Nightmare

I had a horrible nightmare last night (well, actually, very early this morning), that Gabriel was being taken away from Husband and I, and he was being adopted by a family in Italy. It was terrifying. In the dream, we were at the airport, and the Italian family was walking him to the jetway to board a plane for Florence, and Husband and I were screaming, “Gabriel, Gabriel!” and the family turned to look at us and said, “His name is Jibril now.” (This makes no sense. This is Gabriel’s name in Arabic.* Not Italian.)

I woke up, sweaty and confused. The clock said 4:59 AM. My heart was beating a cannonade inside my chest, and my mind was screaming ‘Gabriel, Gabriel, Gabriel’. I looked over at Husband, who was sleeping peacefully, and the realization that it was all a bad dream washed over me.

I got out of bed and padded down the hallway to Gabe’s bedroom. His bed was empty and the cold fear from the nightmare returned. I turned around and opened the door to the guestroom (he loves the queen-sized bed in the guestroom, sometimes he shuns his twin bed to sleep in there). I didn’t see him at first because he had pulled the duvet up over his head, and he is so thin he hardly made a lump in the bed. But, then I heard his soft snores, and I crawled into bed next to him and just listened to him breathe for a while.

I thought about Lana’s mother, and I wonder if she wakes up in the middle of the night with her heart pounding and her mind screaming “Bich Lan, Bich Lan, Bich Lan.” Does her whole body cry out for the child she left behind at the age of 7 days? How often does she think of her? She has not seen Lan since she was 5 months old (at least to the best of my knowledge, which is, admittedly, limited to the reports that my adoption agency has compiled every 12 weeks for the last 3.5 years). But, she named Lan after herself. Well, they have the same family and multiple middle names, and the birth mother’s first name also starts with “L” and ends with “N”. It must have meant something to her, it must have been important to her, to give Lan a name that matched her own.

Then I thought about Lan’s foster mother, who has been caring for Lan for three years. Twice the foster mother has been told the child will leave her to come to America, the first time just before the adoption shutdown (an adoption that was disrupted by the shutdown), and now, in the last six weeks, she has been told Lan will be adopted by my family. I wonder about her, and how much this will hurt her, when Lan leaves her. How much it will hurt Lan, to leave the only mother she knows.

There aren’t any better options for Lan. Our agency attempts family reunification and inter-country adoption first, both of which have failed. Inter-country adoption is the last chance for Lan. Lan will either be adopted by us, or she will stay in the foster care system, until the kick her out at age 13 or 14. I feel a heavy burden, that I am taking something from her, in order to give her something greater – she deserves a family of her own. We are that family, I believe that with all my heart. I only wish I didn’t have to hurt her so badly at first, in order to give her that.

These are the things I thought about, while I listened to my little man snoring. Eventually, his snores kept me from falling back to sleep, and I went back down the hall to my own bed, where I fell asleep for a few minutes.

LM

* Jibril is what a former relative of mine used to call Gabriel, when he was a baby and a toddler. That relative has since divorced out of the family and returned to Saudi Arabia. He was very fond of Gabe, and always called him Jibril and said he was “just like the angel he is named for.” Why this came up in my dream, I have no idea.