Sister of an Immigrant Celebrating Big Anniversary
It's been over six decades now--December 17, 1956, to be exact--when my status as an only child ceased. Oh, happy day! I doubt any 10-year-old in America was happier than I was that night, eight days before Christmas.
The occasion at Will Rogers International Airport was topped off by a rather unusual event in Oklahoma City, at least for mid-December. Not a blizzard, but a pleasantly snowy night greeted the little wharf who had come to America, who would likely have been dead within a few weeks if she'd been forced to remain in the orphanage back in Korea.
She arrived, weighing fifteen pounds, within days of turning fifteen months old, unable to even turn over on her own, literally packed into an open cardboard box, with scores of other infants in similar states. A photo of her was captured, as she was somehow picked from the lineup for a op-ed in a small newspaper that arrived in our box weeks after her arrival! It ready "Precious, Little Cargo."
The infants were all bedded down in their boxes on the floor of a jet plane that had been stripped of all its seats--except for a few, I suspect, where attendants might have been able to sit in between their tasks of caring for the Korean war orphans, soon to be placed into the arms of loving families like ours.
I'd wanted a little sister or brother all my life, and I'd actually helped arrange the arrival of Lydia Christine Sneed (alias Kil Yung Kang)--a fact I was immensely proud of. Had I not been visiting my grandparents that previous summer, and spoken up with joy as soon as I heard my grandmother telling me about the babies a missionary-friend of hers was helping to bring back to the USA, I'm quite certain this little sister of mine would never have arrived to lay in my arms that night, moments after I'd peered over my mother's shoulder. Instead, she would probably have been placed in a casket in Korea and buried alongside others infants that I'm sure had this fate because there were simply not enough Americans able and willing to take the massive number of infants that lay in the squalor orphanages back in Korea--so many because American soldiers had left behind their Korean lovers and offspring, to return to the safety of America after the Korean conflict.
Never will I forget the sight! Her dark brown, extra-large eyes, peering as all eyes do from children who are malnourished, this child seemed to faintly smile as she reached her little hand up for my father, sitting on the other side of Mom, to kiss again as he'd just done seconds ago after reaching down to gently lift the hand to his lips.
Lydia soon was thriving physically. Psychologically and emotionally thriving was another matter, of course. Years later, as I attended a conference for mental health professionals on Attachment Disorders, I understood suddenly the wounds that have life-long implications similar to what I'd witnessed over decades in this beloved little sister, who could not have possibly lived if it had not been for the welcoming arms that America was extending at that time to immigrants like Lydia.
This child's mere survival to this point was a miracle. She had survived being taken from the loving arms of her biological mother, we were told, at seven months. Survived mostly on rice water as she'd lain in an orphanage for seven more months as my parents worked to jump thru all the hoops before finally getting clearance. Now this Korean Christmas gift that would soon have us as a feature story in the Ft. Worth Star Telegram and on a local six-o'clock news program, was ours. Ours to lovingly nourish back from the throes of death with the direction of a pediatrician. Sadly, nobody was equipped to sufficiently bind the complex psychological wounds of these children--many, I'm certain, that have remained to this day--made much worse because of the common problem of "rescuing parents" who have often taken on these challenges while believing that the answers could all be found simply by "trusting in Jesus," long before the mental health profession had any idea how to assist both parents and the adoptees with the transition.
As I look at our immigration policies now and the ones that Washington officials, with the cruel attitudes of so many Americans supporting these policies, I cringe to think of the individual lives so impacted--some whose very physical survival depends on being admitted to our prosperous land, where even the poorest among us are far healthier than Kil Yung Kang who was to soon take her place with full American status on another thrilling day I so remember, when the four of us went for my parents to act on her behalf, swearing in her full citizenship in the "land of the free."
Yes, it's all very complicated. Yet, somehow we must find ways to let Love reign supreme, despite
terrorism and threats, even with leaders who are pent on taking away the most precious tenets embraced in principle by many Americans for generations.
The occasion at Will Rogers International Airport was topped off by a rather unusual event in Oklahoma City, at least for mid-December. Not a blizzard, but a pleasantly snowy night greeted the little wharf who had come to America, who would likely have been dead within a few weeks if she'd been forced to remain in the orphanage back in Korea.
She arrived, weighing fifteen pounds, within days of turning fifteen months old, unable to even turn over on her own, literally packed into an open cardboard box, with scores of other infants in similar states. A photo of her was captured, as she was somehow picked from the lineup for a op-ed in a small newspaper that arrived in our box weeks after her arrival! It ready "Precious, Little Cargo."
The infants were all bedded down in their boxes on the floor of a jet plane that had been stripped of all its seats--except for a few, I suspect, where attendants might have been able to sit in between their tasks of caring for the Korean war orphans, soon to be placed into the arms of loving families like ours.
I'd wanted a little sister or brother all my life, and I'd actually helped arrange the arrival of Lydia Christine Sneed (alias Kil Yung Kang)--a fact I was immensely proud of. Had I not been visiting my grandparents that previous summer, and spoken up with joy as soon as I heard my grandmother telling me about the babies a missionary-friend of hers was helping to bring back to the USA, I'm quite certain this little sister of mine would never have arrived to lay in my arms that night, moments after I'd peered over my mother's shoulder. Instead, she would probably have been placed in a casket in Korea and buried alongside others infants that I'm sure had this fate because there were simply not enough Americans able and willing to take the massive number of infants that lay in the squalor orphanages back in Korea--so many because American soldiers had left behind their Korean lovers and offspring, to return to the safety of America after the Korean conflict.
Never will I forget the sight! Her dark brown, extra-large eyes, peering as all eyes do from children who are malnourished, this child seemed to faintly smile as she reached her little hand up for my father, sitting on the other side of Mom, to kiss again as he'd just done seconds ago after reaching down to gently lift the hand to his lips.
Lydia soon was thriving physically. Psychologically and emotionally thriving was another matter, of course. Years later, as I attended a conference for mental health professionals on Attachment Disorders, I understood suddenly the wounds that have life-long implications similar to what I'd witnessed over decades in this beloved little sister, who could not have possibly lived if it had not been for the welcoming arms that America was extending at that time to immigrants like Lydia.
This child's mere survival to this point was a miracle. She had survived being taken from the loving arms of her biological mother, we were told, at seven months. Survived mostly on rice water as she'd lain in an orphanage for seven more months as my parents worked to jump thru all the hoops before finally getting clearance. Now this Korean Christmas gift that would soon have us as a feature story in the Ft. Worth Star Telegram and on a local six-o'clock news program, was ours. Ours to lovingly nourish back from the throes of death with the direction of a pediatrician. Sadly, nobody was equipped to sufficiently bind the complex psychological wounds of these children--many, I'm certain, that have remained to this day--made much worse because of the common problem of "rescuing parents" who have often taken on these challenges while believing that the answers could all be found simply by "trusting in Jesus," long before the mental health profession had any idea how to assist both parents and the adoptees with the transition.
As I look at our immigration policies now and the ones that Washington officials, with the cruel attitudes of so many Americans supporting these policies, I cringe to think of the individual lives so impacted--some whose very physical survival depends on being admitted to our prosperous land, where even the poorest among us are far healthier than Kil Yung Kang who was to soon take her place with full American status on another thrilling day I so remember, when the four of us went for my parents to act on her behalf, swearing in her full citizenship in the "land of the free."
Yes, it's all very complicated. Yet, somehow we must find ways to let Love reign supreme, despite
terrorism and threats, even with leaders who are pent on taking away the most precious tenets embraced in principle by many Americans for generations.
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