Dreaming at the Conference

I woke up at 5:30 a.m. after the most real dream I have ever had. The details were so clear that I was convinced it was true.

I dreamed that I was in touch with a social worker in South Dakota (of all places -- very seldom happens) and I told her that we were possibly interested in adopting again. She told me about a couple sib groups, but then threw in that there was a teenager named Robert on her case load who was older. I agreed to see the information on him and she faxed it to me. He was the oldest of 10 children who had all been split up and desperately wanted a family.

Next scene of the dream I am in the mall in Sioux Falls where we used to shop often when we lived farther SW in MN and I saw Robert with his foster family. They were a wonderful “perfect” couple with three other children that I assumed were birth children. I interrupted their conversation and then asked if I could talk to them privately about Robert. They told me that he was 18 (even had a birthdate in the dream -- 3/23/88) but that he still wanted to be adopted. I gave them Pat O’Brien’s “commitment test” (What can he do to get kicked out and where will he live when he no longer receives services from the county) and they said they really just wanted him to live there until he had a family and that they had been praying someone would adopt them.

During this time I am doing things the right way and asking Robert to let me talk to them privately (amidst the JC Penney clothes racks). However, they invite me to their home and all the sudden the secret is out. Robert discovers that we might adopt him and asks a zillion question. The more he talks, the more I fall in love with the kid.

As we visit in the foster home, which by the way, was much nicer than ours, they explain that he only goes to the foster home on weekends and that he is in residential treatment. The foster mom tells me that she is sometimes afraid of him because he is so verbally threatening but that he has never hurt her. I am becoming more convinced that we can parent the kid and he is getting overwhelmed with excitement. He said, “My social worker is coming over late this afternoon to talk to me about my ”independent living plan“ -- maybe it can be YOU.”

I ask the foster parents what paperwork they have and I start to review some pictures. The family is surrounding me as I look at the pictures and right next to Robert in the picture is Melissa, a girl that I had assumed was the foster parent’s birthdaughter. I look at her and she quiet and shy, says “Yes, I’m Robert’s sister. I just turned 16. Do you think you would adopt me too?”

My heart sinks. We have absolutely no where to put a girl in our new house. The girls room is already quite small. How can I tell the kids no? I get up to leave, knowing I have to discuss it with Bart, and knowing I’ve gotten myself into a real mess. Both kids give me long hard desperate hugs as I leave the home and I know I have to figure this out. As I leave the beautiful spacious home of the very good foster parents I am shocked that the kids even want to move in with a preacher and 10 other children, but know that permanency and a lifetime commitment is worth more to them than the pool table in the garage, the upper class neighborhood, etc.

But we have NO money for remodeling. We have no agency that will work with us without South Dakota paying Purchase of Service and I’m not sure they will. We have not room for another girl. But the kids are so desperate, so excited about the possibility of being with us that I have to figure out how to make it work. All these thoughts were pounding through my head at 5:30 a.m. and I could not go back to sleep, but I am seldom this relieved when waking up that I was only dreaming. I lay there for 40 minutes and finally decided maybe I could go back to sleep if I wrote this down (I need to sleep longer as we won’t get home until nearly 1:30 a.m. tomorrow morning and it would be a VERY long day if I stayed up from 5:30 a.m.).

I’ve already looked up Robert and Melissa on adopt us kids to make sure they don’t exist.

But the thing is that they do exist -- with different names maybe, or in other states, with varying situations, but they are out there. Not only them, but tens of thousands more just like them. How can we NOT do something? How can you NOT do something? They are everywhere -- 20,000 of them aging out every year.

We may not be adding Robert and Melissa to our family. In fact, we may not be adding anyone to our family in the next year or two. But I am pretty convinced we’re not done. Because knowing that they are there and choosing to let them leave foster care without an adult committed to them when we have space in our home would seem almost criminal to me.

I think I wrote it best last September with the poem They Sit. And now that I’ve spoken my peace, maybe I can go back to sleep.