Free Separated @ Birth: A True Love Story of Twin Sisters Reunited by Anais Bordier, Samantha Futerman Page A

are adopted. But, for me, there really wasn’t a chance that I wasn’t adopted—my parents are a different race. It was never a problem for me, because it wasn’t presented as such. My mom was my mom, my dad was my dad, and my brothers were my brothers.
    Adoption was always part of the Futerman family plan. My parents discussed it early on in their relationship. The idea appealed to both of them. They say it wasn’t for any altruistic reason. They weren’t looking to help a “poor orphan” somewhere. They just wanted to have one or two biological children and adopt one or two more. Little did they know, they would end up with bratty me—and maybe a French “plus one.”
    And so the plan went. They already had two biological sons, my brothers, Matthew and Andrew, when they started the process to adopt a third child. Apparently my mom had been putting Andrew’s baby clothes into storage boxes when the feeling hit her that she wasn’t done. Either that or she was manifesting the beginning of her mild hoarding syndrome—not legit, just diagnosed by a couple of perceptive individuals, myself included. My parents began with a domestic adoption agency, Catholic Charities, but they were told the wait could be eight to ten years, and they didn’t wantto wait that long. Their sons were both under the age of six, and they wanted their next child to be relatively close in age to them. As this was going on, Matt made a new friend at preschool, an adopted Korean girl. My parents liked the idea of adopting a child from Korea and asked the girl’s parents how they had gone about it.
    My parents were told about Spence-Chapin Adoption Services, and they took the recommendation. At the agency, the intake person explained the adoption procedures, paperwork, and parental age requirements so clearly that my mother was scared that she and my father might not qualify. Next came the discussion regarding fees and expenses. Now my parents were not only scared but shocked. The costs were very high, between New York agency fees, Korea agency fees, foster care fees, airfare for the baby, and airfare and fees for the baby’s escort. At the time, babies were “escorted” to the parents’ home country. Few, if any, parents actually picked up their child in the country of birth. My parents weren’t poor, but they weren’t rich, either, and they wondered if they could really afford it. There were also the eighteen years of costs to raise me, and college tuition . . . but, hey, I think it was a safe business investment. My parents did, too. They took a second mortgage on their home in Verona, to pay the expenses.
    Spence-Chapin was extremely thorough. The social workers not only talked to our family pediatrician, but they investigated our neighborhood to be sure that a Korean child would not have trouble living there. There was a family meeting at the agency with my parents, Matt, and Andrew. My parents also attended one or two group meetings with other potential adoptive parents, which, they said, felt like group analysis. All of this, of course, was to prepare them for howthe arrival of a Korean baby would change, and add to, their family dynamics.
    My parents filled out mountains of paperwork. Because they already had two sons, it was mentioned that they could request a daughter, and although there was no promise, every possible effort would be made to see this happen. It was also mentioned that considering their ages—my dad was in his early forties, my mom was in her late thirties—Korea would not approve another adoption later down the road. So, my parents’ initial plan of “one or two biological children and one or two adopted” turned into “one adopted.” They requested a daughter and began the wait.
    Less than a year after starting to work with Spence-Chapin, my father received a phone call that their baby had been born. He ecstatically located my mother to tell her it was a girl. Although I had been born in November