Separated @ Birth: A True Love Story of Twin Sisters Reunited (8 page)

Matt and Andrew have very different temperaments. Matt is quiet and introverted. While Andrew and I were running around the house playing, Matt was locked away in his room doing his own thing. He wasn’t an attention seeker, although I think he sometimes resented that Andrew and I demanded so much attention and got it. Matt wanted to be recognized for his accomplishments without marketing them. He is very artistic. He used to make amazing cartoons and doodles. I looked up to him and wanted him to be proud of me.

Andrew was a typical middle child—wild and needy. He was a troublemaker in school beginning in kindergarten. I remember my mother having to go to the principal’s office many times to sit with him. When I got to middle school, I was known as “Futerman’s sister,” and all the teachers would tense up when they figured out I was related to Andrew. Sometimes I would pretend he wasn’t my brother. After all,
we didn’t look alike, so it would work until they saw Mom picking us up after school together—damn it! He always meant really well, but he just couldn’t execute. He also has a hot temper, just like my dad. Despite all of this, he and I are best friends.

In our childhood, Andrew and I did a lot of the same things. When I started dance classes at age four, Andrew decided to take jazz and acrobatics classes at my dance studio. In his shining moment during one of our recitals, he was supposed to lift one of the girls in the dance number, but instead he dropped her onstage. When he decided to audition for a Christmas play in the community theater in the neighboring town of Montclair, I told my mom that I wanted to audition, too. I was either going to be in the play or dragged around like a tote bag, so it made sense to try for a part. Luckily, we both got the roles we wanted. He played a Christmas elf and I was a Christmas angel. And so my acting career began.

As we entered middle school, our relationship became a bit more separate. We were in band together, but I didn’t want to be embarrassed by him anymore. If he did something stupid in first period, I would hear about it by lunchtime through everyone else. One time, he superglued his hand to his face, and all I could think was that he was ruining my life. I was starting to really like boys, and to me, it seemed like Andrew was messing up my chances.

I remember one night sitting at the top of the stairs to my house, listening to my parents arguing about something. I was spying, trying to hear what was going on. My parents fighting was devastating and elicited a really intense sadness in me. But I stayed anyway, in need of hearing them find a resolution. Matt came out of his room and saw me, so he
stopped, sat down, and put his arm around me. He didn’t say a word because he didn’t have to—that wasn’t our relationship. He would never try to talk me into feeling okay. Even though it was such a simple gesture, I knew he was letting me know that he was there for me.

Not that we didn’t have our misunderstandings. One time, Matt, Mom, and I were in the car, stopped at a red light. We were talking about adoption, and my brother said, “I don’t understand why you would adopt kids, if you can have your own.” I didn’t even know what to say. I sat frozen and speechless in the backseat. I was really upset.

When we got home, I flew into a rage, complaining to my parents about what Matt had said and going off about how close-minded and stupid I thought he was. My parents looked at each other, smiled, and then let out a slight chuckle. Had they not heard what I just said? What
he
said?!

“Sam, it’s a compliment,” my father explained. “Matt doesn’t even think of you as being adopted.” I thought about that until I figured out what Dad meant. When Matt said he didn’t know why someone would adopt, he wasn’t including me in the pool of children who had been adopted. He considered me his biological sister, as much as he and Andrew were biological brothers. Wow. Dad was right. I changed from outraged to honored. It was a moment I’ll never forget. Dad wasn’t trying to save Matt from my wrath; he was just being wise.

In sixth grade, I tried Little League baseball on the boys’ team. Softball was for girlie girls, and I already played baseball in the back of the house with my brothers. I wanted to make the point that girls could play baseball if they wanted to. Plus, my dad was the coach. So there I was, on a team full of boys and one little Asian Jew girl. I played right
field, benchwarmer, flower picker, but at least I was on the team. In the outfield, I could practice for my dance competitions solo, without too many people noticing.

