Different DNA doesn’t stop their similarities shining through

If I can single out one specific cherished memory of spending time with my father, it would be going out surfing with him after school. Our house was just metres from the beach. My parents bought me my first proper surfboard for Christmas when I was about eight. Before that, I used an old piece of styrofoam that loosely resembled the shape of a surfboard; it was all banged up, had no fin and barely floated.

For what I can only imagine were reasons of fiscal constraint, this is what Dad surfed on when he joined me out there after school on my new board. He never asked if we could swap – and there was no chance at my age I would have offered, but when I’d had enough, Dad would often go back out on my board, giving him a fighting chance of catching a good wave.

He was also selfless when it came to cycling. My grandfather owned a bicycle store and my father, 61, cycled competitively from his early teens until well into his 50s. As a child I didn’t share his passion, though he did all he could to gently persuade me.

Most summer mornings we would park about 2km from my primary school, then cycle together the rest of the way. After saying goodbye I would watch as Dad rode away one-handed, steering my bike with his other hand all the way back to his car.

Later, I spent many weekends mountain-biking with my father and friends. From a logistical perspective it was great having Dad come riding: for the most part we were interested only in bombing down mountains and Dad was happy to not only transport us all on these expeditions but to ride back up to the Springs from Glenorchy to get the car afterwards with no expectation we join him. It’s only now I realise how lucky we were to share this interest. He’s pestered me for a long time to get back on the bike with him and I’ve promised I’ll go for a Tuesday night ride with him and his friends this month.

I was born in Taegu, South Korea, in 1984, and raised by a foster mother until I was six months old, when I became available for adoption. My parents were on a waiting list to adopt for a little over a year and came to South Korea to get me after trekking in Nepal for a month.

In Korean society in the early ’80s, and even mostly still today, it was taboo to have a child out of wedlock, so the decision that I would be raised by someone other than my biological parents was likely made before I was born.

I was aware from an early age I was adopted. I remember going to a Christmas party put on by the Eastern Adoption Agency in Hobart when I was four or five, with heaps of other adopted kids and their parents. I knew all of the kids were adopted, but I don’t remember a momentous sit-down where my parents told me. I think I just looked in the mirror and realised I didn’t look anything like them.

No doubt to my parents’ frustration, I interpreted being an only child (and an adopted one at that) as carte blanche to do what I wished and demand anything I wanted. I misconstrued me being adopted as me being special. I acutely remember thinking: “These guys must have really wanted me. They spent a truckload of money and travelled halfway around the world to get me.”

When you meet people and they discover you are adopted, without a doubt the only question between, “Can you pass the salt?”, and, “Would you like another beer?”, is, “Have you met your real parents?”. I’ve never had the slightest inclination to search for my biological parents. I would posit, “You only know what you know”, and I know I’ve lived a very fortunate life, so I’ve rarely wondered what the grass may have been like on the other side. Maybe my perspective would be different if I hadn’t been so fortunate, but I feel that I’ve won Tattslotto.

I did wonder if there was an intangible biological link between a parent and child I was missing out on. But it’s so hard to tell, as I was raised so differently to my parents. A couple of years ago we broached their child-raising methodology. They freely admitted they were flying without a radar much of the time and I grew up with an enormous amount of autonomy.

I asked Dad whether choosing to let me have this was a conscious decision or forced upon my mother and himself by my own intrinsic character. “It’s a real chicken-and-egg kind of question,” he said. “We definitely made a choice to let you make your own decisions and consequently make your own mistakes, but once you set something in motion it’s very difficult to realign.”

But that is such a subjective, unanswerable question. I do know I am everything like my father in many ways and nothing like him in others.

We share the ability to see both sides of an argument and a common distaste for sycophants. I’ve learnt from him to be generous with my time and effort to those who deserve it.

I feel comfortable cooking dinner for a party for 12, but my father has never cooked me a meal in his life. I would prefer to be wellliked, while he would choose to be well-respected. My father shows an extraordinary amount of patience and application to most things while I am in constant conflict with those two traits.

I see that so many of my friends’ beliefs, traits, mannerisms and values can be traced to their fathers. I am no different and am proud to say I am my father’s son.