Our Adoption Story

Many of you have asked to hear Melanie and my whole adoption saga, so I’ll start from the beginning. My adoptive parents, Nancy and Dennis Moller, moved to Taipei, Taiwan in 1972 with our older brother, Matt, who was just a year old. Shortly after arriving for their teaching assignments at a Christian school, my mom started looking for a baby to adopt. They raised support as short term missionaries and were affiliated with TEAM – The Evangelical Alliance Mission. Adopting was something that she was interested in doing even before they had Matt, but my dad insisted on refining the art of parenting on a biological child first. While at a church meeting, a couple of new friends heard their prayer request. The man was a doctor and the head of a hospital in Taipei. The very next day, in a conversation with a fellow doctor who had flown in from Puli Christian Hospital, he learned about twin girls who needed a home. On the way to Puli (beautiful mountainous area in the middle of Taiwan, now a huge tourist destination) by train, my dad kept saying “I only want one”. When they arrived, the Norwegian nurse, who was a twin herself, didn’t want us to be split up. She cleverly put one of us in my mom’s arms and the other in my dad’s arms. My dad looked at the baby in his arms (in my mind, that baby was me) and said, “Let’s take them both.” In reality, he was probably holding Melanie, because I was smaller, sickly and covered in a rash. My mother was ready to take us home then and there, but our paperwork was not in order. It took another 8 weeks to get all the correct signatures and official stamps, but we came home in time for Christmas. At the signing of the documents, after our birth father had been located, my adoptive parents met my birth parents. I didn’t know this fact until I was in 5th grade and my dad said, “Okay, this is as tall as you’re going to get, because this is how tall your birth parents are!” Where was the photo documenting this monumental moment, you ask? It never occurred to my parents to take a picture until I asked the question! Another interesting fact is that they weren’t even supposed to adopt according to TEAM’s guidelines. But ever the renegade, my mother acted like she wasn’t aware of the rules and invited all of TEAM’s leaders over for a visit after we came home. It didn’t take long before everyone was willing to look away about that particular rule. A year and a half later, they had my sister, Mia, and we moved to the US shortly after. We lived in West Lafayette, Indiana while my mom worked on her three masters and a PhD at Purdue. My dad was the guidance counselor at a local junior high and the light of our world. My youngest brother, Mark, was adopted at 5 months old keeping that same close spacing in age. He was so cute and fat with his curly brown hair and green eyes that we wanted to “squeeze him ‘til he popped.” With a career mother and a nurturing father and the wide range in skin color, we were anything but normal in the 1970s. When we were on vacation (which is something my parents did really well), people would often ask what organization we were. We’d just look at each and shrug, “we’re a family”! For most of my childhood, my dad’s sister, Bonnie, lived and taught in Taiwan, following in her big brother’s footsteps. As a career missionary, she is now finishing up her tenure in Macau, but because of her, we always felt a connection to Taiwan. Our standard mealtime prayer went like this: Dear God, thank you for this food and for the nice day and be with Aunt Bonnie in Taiwan, Amen. Even with this connection, it never occurred to us to try to find our birth family.
My second chance at looking for them was in the summer of 1991 when Melanie and I went to Taiwan as a graduation present from high school from my mom. The Overseas Compatriot Youth Formosa Study Tour is for college age kids of Taiwanese decent living abroad. It was 5 weeks of intense language and one week of traveling around the island. When Addison graduates from high school, please remind me that 18 is too young to be left to one’s own devices in a foreign country. The tour took me to Sun Moon Lake, close to my birthplace. As I stood atop a tall pagoda, looking at the beautiful landscape, I thought of them and knew they were probably within my line of sight. I didn’t have the money, language skills or time away from the tour to make any movement towards finding them. In hindsight, I just don’t think any of us (on the American side of the ocean) where ready for it.
