I was at the orphanage, and the counselors were in the hallway, blocking the way to the kids. They were whispering together while at looking at me. They said the kids were busy.
“You want to play at being their mother for a little while, is that it?”
“Well, I came to teach them,” I said. “Help them with their homework.”
The counselors snickered unkindly.
“And teach them English.” Again they snickered to themselves, mockingly.
When I woke up, it felt like my dream had been about a real situation. I wonder if I am afraid of such a situation in real life, or was it just a test to shake my confidence?
Well, Elizabeth, if you wanted your reader to truly experience the same dis-ease and sense of anxiety that you experienced in your dream - you succeeded! I'm still feeling the horror in the pit of my stomach.
ReplyDeleteI hope you've never really sensed that.....at least not from many of the caregivers. There's always "one"....just, as there are people here who sneer and turn their noses up at adoption or foreign adoption or older child adoption or anything Russian, or even - anything Christian....but the bulk of people I've met here and there are (praise God!) more open minded and warm hearted.
I did have someone tell me sometime that I was just "taking on someone else's problem". THAT was like a bad dream!
I sometimes feel under scrutiny...or maybe not taken seriously. But it isn't malicious. It takes a while to go beyond first impressions, but in general I think the goal of helping children is shared and becomes common ground. I haven't met too many counselors who didn't want the children to succeed. It is usually out of love that they are protective.
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