I was also a dancer growing up. I took tap, jazz, ballet, and lyrical. I hated ballet—too many rules, not enough creative expression. Not only did I have to listen to classical music, I had to have my hair in a bun and a leotard with no skirt. Jazz was much better. I could dance around and do jazz hands, and our costumes for the recital were always embellished with feathers and fringe. Sometimes, I would wake up in the middle of the night from muscle pains, hysterically crying. Mom would kneel next to me, put a pillow under my knees, and rub them until I fell asleep again. There were even times when she would let me stay home from school. Yeah, she is definitely my hero.

Mom drove me to three or four dance classes a week, tae kwon do, Little League practice, play practice, French horn lessons—everything. I’d come home from school, eat a bowl of soup, get changed, and head to dance class, which lasted from six to eight p.m. Then, I’d come home, eat macaroni and cheese, pretend to do my homework, and go to bed.

I was always very dramatic. When I was mad at my parents, I would throw myself on the kitchen floor and scream. (“I won’t have goodie bags at my birthday party!”) My mom called these my Samantha Meltdowns. One of my first encounters with the spotlight was memorable, but for the wrong reasons. I was playing the ingénue in the elementary school’s annual Thanksgiving play, and I was too terrified to excuse myself to use the bathroom. So I ended up having an accident . . . onstage . . . in front of my entire class. I mean, I guess I could say I was just marking my territory. I knew I’d be an actor for life.

I began summer plays when I was just eight years old. I was a chorus dancer in my first production,
Guys and Dolls
. The following summer, I did
Bye Bye
Birdie
, again as a dancer. I was always a dance captain and in the chorus. By the time I was twelve, I was training at the Paper Mill Playhouse’s Summer Conservatory. The Paper Mill Playhouse is a highly regarded regional theater in Milburn, New Jersey, that often casts big Broadway stars. I would spend two months there in the summers, where classes began at ten a.m. and ended at five p.m. I got to perform on the main stage in such shows as
The King and I
and
Miss
Saigon
. This exposure eventually led me to my talent manager, Eileen, who saw me in the conservatory showcase. My heartthrob was Leonardo DiCaprio. I went to see the movie
Titanic
as soon as it came out, and not long after, my walls were plastered with posters of Leo. I spent hours listening to the sound track my mother bought me. I would put on the music, stand on my bed, and stage the action with my dolls, throwing them into the “water,” my bluish-purple wall-to-wall carpet. My other favorite movie-based reenactment was based on the film
Outbreak
, which my parents allowed me to watch at a very young age for some unknown reason. All of my stuffed animals had all died of Ebola virus. I would always come downstairs to reveal the bad news in person. Mom would follow me upstairs to find them all laid out in the morgue, which again was on the floor, with little blankets over their bodies. Grim, but an honest delivery.

In high school, my zest for acting revved up. During my freshman and sophomore years at Verona High School, I would go into Manhattan to audition for commercials, TV shows, print, and film. My mother would pick me up from school; have my head shots, résumés, and lines in the car; and drive me into the city. The expenses involved were
substantial—gas, tolls, parking—but Mom paid for it all. Once she even had her car towed, so that cost more than $250. When I was fifteen, I landed my first feature film. I was ecstatic! It was called
The Motel
, and it was an independent film written and directed by Michael Kang, who is still my friend and mentor today. My second big part was a role in
Memoirs of
a Geisha
. I was sixteen, which meant I needed a parent present while filming. Mom quit her job as a preschool teacher to travel back and forth to California with me. She always put her kids first.

My junior year, I transferred to the Professional Performing Arts School (PPAS), a public high school in Manhattan that required an audition for admission. Kids from all over New York City wanted to go there, and the competition was tough. Trumpeters, saxophone players, dancers, choir singers, kids of every race, every shape, and every size were waiting for their turn on audition day. I had my three-ring binder in hand, filled with the songs I knew by heart. I was called into a bright pink room with a man on the piano and a teacher behind the desk. I did my thing, walked out, and let out a big breath of relief, and an even bigger one when I was accepted a few weeks later.

