Where is my brother?

Lana threw me for a loop on Tuesday with her use of the word "Brother."

She was home from school (still sick from the virus that sent us to the hospital on Sunday, which is a post unto it's self and which I do not have the patience to write about right now because it made me so angry I thought my head would explode).

Anyway, we were looking at pictures and trying to decide which pictures to put in collage-type frame, when she picked up a picture of Gabriel and said, "Ga-bri-el!" And I said, "yes, that's your brother, Gabriel."

"Brother!" she said, happily, pointing at other photos of Gabe and saying, "Brother! Brother! Brother!"

I was proud of her for learning a new English word and I gave her a "high five". (She high fives everyone right now. EVERYONE. She tried to high five the check-out girl at the grocery the other day.)

Then, all of the sudden, she dug through a stack of pictures from our trip to Vietnam, until she came to a photo of several children at the orphanage.

She pointed to a child named Son, the child who had been fostered in the same foster home as her, and, in all seriousness, looked at me and said his full name in Vietnamese (which I cannot pronounce and cannot even begin to imagine how to spell) and then said, "Brother."

I looked at her completely stunned.

"Brother," she said again, pointing at Son. "Brother mo? Brother mo?"

She took my face in her hands and said it again, "Brother mo?"
"Mo" means "where" in Vietnamese.

SHE WAS ASKING ME WHERE HER FOSTER BROTHER WAS.

I felt like someone had poored ice water down my spine.

It has been weeks since she said Son's name (admittedly, she did ask about him in Vietnam, and on one occasion vomited when he and his new parents got out of the agency's van to go to their hotel, so, I was AWARE, at least, that they had a bond of some kind.)

I would venture a guess that she has not mentioned Son since we left Vietnam, but, it was clear, Tuesday, that his absence was weighing on her.

Where is my brother? Where is my brother? (Can you imagine not knowing the answer to this question?????????????????)

It is at moments like those, it occurs to me how much this child has lost. And I do not have the ability to tell her, "Son is with his new family in Chicago" because "Chicago" means nothing to her.

Ultimately, I pulled out a photo of Son's parents and I said, "Son co Mommy" and "Son co Daddy".* She looked at the photos of Son's new parents (thank God I have pictures of them at least) for a second and shook her head. Then she picked up a different photo of Gabriel and she hasn't brought up Son since.

I don't honestly know what to think about the whole conversation, except that it makes me sad to think she has been wondering what happened to her foster brother, and it never occured to me to tell her where he had gone.

Gretchen

*I believe that "co" is a possessive marker in Vietnamese, equivalent to an " 's " - this is based on my observation of Lana's speech pattern when she is talking about something that belongs to her - i.e. she says, "Lana co shoe" or "Lana co kitty" - when it is clear she means "Lana's shoe" or "Lana's kitty."