I hate asking for money. This year as M is in Kindergarten the first level of charity or “community service” as we term it today, began. For Halloween he brought home a UNICEF - trick or treat for Halloween box. He was very excited about collecting though I could feel a neurotic stress level increase at the thought of having to ask strangers for money. I should have done what I am doing now..that is looking up UNICEF reading about what they do, explaining that to my son and discussing how much he wanted to give and then ending it there, but I just ducked for cover. I just don’t like to ask for money. When I was 14, I had a paper route. I dreaded knocking on people’s doors and asking them to pay for the paper they received every day. When there were fund raisers as school I sold the very minimum and I pretty much never did community service. I am uncomfortable with charity.

As a Korean adopted by a Caucasian family in the 1970’s I was a commodity of Christian charity. It cost my parents 1700$ which at the time was 1/10 of the cost of their house. Holt, the Christian organization that facilitated my adoption used to send out pamphlets with pictures. Like toys in the Sears catalogue, our pictures were neatly captioned with Korean names and numbers. There were enough of us to choose from, many of us mixed Asian Americans already left over from the ripples of the Korean war and some of just extra sons or daughters. Just as in any sale if you buy one you can get a discount on a second or a third. Kids with special needs always come “cheaper” because they cost more in the long run and well…I won’t be crass. When you are orphaned reality begins by sucking and then it possibly gets better, but the primary condition that I will always share in common with all orphans and adoptees is that , “ Life‘s first order of business is exile.” What happens afterwards is up for grabs as it is in any child’s life. What everyone who is adopted understands is that life, that is the happening of events that directly relate themselves to us can and will randomly knock us out.

I myself was left on the doorstep of an orphanage with a note stating that I was of full Korean Heritage, because blood matters to Koreans as it does to so many others. When a child is adopted from a foreign country or is of a different race, during my generation there was no misunderstanding about who was doing who a favor. The parents were often put on a charitable pedestal. Even today when people find out my parents adopted me and two other children they ooh and ahh at , “How wonderful that your parents were so generous.” Wait? Were they doing me a favor? Yes, yes they saved me. They saved me from a life of prostitution on the streets of Seoul or so she would say in her fits of feeling ungratified. I love you, I saved you …two very different things. I am ungrateful.

Am I doing my sons a favor by loving them and feeding them and making a life better than the one I had? Children are not charity. Orphans are not currency to be bartered for a better next life. Orphans just need parents who really want kids. Love only comes through love, never from indebtedness. For me, asking for money for “charity” reminds me of my own “indebtedness”, and that I will always be ungrateful because it is a barter that I never agreed to, and one that I will not replicate.

In Obama’s declaration of National Adoption Awareness month, he reminds us to look to our own nation of orphans in foster care. Here in Philadelphia, the Inquirer is continually plastered with articles about abused children and dead children. The articles are horrifying and we read them. I am not moved to charity, but I am moved to think. I think about being a stay-at-home mom and what that affords me and my family. I think about how and when …there might be room for more. I think, as I prepare to close the door on making more babies and I wonder and perhaps dream of a family that grows in different ways. I think about love that creates better passage ways for others because I have more to give. I look at my sons and I know that for what I give and do for them the value and meaning they have added to my life already is immeasurable and then I think ..do I have more room to wonder?