From Dream to Miracle

           Sometimes miracles start out in the oddest ways, not with one giant movement but with tiny ripples, so small you barely notice them, building slowly, until you can't deny what is happening. That is how our youngest son entered our life. We had no idea that someone so small, not even on the growth charts when he arrived, would alter our lives so profoundly. We didn't realize the true meaning of resilience or courage could be taught by one so little. 

       But I need to start at the beginning because beginnings are important, revealing depths and mysteries behind the apparent reality of life. So I must tell you that long before the boy arrived, first came the dreams, so strange, of a woman with dark hair, holding our her arms, pleading with me. Each night I could hear her voice but I coudn't make out the words.

      She was barely visible, out of focus, but still so real.  Finally, one night, her words can out, clear and vivid, "Save my son. Take my son! Please, you must help my son" She spoke to me as one mother to another. There was no denying the passion in her voice, the love behind her pleas. I would wake up and almost expect to see her standing by my bed. I longed to comfort her but she could not be comforted. 

     I puzzled over her words and her strange accent, which was also oddly familiar. Then I realized that her accent was one I'd heard so often because it was the accent of my father, from Romania. But who was this woman? I tried to dismiss the dreams, so differernt from any I'd had before.

    At the same time, I became interested in adoption and happened to connect with an online support group of people who were adopting children from Romania. This resonated with me because we had Romanian heritage and also because my father was so ill, dying of heart disease. How wonderful it would be to bring another Romanian into our family! From this tiny seed grew a yearning, then a passion. I talked to my husband and he surprised me by agreeing that this would be a good thing, to add another child to our family of two boys. 

    So we pursued our dream, went through the home study, heard all the warnings about adopting older children, the possible risks and then...one day...I opened a book of Waiting Children and saw the eyes of the woman in my dreams, in the face of a little five year old boy. There was no denying those eyes! I felt like I was seeing my dream come to life and that certainty never left. 

    That is when the miracles kept coming, even though I've never thought of myself as someone who believes in fate and things that are "meant to be". One of the women in the online support group was working in Romania, only minutes away from the orphanage where our potential son lived. Out of the kindness of her heart, she went there and took videotapes of him. I can't express how hauntingly wonderful it was to hear his sweet voice and see him moving around, the photo come to life! In his arms was a small hankerchief which he proudly held as the prize it was to him.

       Within a year, he came home to us, not even on the growth charts, not speaking a word of English, with scared eyes but a brave heart.  From the start, he made it clear that he had clear opinions, hopes, desires and feelings. He also rocked constantly, something that children in Romanian orphanages often did, in an attempt to create stimulation in an environment that had been barren and often without activity, nurturing or the bare minimum of toys or play.

    Although he was five, he had to learn to play. At first, he would spend hours kicking a ball against our garage door - or ANY door, inside or out. He touched everything he saw, turned knobs, pushed buttons, marveled at things we took for granted, like turning on and off the lights, the tv, a radio.  He ate like crazy and within 3 months, he was on the growth charts, a great joy to us....and a relief. He no longer looked like the starving little waif that stepped off the airplane only a short time before. 

     Along the way were many joys -and traumas. Within a week of his arrival, he bit into an apple and his tooth...fell...out! Oh, the screams and the terror! He cried "Put it back!" in Romanian. How hard it was to explain to him that this was normal, that baby teeth fell out and that coming to America did not mean that your body parts fell off, as he believed at that moment, horrified by the thought.  

     I knew we'd reached a turning point when I brought home the movie, Babe, about a little pig adopted by a family of dogs. He was entranced and would sit in my lap, day after day, rocking and sucking his thumb, watching the movie as I explained the words "dog" "baby pig" "mice" "mama" "papa" "family"- and the most important word - Love. I would hug him at the end of the movie and say "Babe is loved and Claudio is loved". Then he would hug me. "Mama" he would say wonderingly, touching my hair, my eyes. "Mama love Claudio?" He had only to look in my eyes to see the answer. Some things can be communicated without speaking, crossing all language barriers. 

     Slowly, so slowly, he began to learn English., although some concepts came more easily than others. "Mama" he said to me one day, "When did you and Daddy adopt each other?" Thinking of that now still makes me smile and yet what truth were behind those words. In some ways, marriage is NOT all that different from adoption, two strangers choosing each other and forming a union, "adopting" each other into their hearts.  

        For our son, trust came slowly, in fits and starts, as he tried to figure out what being part of a family meant. Often he tested us, seeing how far he could go and whether we would still love him. He would have major tantrums when he became frustrated or couldn't make himself understood, hitting himself, the walls, even his father and me. He even cursed in Romanian. Sometimes he would try to punch himself in the face or bang his head against the wall. So we made three rules - no hurting himself, no hurting people, no hurting the home. 

        When he had screaming fits,  we held him till his anger or hurt ebbed and he collapsed, sobbing, into our arms, then relaxed and hugged us, with a sigh of relief. Night was particularly difficult for him and he would have to be held as he sobbed himself to sleep, hating to make the transition from day to night, perhaps fearing he would awake and we'd be gone. In the middle of the night, he'd awake again and come running to our bed, snoring away till morning. Then, one night I told him his sleep muscles were "strong enough" for him to sleep in his own bed and he proudly did so. That easy! I was amazed. 

     He bonded so strongly to me that he would cry whenever I left the house for even a moment. Going to school was traumatic. But he stuck it out, persevered and began to thrive. He made friends and discovered Pokemon cards, a major obsession. He started to read and write, our youngest son, our little Romanian/American.

      During this time, I was so focused on HIS changes that I didn't realize another miracle was taking place, that my perspective, my view of life was changing as well. All the little frustrations that I used to consider stressful were beginning to seem somehow...easier. Dinner burned? Another could always be made. Didn't get that writing job? Another was just a query away. I saw hope around each corner, realized that each day was full of possibility and change. 

     The only thing I couldn't change was my father's health. He did live long enough to see his newest grandson, to touch his head and speak to him in Romanian. Many a night he would look over at Claudio in wonder, amazed that this boy was here, all the way from the same country my father had arrived from, many years before, escaping the Holocaust.  

      Then one day my father was gone. Amidst the sadness, I couldn't help smiling as I watched our youngest son crawling beneath a chair at the funeral and staring at the stained glass in the windows in awe. He was a great comfort in a difficult time.
 

      Now, 10 years later, he has turned into a teenager and it is hard to remember the scared little boy he once was. He wakes each day with excitment and joy , eager to play his beloved soccer or join his friends, to see what awaits him. He lays out his clothes proudly each night, preparing for each new day. He is still proud to have his family, his home, his own room and toys. New clothing is still a joy to him, not something he takes for granted, remembering when he only had hand me downs back in the orphanage. Yes, he remembers. 

        And his mother, the woman I believe came to me in my dreams? She died shortly after his birth - of cancer. I can not help but think that she found a way to rescue her son as he came to us only 10 days before they shut down adoptions in Romania, slipping in with only a brief window of time let. One lost piece of paperwork, delaying our trip by one week...and we might not have saved him - and, oh, how much we would have lost!

      I hope that people reading this will realize that many children, in many places, here and in other countries, need homes. My son was right about one thing. If people can fall and love and marry, take strangers into their hearts, grow to love them and join together in union (and, in a way, "adopt" each other) then why isn't it just as easy to adopt a waiting child? We are all one family, really, underneath it all. 

        This particular child, the dream that became our miracle, will always be my inspiration, my benchmark of courage and resilience. From nightly dreams came a thought and then a purpose and, ultimately, miracle after miracle. May they continue for years to come!