Wednesday was my sister’s birthday. We always celebrate her birthday on Thanksgiving because we are together, just like we celebrate the rest of our birthdays around Easter. My sister’s birthday is really the actual day she was born. I know that sounds funny to most, but when I was adopted it was pretty rare that you knew exactly when your Korean adoptee was born. They gave you approximates.

The day that we celebrate my birthday could be my birthday or it could be another day. My mother is convinced that I was born on her birthday which is four days later than the day that they chose for me. Since my birthday is April 2nd, I am just grateful that the social workers in Korea didn’t choose April 1st. I'm pretty sure that they would not have known the significance of the day.

When my son’s referral came, I realized how much things had changed. We not only knew the exact day that my son was born, but we also knew the city and a little about his birth parents. It’s pretty common now, but my experience as a child was vastly different. Information was at a premium.

I remember when my sister’s referral came. We were sitting in a little office with no windows and they showed us her picture. My first thought was that she was not an Alexandra. My parents had whittled their name choices down to two and she was not going to be an Alexandra. I also remember being told that one of the reasons that my sister had been matched with my parents was that they thought they were best suited to handle the fact that they had information about my sister’s birth family. What was an anomaly has now become common place.

My parents explained to me that my sister had a family in Korea. Not only did they know the day she was born and the hospital that the birth had taken place in, they knew that she had several biological siblings. For the first time, I really understood that there was a whole Korean family in Korea that I didn’t know. I knew the concept, but they seemed very far away and removed from me. Now, that my sister had a very concrete birth family, mine took on a little more substance. I think that it was the realization that she was someone else’s little sister that really drove it home. I was a little possessive of my big sister status back then.

My sister is like me. Though she could find her family easily, she has shown little interest in searching. Though I’ve explained before that I have only mild curiosity about my birth family, I have to wonder if that would hold true if I had as much information as my sister. I’ve never really envied my sister her birth date or her birth family information, so maybe it wouldn’t make a difference. I’ll never really know.

So, Happy Birthday to my sister and she just started her first real (college degreed) job. Yahoo.

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