the snow globe

 the snow globe

There are a few moments in my life that seem frozen in time.  Like a beautiful quilt, there are tattered worn-out squares of equal parts joy and sorrow that are pieced together to quietly prove the existence of life and being.  There are other moments, though, that merely seem slow like old films played on projectors at half-speed.  We sit back and watch them with a soft smile, surrounded by friends as the memories flicker in the reflections of our eyes.  We might laugh or even cry, but whatever we feel quickly dissipates when the lights turn on and we ultimately leave feeling something pleasant.  Time well spent.  We take note to retell those moments as good stories later on, but go on with the rest of our day.  Then there are the moments I'm talking about.  The moments where our world suddenly becomes enclosed inside a giant snow globe, and someone has come and shaken the whole damn thing.  Anything that was moving is now frozen except for you and the drifting snow.  It's beautiful and devastating.  The silence is deafening.  Instead of feeling something pleasant we shudder.  Those are the moments I'm talking about.

Moments like the time I opened my acceptance letter to my dream school.  I sat on my sidewalk outside and ripped it open, attempting to read the letter as quickly as humanly possibly.  "Congratulations" and "accepted" were the only words I remember reading.  They might as well have jumped off the page.  I fell to the ground and cried.  Accomplishment washed over me like a pail of water, extinguishing all the doubt and worry that had been burning inside of me.

Moments like the night I received a phone call that someone I loved dearly had died.  It felt like my heart had leapt into my throat.  I spent hours that night sitting outside on my front porch in a chair, chilly from the cold, but numb in pain and grief.  I stared at the stars and wondered where he was now.  He had called me just three days before and left a voicemail wishing me a happy birthday.  Why hadn't I called him back?

Or moments like the time my ex-husband gave me a hug outside of the courthouse on the day of our divorce.  We had to announce to the judge, as well as to an entire courtroom filled with strangers who were waiting for their own cases, that our marriage was "irreparable" with "no hope of reconciliation". My throat had never been so dry nor had I ever felt so alone as I did in that moment.  It also happened to be our wedding anniversary.  The universe gifted us with a marriage that was beautifully tied up with a perfect little bow, symmetrical with bookend dates that made it easier to store, ready to be placed on the shelf of What Was, collecting dust year after year.  There on the sidewalk before we parted ways to our cars, I knew that would be the last time I hugged my husband.  And it was.

It's fascinating how these deeply emotional moments are stored into our memory banks, so close within our reach yet far away in time, never to actually be seen again.  I knew that this would be one of those moments.  Holed up in a hotel room somewhere in Portland, Maine I heard from my birth mother for the very first time.  And my world halted.  Someone shook the damn globe.

There I sat on the hotel bed while my husband was brushing his teeth in the bathroom.  I sat with pillows propped up behind my back and my knees bent with white sheets tucked all around them.  I felt like a child, taking up such little space on the king-sized mattress, much like a little girl does when she's snuggled up in her parent's bed during a bedtime story.  The light that shone through the curtains was bright and airy.  It was going to be a beautiful day.  I opened my email and saw a reply from the social worker on my phone:

Dear Nikia,

It's October!

I hope that you and your family are doing well.  We are back from a long Chuseok holiday (Korea Thanksgiving) last week.

I would like to deliver a good update on birth mother search.

We knew that the last known address was the most current one since the delivery report showed that your birth mother received it in person.

Her younger sister phoned us on the 24th of September on behalf of the birth mother who was too overwhelmed with emotions to call us.  Thankfully the birth mother was able to open up to her younger sister about the past and also about you.  It was something that only the birth mother and her own mother knew about, but never talked about as a family.

Your aunt said she was only 10 years old then.  She said that the birth mother felt too embarrassed and shameful, unable to stop crying to talk on the phone.

I stopped reading.  By this point my husband had been talking to me from the bathroom, but I was too wrapped up in the email to respond.  I explained to him what I was reading and he came over to sit with me on the bed.  I went back to the beginning of the email and read it out aloud to him.

In a matter of ten minutes, I learned the following information:

My birth mother had been a seamstress her entire life and was currently not working due to pains in her knees and back.  According to her sister, my birth mother had lived a tough life.  She divorced the man she married after giving me up and was pressured by her parents to give up her other two daughters, but she could not bear to give away any other children.  So instead, she raised two daughters on her own.  Oh, yes.  That means I have two half-sisters.  My birth mother gave me my Korean name.  My aunt and maternal grandmother both had ovarian cancer and my maternal grandfather died of stomach cancer.  She was afraid I would find out that she had nothing to show for her life.  She felt unworthy of even being considered my birth mother.

Someone shook the globe and there was snow everywhere.  The cold flecks of white quietly began to settle on my knees, arms, and on the bed all around me.  I learned more information in ten minutes than I ever dreamt of knowing in my lifetime.  There was a mixture of emotions that seemed to be thrashing around inside of me.  One part gratitude, one part pain.  Hints of anger and relief, shame, guilt, pride, and joy.  I sat there in silence trying to process everything I had just learned.  

What happens now?  I thought.