The PPAS was on Forty-Eighth Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. I would wake up every morning at six, be on the bus at 6:50, be in the city at eight, and walk the few blocks to school. We had academics every day until one fifteen. The rest of the afternoon was dedicated to performing arts classes, a different emphasis each day. Mondays it was vocals training; Tuesdays it was acting; Wednesdays was song preparation; Thursdays it was acting; and Fridays it was movement. At three fifteen, we were born free. I would walk back to the bus stop and take the 3:55 bus home, arriving in
Verona at four forty-five. The spring had longer days, as they included rehearsals for the spring musical. I would have rehearsals until ten. My mother would drive into the city to pick me up, sometimes as late as eleven. On some nights, I would just stay in Manhattan with friends. I spent my lunch breaks in Times Square, searching the Swatch store, sampling Sephora products, and drinking Jamba Juice from one of their takeout bars. Fifteen years old and the city was mine.

The school let students take time off to be on location for a movie or TV show, if they landed a role. We had kids doing
The Lion King
on Broadway who would leave at one fifteen in order to make “half-hour curtain call,” a theater expression meaning a half hour before the curtain goes up and the show begins. I learned how to be a performing arts kid, a biz kid, and so much more. It was my first time being completely immersed in an incredibly racially diverse environment. There weren’t many Asian students, but it didn’t matter. Everyone looked different, everyone dressed differently, and it was great. We were performers, stretching and honing ourselves as artists. It was awesome. In my senior-year production, I was Milky White the Cow in
Into the Woods
. I got to dress up as a cow and die onstage, to this day one of my favorite roles.

I had always felt as comfortable with myself as any other teen did. I was obsessed with boys and whether or not I was getting fat. Sometimes, though, I was curious about my Korean heritage, especially as I started to learn about makeup, which forced me to look at my facial features more carefully. Still, being Korean didn’t make me that interested in Korea. When my father offered to take the whole family on a trip to Korea, I didn’t really want to go, so we went to Cancun, Mexico, instead.

I finally did go to Korea. I went with my mother when I was twenty-four. We had received a brochure from the Spence-Chapin Adoption Agency with information about a roots tour of the country, an annual event that brings Korean adoptees and their families to their birth country. “Korea’s many sights, sounds and tastes will enrich your journey,” the brochure seduced. My mom convinced me that the timing for this one was probably going to be the best it would ever be, and the fact that I would be traveling with her made it that much more appealing. It was quite expensive, which worried Mom, but we signed on.

We traveled to Korea with two other families, also with adopted Korean children, and assembled into a much larger group in Seoul, with adoptees from all over the world. We spent time at the Social Welfare Society (SWS) and visited a mothers’ birthing center in Daegu. Ten expectant mothers were there at the time, and another group had forty-five adoptees and their parents. It was a very enlightening and emotional experience for me. It was humbling to see the attachment the birth mothers had for their babies. They were incredibly concerned about where their infants would be placed and if they would be loved. Some wanted their babies to be sent to the United States, assuming they would be well taken care of there. Others wanted their babies to remain in Korea so they would be able to reconnect with them in the future, if they wanted. As an adoptee, I was able to realistically accept the possibility of how much my birth mother must have loved me.

I was genuinely moved by the difficult circumstances this group of women faced. These women were able to stay in these birthing centers for more than a year—from the
time they knew their condition to a few months after delivery. This way, they could tell their families they were ill or depressed and were seeking treatment for anything but pregnancy to disguise the real scenario. During our visit, the young mothers ranged in age from sixteen to twenty-six. Being in their presence gave me a much deeper understanding of the love between a birth mother and her child.

It was an incredibly telling and moving experience. We could ask the birth mothers questions. Someone wanted to know, “Why wouldn’t you want to see your child again?” to which the unanimous answer was that they would want to see their child again, but Korean society stigmatized the single mothers so much that it was almost impossible to make that happen.

Some of the women asked us questions. “Do you love your adopted children as much as your biological children?” My mother stood up. “I have two biological sons, and I love them exactly the same as my daughter,” she said. “Samantha is as much my child as the boys are.” I started to realize how much love and thought went into giving up a child for adoption and for choosing to adopt. To see my own mother stand up and speak so passionately made me proud. I cannot speak for my birth mother, but I imagine that she had given me up out of love. And although the focus had always been on my birth mother, it triggered thoughts of my father, and whether he ever thought about me, or even knew I existed.