Yearnie, a Girl Born in a Dream

Yearnie is an adopted child, and when anyone asks her why she has slanted eyes she tells them she`s from Vietnam, and Mommy and Daddy adopted her. Yearnie doesn`t try to be like everybody else. She knows she`’s different and she`s proud of it. She`s happy to tell us her thoughts and dreams, and she tells them with confidence and humor. She knows that even though she doesn`t look like her parents, they love her more than any other person in the world. She`s the daughter they dreamt of, and because they yearned for a little girl just like her, they called her Yearnie. Mommy says no other child has such a lovely, special name. At home, Daddy sometimes calls her “my little slanty girl” and he pulls his own eyes so he can look like his daughter. But when he takes his fingers away his eyes go back the way they were. Yearnie often asks Mommy to tell her about the first time they saw her in Vietnam, how they held her and hugged her and couldn`t let her go. Mommy tells the story, and Yearnie knows she`s given her parents great joy.

The parents` dream has come true, but Yearnie has got a dream of her own. She wants a little brother like other children in the neighborhood. At first she hides her dream but then, because she always tells her dreams in the morning, Mommy says, “Don`t you dream anymore?” And once she`s asked, Yearnie can`t hold back and she tells Mommy she dreamt about a little brother. In the evening when Yearnie is going to sleep, Mommy tells her that soon there`ll be a baby boy in the house, just like in her dream. He`ll look like Yearnie because he`ll be adopted too. “In the summer vacation,” Mommy says, “the three of us are going to Vietnam where the baby is waiting for us, and he`ll be your brother, Yearnie.”