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An American childhood Jaynes was about 3 months old when David and Carol Jaynes took her from the arms of an Eastern Airlines flight attendant and home to Rockdale County. They had attended a seminar about international adoption after doctors said they couldn't have children. Jaynes has a 16-year-old sister, Katie, also adopted from South Korea. Jaynes is as American as grits and Wal-Mart, and considers herself a Southerner. There's a crisp twang in her laugh, like a fiddle when it's plucked. She is a sophomore at Berry College in Rome, studying classical piano and opera in the hopes of leading a high school choral department one day. She loves show tunes, and after demurring, belted out a spunky rendition of "All That Jazz" for a visitor. "It gives me the chance to express myself," she said of her music. The first song she remembers singing is "Jesus Loves Me," as a child. As she grew older, she began to wonder whether her musical talents came with her on the plane from Korea. Like everything else about her heritage, it was a mystery. "There were things we couldn't answer," David Jaynes said. He and Carol gave Jaynes what few details they had of her background when she was in middle school, but it only seemed to raise more questions. "One birthday was really hard for her," Carol Jaynes said. "She was in tears. I asked what was wrong." Brittney said she was thinking about her birth mother, wondering where she was, what she was doing, if she ever thought of the infant she had given away. On the other side of the world, a woman with Jaynes' heart-shaped face was wondering, too. An immigrant benefactor Berry's 2,045 students got an enticing e-mail this spring: five would be chosen for a monthlong study program at Seoul Women's University. Sunny Park, founder and CEO of General Building Maintenance in Atlanta, had offered to pay for the plane tickets. He has served on Berry's board of visitors, a group of business and civic leaders who offer their expertise and guidance, since 2002. Program applicants submitted transcripts and an essay. Jaynes' essay revealed her dream of meeting her birth mother. "I feel that Korea holds many secrets for me," she wrote. Park, who came to America from Korea in 1974, had contacts he thought could help. "There may be a way to find her," he told Jaynes over lunch before the trip. "Would you like to meet her?" Jaynes prayed with her family and accepted Park's offer, never dreaming the search would be successful. Three weeks into her monthlong program, staff of the Seoul university sent for Jaynes. The adoption agency had found her birth mother. "She wanted to meet me," she said. Two staff members accompanied her to the agency office. They arrived early, and Jaynes went upstairs to the restroom to freshen up. "God, please help me," she prayed. When she walked downstairs, a social worker told her that her birth mother and biological aunt were waiting in the meeting room. "We started crying when we saw each other," Jaynes said. "We hugged. It was tense but comfortable at the same time. It was like a dream." Speaking through interpreters, Ok Lim Jeong told Jaynes her story: She was 18 when she gave birth, a year younger than Jaynes is now, and the father was 19. The teenagers were high school sweethearts, poor and unmarried. A birth out of wedlock would have brought unbearable shame upon their families. "She had a part-time job as a seamstress. She couldn't ask her parents for money," Jaynes said. Jeong, opposed to abortion, skipped meals so she could afford to give birth in a hospital. After the baby came, Jeong held her all night long, knowing she would give her up for adoption the next day. Jeong's sister, who had taken her in and helped hide the pregnancy, took the baby to an agency. Three months later, Jaynes was in the arms of David and Carol Jaynes. Jeong and her sister felt guilty about giving away the child they could not afford to raise, but Jaynes told them she was grateful. "It was the best thing they could have done for me," she said. Jeong and Jaynes' birth father married other people. He divorced, and her husband died in a fire. The birth father then proposed marriage, but Jeong refused. Six years ago, he died in a car wreck. "You look like him," Jeong told Jaynes. She said that he was musically gifted and played the guitar. Jeong stroked Jaynes' hair and her face as they talked. "I was kind of afraid to touch her," Jaynes said. "It was hard to believe she was real." Aside from Jeong's sister, none of Jaynes' biological relatives, including two teenage half-siblings, know about her. When the time is right, Jeong will tell them, although Jaynes understands why she has kept silent. She can imagine how hard it would be to tell her children, "By the way, before I married your father, I had another child and I gave her up for adoption, and she found me." Jaynes and Jeong went shopping and had dinner before Jaynes had to leave. "I love you," were the last words they exchanged. Jeong gave her a small white purse she embroidered with an orange rose to remember her by. It sits on Jaynes' dresser, next to a picture of her parents holding her in the airport terminal, moments after she arrived. Someday, a big reunion Jaynes would like to go back to South Korea one day -- with her family. She is careful to stress that Carol and David Jaynes are her parents, DNA or no DNA. She feels a bond with her biological mother, but it could never compete with what she feels for Carol, the woman who will always be Mom. The Jayneses would like to meet their daughter's biological relatives, to thank the woman who loved her enough to give her away. "I would love to thank her for choosing life," David Jaynes said. Jaynes' trip changed her, helped make her feel whole. For the longest time, she had just a piece of paper with sparse information about how she came to be. It warms her heart to know that her birth parents were in love. One day, when she is no longer a secret to the rest of her Korean kin, she would like for everyone to get together. Even if that never happens, she is grateful to Berry, for letting her know about the study-abroad program, to Sunny Park, who paid for her trip, for the adoption agency workers who found Ok Lim Jeong, and for the chance to be raised in a loving, two-parent home. "I found out a lot about myself. I found part of who I am," she said. "It definitely made me realize how much life has been a huge blessing." |
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