This afternoon I was driving in the car when my cell phone rang. It was my husband and during our conversation, I had asked what came in the mail today. One of the first things he mentioned to me is the Sports Illustrated magazine (February 27, 2006 issue) and then told me that I am going to like this issue. Let me preface this with yes, I like sports BUT I don’t read about them on a regular basis and about the only time I watch them is when the Steelers are playing! My husband on the other hand is an avid sports fan. He loves football, baseball, hockey, golf, and watches all the sports shows such as Comcast Sports and ESPN. His comment that I would like this issue certainly peaked the response of “why?”

There is a writer for the magazine that I have read in a previous issue where he try’s and explains to women why men are the way they are. It was quite humorous and not far off the mark. That is the only time I have read Sports Illustrated and it had to be pointed out to me by my husband.

So, now to answer my question of why, my husband says, “you know that writer for the magazine Rick Reilly?” I say “yes” and my husband proceeds to say that the article in this issue is about two Olympians and how adoption has touched their life.

After we hung up, I was touched by the fact that my husband made it a point to tell me about this article. Adoption has touched his life by not only marring me, an adoptee, but as we face issues of infertility and starting the adoption process.

When I game home, I choose to read the article.

Toby Dawson, an Olympic skier who started to ski at the age of four was left on the front steps of a police station and then placed in an orphanage in Seoul. He was adopted at age 3 by to Wail ski instructors.

Toby showed no interest in his birth parents even after knowing his brother also adopted, traveled to Seoul and met his. Toby had no curiosity about the subject and only cared about skiing. As Toby got too good and started winning he would receive emails from Koreans saying they were his father or mother. He had no desire!

Something changed for him though. He returned to the Lorean Heritage Cam he hated as a kid, and when he went he discovered something within himself. He wanted to know who he was. He states that “There was such a buzz with the kids there. A lot of them had already found their birth parents. Some of the stories were so amazing.”

One of the story Toby heard was the story of the daughter who wrote this article. She was also adopted and at the age of 11 they flew to Seoul to meet her birth mother. They made the trip even though they were told that her birth mother would not meet with them. Unwed, she’d sneaked away at 16 to have the baby, and only her sister knows. She was married now, with three kids, and she dared to not be discovered. However, the interpreter told them that not a day went by that she didn’t think of her daughter that was relinquished to adoption.
After they were in Seoul, the birth mother agreed to meet with them for 30 minutes in a coffee shop that was two hours from her home. They waited for three hours and finally a cell phone rang. She was calling to tell them she would meet them in the alley behind the coffee shop. Once in the alley, they saw her, and she climbed into their fan, making the statement that she had 10 minutes.

The author of the article, Rick Reilly, told his daughter if she had any questions for her birth mother to ask them now. She took out a folded piece of paper they didn’t know she had.

Question 1 was “why did you give me up?
Answer was “great shame” never looking at her daughter only the interpreter.
Question 2: “Where’s my father?” Answer was “don’t know”
Question 3, “when you had me, did you get to home me?” Answer “no” and the birth mother hung her head. That is when the interpreter said “well, you can now.”

The birth mother than embraced her daughter in her arms and gave her kisses as she sobbed. The author of the article and his wife were also crying.

The birth mother hasn’t been seen since this one time reunion and the 11 year old felt as if that one time meeting “fixed a little home in her heart”

So for Toby Dawson he thinks it would be cool and that he would like to be friends with his birth mother. He has had lots of possibilities since winning the medal and has more long lost parents than a Power Ball winner. No body has yet agreed to a blood test.

Rick Reilly sums the article up by saying that an Olympic medal can fix a lot of things but not little holes in the heart.

My hat goes off to Rick Reilly who wrote a wonderful article touching on adoption and how adoption effects every aspect of our lives. Not just as an adoptee, but as a birth parent, and adoptive parents.

My husband and I talked about this article over dinner and he was surprised at the questions that the 11 year old had. I think that it has opened his eyes a little wider how adoption has touched triad members lives.