats by using pillows as braces, how to take the children’s outer garments off to keep them clean, and then redress them before landing to look nice for their parents, all whom had never seen their new child in person. Strict instructions were provided to avoid feeding the children any western food on the airlines. It was explained that the children’s digestive system would not be accustomed to the rich food, which could lead to diarrhea on a long flight. Something to be avoided at all costs!
During the motherland tour, we spent nearly two weeks traveling the full length of Korea. For part of the trip we stayed in peoples’ homes. For a few nights we stayed in the orphanage that I had lived in as a toddler. My return to Il-san, a Holt-operated orphanage, was a part of my past. I could envision running and playing with other children and could easily imagine what it was like in the late ’50s. But it was not part of my present. I did not have any romanticized feelings, but I did have an indescribable sense of looking at myself as a young child and thinking about what life would have been like had I not been adopted or had I been adopted by another family or lived in another country.
The remainder of the trip we traveled and took in the sights. We ate great food and saw national landmarks and tourist locations. We traveled in a large custom bus on wide highways that were designed to serve as emergency runways if a shooting war had broken out again. We hiked up several hills to religious shrines. We received a healthy dose of Korean history and were informed how Koreans had a movable type printing press before Europe. If we saw one fan dance or ribbon dance, we saw at least a dozen. At the end of the two weeks we were given the instructions on how to act as escorts.
Then, at the offices of Holt Korea, foster mothers brought the young children for the big trip. The children were a mix of infants and toddlers with an older child or two included. The social workers reviewed photo albums of new families with the children old enough to understand. In a few minutes their entire world would change. Some of these changes would occur as soon as they boarded the plan, and others after they arrived in the new land where they would live. The language the children would hear would instantly change from Korean to English. Instead of squat toilets they would be expected to use western toilets; instead of chopsticks, fork and knives; and instead of the floor, they would sleep on a mattress on a raised bed.
I was assigned three children, two boys approximately two-and-a-half years old, and a girl approximately five or six years old. The boys were excited and wound-up. The girl was afraid, crying and withdrawn. She was blind.
The first step of the journey was making it through the departure gate and onto the flight. Although social workers accompanied us part of the way through the process, at a certain point they couldn’t come any farther and I was on my own, just three children, their bags, their official papers, and trying to work our way through the airport. The boys were eager with big eyes. The blind girl was terrified and cried constantly, her body shaking. There was nothing I could do. When we finally made it on the plane I tried to talk to the girl, in English, and the more I talked the louder she cried. I tried to touch her and she just recoiled and cried louder again. But if I left her alone, it seemed that her crying become softer.
The flight took off from Seoul and flew to Anchorage, Alaska and took about eight hours. When the plane pulled away from the terminal the boys became fearful, but after we were airborne they quickly and quietly fell asleep. The little blind girl continued to cry and moan, though. I was nervous and tried to comfort her, but nothing worked. I am sure she must have fallen asleep sometime during the flight, but I just do not remember that happening. It seemed that she cried and sobbed the entire flight.
As I sat, flying through the night, I could not help but think WHO? WHO would adopt this little blind girl? Everyone wants a “perfect” baby, a child that is developmentally normal and beautiful. Who would want to adopt, to make part of their family forever, a girl who was imperfect, without sight? What was the motivation? But I was looking at this little girl through the lens of my eyes and my life expectations. I marveled at the thought that this crying blind girl was going to a family in the United States. But, who were they exactly?
Our port of entry to the States was Anchorage, Alaska, where we were met by volunteers who took the children and helped them through customs. They fed and played with them, giving me a small break and the ability to get through customs on my own. I was extremely tired. Another escort took the boys to a different destination in the U.S., and I continued with the blind girl to New York City. The little girl was tired too, but she was more afraid then tired and continued her sobbing. She must have slept for part of the trip, but I can’t recall. It just seemed that she was quietly weeping and sobbing the entire flight.
By the time we arrived to New York I was exhausted. I was not used to being around young children, and I felt the pressure of being responsible for someone else’s child. I felt responsible, too, to the other passengers on the flight. I didn’t want the crying to disturb them, and I was conscious of their glances and looks. Escorting was a lot like babysitting in a closet without any lights, and doing all this, for hours on end! From the port of departure, through customs in Anchorage and then on to New York took nearly twenty-four hours.
In New York we were again met by volunteers from Holt. Their job was to take the little girl and present her to her new family. The questions of the last hours weighed heavily, and I wanted to see who it was that was adopting this very scared, trembling blind girl. Who was going to be her new family? The volunteer boarded the plane to escort the girl off. It took me a few minutes to gather my things and to deplane. I hurried to follow the volunteer with the girl who by then had disappeared around a corner at JFK in New York. As I turned the corner, I saw the volunteer hand the girl over to a sighted woman and a blind man. As the small group huddled tightly together the world stopped and became silent. The blind man took his hand and touched the face of his new daughter, the little girl took her hand and touched his face, and as the two connected, she stopped sobbing and became relaxed and calm, the first time in nearly twenty-four hours. The connection was instantaneous and the love miraculous.
Blair King was born in Uijeongbu, Korea, near the DMZ. He was sent for adoption when he was three years old, and raised by a farming family in Mariposa California. Blair has spent all of his professional career in local government, and is currently the City Manager of Coronado, California. Blair is married to another Korean adoptee, and they have three daughters, two in graduate school and one in college.
“The Blind Girl” was first published June 18, 2015 by the VanceTwins in “The Unknown Culture Club.”