Personal Story: My Little Sister Sarah

Years ago, when I was a freshman at a small college in New Hampshire, I walked into the school’s community outreach office in search of a Little Sister through the Big Brother/Big Sister Program. That very day, the office received a telephone call specifically requesting a Korean female student to be a Big Sister for a little girl named Sarah. Undoubtedly, it was fate.

Sarah is a Korean adoptee. She arrived as an infant on an airplane to become the first daughter of a loving, childless couple living in the Upper Valley of Vermont. Eventually, Sarah’s family would grow to include a brother and sister – they would arrive via the stork, both blonde-haired and blue-eyed, just like Sarah’s parents.

When Sarah was 6, she began asking her mother, “Mommy, Mommy, when I grow up, will my eyes be like yours?” With no other Asian faces around in her home or her community, Sarah had no understanding of ethnic difference.

Sarah’s mother realized that the only place she might find an adult with an Asian background might be at the local college. And that person turned out to be me.

Every week during the school year, Sarah and I shared a few hours over books, games, McDonald’s (I didn’t know much about nutrition then), and stories about family. She was an inquisitive, gentle, loving child with the most watchful eyes that soaked in everything around her.

When she was 8, something happened. Almost overnight, the very children she grew up with began to take notice of Sarah’s different eyes, her petite nose, her dark hair. And the responses were not pretty. Sarah suffered needlessly through racial taunts, slurs, and outright attacks. She, along with her parents, were bewildered that the children Sarah had known all her life could suddenly turn against her.

Again, Sarah’s mother prevailed. She consulted with teachers and administrators, and together, they asked me to make my weekly visits with Sarah at her elementary school. I showed up each week in her classroom, where the children could see someone who looked like Sarah, who was an adult, who was – in their eyes – a person of authority.

Every week, I came with a book or a story, a traditional doll or a set of pictures that was Korean. And every week, the children greeted me with excitement and hugs. And I wondered silently which one of these fresh-faced children could possibly be my child’s tormentor. After the time with the whole class, Sarah and I always had a few minutes alone. And in that time, I like to think we both nourished each other’s souls.

The next year, my senior year, Sarah’s family moved further upstate in Vermont, to the small town in which her father and grandfather had grown up. She had the same teacher her father had had 30 years prior. And whether it was a change of place, or that the family was so entrenched, Sarah did not face the same racism. And ever so slowly, Sarah began to thrive once again.

Twenty years later, Sarah is now in Kansas, just finishing a Master’s program, after years of teaching and coaching in Florida. We keep in very regular contact – last week, she wanted to know about palm-type hand held computers (I’m clueless). This weekend, I’m flying out to Lawrence to watch her receive her Masters in Education. While Sarah might still reach out to me for advice or assistance, in many ways, she has taught me more than I could have ever taught her.

As an Asian American, I feel that I live my life in a place of “in-between” – not quite Asian, not quite American, but somewhere in the hyphenated space in between. I think that experience is magnified as an Asian adoptee, especially in a transracial family situation. But whatever the hardships or challenges, in the end when all is said and done, family is everything. As Sarah’s mother proved over and over again, never mess with a determined Korean mother – and that’s a Korean mother by birth or by adoption.