Now at this point in the story, I have a lot of conflicting information. Most is not relevant, but it goes to show that memories are fuzzy and fickle. My mother recently gave me an article that she wrote in the 1980s about our adoption. I have vague memories of reading it years ago, but a lot of it seemed like brand new information. The story I’ve always told people is that my parents first saw us at two weeks and were adopted at two months, not six weeks and three months, respectively. Last week, my mom told me that the only money they paid was $20 US for a taxi to pick up my birth father to sign documents and take him home. In my birth mother’s cassette, she says she couldn’t take us home because they couldn’t pay the hospital fees. She was under the impression that my American parents paid them. Did my parent’s adopt and dash? My birth mother never mentions the fact that we were girls as a reason to abandon us, only lack of money and ability. As it was a Christian hospital, whose mission was to reach out to Taiwanese people, I can’t imagine that they wouldn’t allow a mother to take her children home for lack of money. Is this the least shameful reason she can give us?
I think my first unconscious effort to find my birth family was in college. One of the reasons I chose Manchester College, besides the excellent financial aid package, was their exchange program with a school in China. They also were able to offer Chinese language courses through Ohio State and a Chinese tutor on campus. Even though I graduated with a Bachelors of Arts with Chinese as my language requirement, my Chinese was lacking. Five months was not enough time to solidify the complicated language in my sized brain. Marrying Mark, and then making the decision to raise our children bilingually, has also played a factor. When we knew that we wanted to come to China, I approached my sister about finding our birth family. She was less than enthusiastic about it. There are always concerns when an adopted child finds his or her birth family. If you find them, you risk feeling rejected a second time. On top of that, what if the birth family comes with a host of financial or emotional burdens? It is a risk, but I was willing to take it, even if Melanie was not supportive. When we hosted a Chinese teacher for the 2005-2006 school year, I had He Yuejun look at our birth documents. They are written in the old characters, but she was able to read them. It was the first time I realized that I had my birth parents names and their address this whole time! As we started to plan our move to China, I developed a plan of action. I would wait until we lived in China to begin the search. Perhaps someone would know someone who could help us. This is the Chinese concept of 关系 (guanxi) or connections. After we had settled in Dalian, I started to think about the steps we needed to take in order to find them within our 18 month commitment in China. I had a sinking feeling when I tried to think where I had put the documents. I had no memory of packing them. We went through all of our papers here, only to come to the conclusion that we’d left them in storage in Portland. I frantically called Melanie and my mom to see if they had copies. I was crushed when they looked and couldn’t find any helpful details. My only hope was that He Yuejun remembered the names from looking at the documents three years earlier. When we were in her hometown in July 2009, it felt as if fate had closed the door on my search. In August, Mark went to Portland on business and remarkably found the documents! They hadn’t been put into a storage locker like we dreaded, but rather were with other important documents in some friends’ garage. The very next week after he came back from the US, he went on what would be his only business trip to Taiwan. He shared Melanie and my story and documents with the Taiwanese co-worker, Joseph Hung, who was traveling around Taiwan with him. Not only was Mr. Hung interested in helping, but was actually excited about it. His father was buried near my birthplace, making it a place that he is very familiar with, visiting at least four times a year. On February 18, 2010, just four days after Spring Festival, the most important reunion holiday in Chinese cultural, Mr. Hung met with my birth mother and oldest birth sister. He had already done some preliminary investigating on the financial conditions before he told the family of his connection to us. I think he went through public records to discover my birth father had died and my birth mother collected a farmer’s pension from the Taiwanese government. There were no financial requirements needed in my mind to determine whether to contact them or not, though it was important for Mr. Hung to check out this information. Last week, I received a package containing two pictures and a cassette tape, which has been translated (and dissected). After hearing the contents, Melanie told me thank you for giving her something that she didn’t even know she wanted. We are planning to go to Taiwan either in May or June (or maybe even March), as soon as we work out the details. Melanie and her husband would like to join our family (Mark, kids and me) for this trip. It would be so great if her whole family could be with us, but Melanie and her boys have already made plans to visit us in China at the end of this month. There is a slight chance that Melanie and I could slip away for the weekend, but that would leave Mark alone with eight kids. If any male can handle it, I think it’s Mark. I’m thrilled that my adoptive mom is eager to share in this reunion and that she has the time and the means to make the trip. The rest is history in the making, and I’ll be sure to document it with stories and pictures.