Nathan

Personally, I hate dreams. The things you have when you sleep. They frustrate me to no end. I lose sleep only to not be able to remember exactely what it is I dreamed. Most of the time my dreams are not something I enjoy and I want out them ASAP. Occasionally my dream is a beautiful thing that I'm sad to see come to an end. Lately I've been dreaming almost every time my head touches my pillow and I'm not sure why. I don't dream that often, especially not every night for a week. This last week I had a dream about a little boy that is very dear to my heart that I haven't seen in a very long time. I don't think I've ever dreamed about him, or at least not in a very long time. His name is Kim Beyung Chul. I met him for the first time when my parents flew to Korea and brought him home to adopt him in 1999. Wayside had announced the need for this little boy that has heart problems to be adopted and my parents felt called that they were the ones. They filled out the paper work and I remember we spent months working on it. A lady came to our house and questioned each kid alone to see what we would say about our parents without them in the room. I have no clue what I said but I can imagine how nervous my parents were as to what we'd say. Apparently none of us said anything bad because we got the papers done and my parents flew out. They were gone for probably a week(as best as I can remember) and my grandparents stayed with us. I remember waiting at the airport and being so anxious to meet this little boy we'd been hearing about for months on end. My parents got off the plane with a very tired little boy that probably saw too many people all at once. We all fell in love with him immediatly. We renamed him to Nathan Beyung Chul Putman. He had to do some surgery right off the bat for his teeth because they were falling apart. He did ok with that. He had a huge scare that ran all the way down his chest from his heart surgery that he had in Korea. His heart condition that he had was that he was actually missing a chamber in his heart. Somehow they fixed it so that he would live just fine. He always had doctor visits though. I remember that he always drooled insanely. It reminds me of my nephew now that I think about it:) He wasn't accustomed to our foods here yet so he ate his own snacks that tasted like fish He also ate lots of rice cakes. We all hated his food and it smelled horrible but it made him happy. He loved cookies very much though. You couldn't even say the word around him or he'd go nuts. He loved to play just like any toddler does. He had a problem though and we weren't sure what was wrong. He was mad a lot. He cried and cried. Nothing seemed to make it better. He didn't really like anyone but me. For some reason he was happy with me. He just couldn't seem to adjust and my parents weren't sure what was wrong. They consulted our adoption lady Jan, and she said that this adoption might not be working if he doesn't adjust to the family soon. He didn't. After a lot of prayer and advise from friends, my parents decided to put him in a foster home (some friends of ours) and then he would get re-adopted. He was with us for about 5 months. The day he left will never ever leave my mind. I was dreading it and it happened very quickly. I didn't know exactely what was going on and didn't understand. Our friends, the Penningtons, came and started loading his stuff into the car. I remember holding him and not wanting to put him down. Once they put him in the car I lost it. I took off. I hid out in my brothers bed room and cried like a baby. I was never a softy and it embarrased me but I couldn't keep the tears from coming. It was like that van was driving away with part of my heart. My parents found me and tried to explain why he had to go and I just kept saying "I don't want him to go!" I cried a lot that day. We took a vacation down the river in a cabin for a few days to regroup as a family and it was a good thing because it got our mind off Nathan. Later on we found out he had some kind of problem that caused him to act the way he did with us. I'm not even sure what it was but it was some kind of neurological problem. His brain didn't register things right and that's the reason he was mad all the time. That news hurt so much because it meant that he probably could have stayed with us had we known that but it was encouraging that the reason he was mad had nothing to do with us. He went to a family in Ohio that had adopted two other Korean boys. As far as I know he is still there. He is 11 years old now. So many times I wonder what it would have been like had he stayed with us. His presence would have changed so many things in our family. I'm not even sure why I'm writing all this out except that I dreamed about him again this afternoon as I took a nap and it felt so real. I was holding him and it felt like he was actually there. He was a toddler again. I miss him so much and wonder if adoption is something I will do when I'm married. It definitely has a special place in my heart because of that little boy. I keep pictures on my wall to remind me of him. I miss him a lot...

The picture above is the day he left. He is wearing traditional Korean clothes for a baby to wear on their second birthday. He was about to to turn two and we wanted to see him in his clothes before he left.