Tonight, his four-year-old self said the words I’ve been dreading to hear, the words I had not braced myself for and certainly had not expected to hear until, at least, puberty.

“You’re not my real parents. I miss my real parents.”

I can feel the blood draining from my face as I sit next to him, in the dark, as we drive home from dinner. I can’t breathe. It feels as if time suddenly froze as headlights graze over our faces and I scramble to find words, enough of the right ones to string into an appropriate sentence, a sentence that wouldn’t give away the hurt that has its bony fingers wrapped tight around my neck.

What do I say?

Headlights continue to cut in and out of our back row seat and I see tears stream down his cheeks as his face twists and contorts in his four-year-old effort to hide his pain. His restrained whimpers as he cries for his “real parents” in Korea churn a pain in my gut that I fear will explode. I’m thankful for the dark that covers us and in this moment, it is just the two of us, in a world of heart pain that we are desperately trying to hide from the other.

I lay my hand on his and tell him it’s okay to miss them and that I understand he is sad. I remind him that we are his real parents and always will be, but he rejects this truth.

We cry together in the dark as the headlights flash by, our tears the realest things we have to give to the night.

From the archives, 10/21/16