Once Upon a Wish (38 page)

Adventures on the Gator would not end that day, and it didn’t take much time for the Hawkins family to realize what a true gift it really was. Over the years, Henry, Sharon, and Riley have traveled hundreds of miles on the Gator, in the presence of Dakota’s spirit, through hills and forests, rain, mud, and the Arkansas sunshine. It has been stuck, rescued, and the saving grace on good hunting days.

When Dakota first made his wish, Sharon was certain it was for him. It was for his freedom, his need to explore and was his way of getting something he knew his parents could not afford to buy.

But every treasured moment on the Gator has revealed to Sharon and her family Dakota’s clear intent; his wish was for them—he had chosen something he could leave behind.

Three years after Dakota’s death, Sharon and Henry received a clear message from God, telling them that, even in grief, even with holes in their hearts that could only be filled by Dakota, they still had love to give. After months of family discussion and lots of prayer, they called a local adoption agency to foster a child in need. They received a phone call one day about a two-year-old little boy waiting for a good home, and as soon as they heard the boy’s birth name—Dakota Quinn—they knew in her hearts that it was providential.

Sharon sat, silenced, on the phone, eyes filling with tears, heart filling with God’s message. This little boy, Dakota Quinn, was meant to be with them. Sharon, Henry, and Riley opened their
home and their hearts to the boy, who they decided to call Quinn, and a year later, adopted him into their family.

There was no doubt in their minds that Quinn was sent from above—a gift that they knew Dakota would smile about from Heaven. God had given his parents this gift, just as Dakota had given the Gator, a gift that would keep on giving; a gift for his brother, Riley; his parents; and now their son Quinn.

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P
ARIS
, T
IEN THOUGHT
.

Lights twinkling from the city to the sky. Streets filled with people on bikes, pedaling through the smell of rising dough, of baked croissants and French baguettes from local patisseries. Dogs sitting proper at the heels of their owners at café-lined roads packed with cars and honking taxis, people blowing cigarette smoke from their lips, words in French rolling from their tongues.

Will I speak French by then?
he wondered.

Would Tien’s father, Bruno, have taught him more than simple words like
bonjour
and
merci
?

Would he be able to say to a waiter, “
Je voudrais le poisson frais du jour
”?—“I would like the fresh fish of the day”—and compare its flavor to that of the fish he had pulled from the South Pacific in Tahiti with his family when he was younger? Would he be able to ask for frog legs and escargot with, “
Je voudrais les cuisses de grenouille et les escargots
”? He wanted his taste buds to learn the difference between France’s beef bourguignon and his father’s, wanted to see if its chefs could perfect an egg the way Bruno perfected an egg.

Tien wanted to immerse his senses in the city’s tastes and smells, its sounds and feels. He wanted to see the rolling hills of France’s countryside, hills that, in his mind, were like those of Napa Valley, endless green waves of mountains. He wanted to climb the Eiffel Tower and compare the City of Lights to San Francisco, the biggest city near his Berkeley, California, home. He wanted to compare his
hometown’s Victorian houses to the old, historic homes of Paris, see the differences between ancient cathedrals and the Catholic church where he attended Mass with his mom, Lillian. He wanted to hear the city’s live music pouring down its busy streets and taste the flavor of fresh crêpes and
coq au vin
that he would learn to make.

During the nine years of his life, Tien had spent many of them imagining such a place, dreaming of going there. His older brother and sister, Yune and Vanina, had traveled to Paris before Tien was even born. Their experiences fueled his desire, ignited his imagination, with stories of cruising the Seine by boat, staring the Mona Lisa in the eye, indulging in French food, and viewing the lights of Paris from the observation deck of the Eiffel Tower.

When social worker Steve Baisch asked Tien what he would wish for if he could wish for anything in the world, he didn’t have to think twice.

Tien smiled.

“I want to go to Paris, France,” he said weakly, and Steve thought,
Really? Paris?
“That sounds wonderful!” he said, smiling, as technicians hooked Tien up to the machine.

It was time to start dialysis.

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Before making this wish, Tien listened to the wishes other children on dialysis were making.

“I’m going on a Macy’s shopping spree,” said one little boy, hooked to another dialysis machine near Tien, just a few days before. “When my dialysis is done, I’ll get out my laptop and show you pictures of the things I want to get.”

Tien smiled, imagining what it would be like to wander the
endless aisles of the department store, clothes, shoes, and toys at his fingertips. But then, through his imagination, came the sounds and scents of Paris, the stories from his siblings, the voice of his grandfather telling him how he had met Tien’s grandmother in the world’s most romantic city.

While studying law at the University of Paris, Tien’s grandmother, Theresa, met his grandfather, Yin, when Yin was attending École Nationale Des Ponts et Chaussées—National School of Bridges and Roads—the world’s oldest civil engineering school. They had both grown up on the small island of Tahiti but had never met, and together, learned about and fell in love with the foods of France, a passion they passed down to their nine-year-old grandson.

As Tien’s dialysis machine grabbed blood from his body, circling and placing it back inside his veins, his mom watched and thought of her own mother, Theresa, who had passed away before Tien was born. Twenty-two years ago, when Lillian left her Berkeley home to live with her mother for a month in Hawaii, where Theresa lived the last of her days near her sister and her best friend, Lillian never imagined that two decades later, she would be holding the hand of another loved one hooked to dialysis, the small hand of her young son.

Lillian thought of her mother fondly as she remembered the serious, intellectual nature of Theresa, the goody-two-shoes reputation she had as a devout student at the University of Paris. Her father, Yin, on the other hand, was a shoot-from-the-hip kind of guy, a man who loved life and didn’t take it too seriously unless he needed to.

Brought up on a French-speaking island by parents who spoke only Chinese, Yin could trick his parents into believing his grade school progress. He’d offer up phrases like, “
Vers le haut de la colline, un, deux, trois, quatre, Napoléon est parti en Egypte”
—“Up the
hill … one, two, three, four … Napoleon went to Egypt”—disjointed sentences combining unrelated words spoken with beautiful French pronunciation—when his parents insisted he demonstrate his progress of learning the language. They believed every word.

Yin’s blood ran through Tien, even as it left and re-entered Tien’s body. Forced to sit for three-hour stretches every day, Tien suppressed his love of playing games and running outdoors with his friends. He needed to push those thoughts, that life, away for those hours. Just like his grandfather, he was serious when he needed to be, and he was devout like his grandmother.

With his head tilted perfectly still, blood flowing, Tien sat for every long dialysis session, studying with his hospital teacher, Alice Cassman, listening to stories from his mom, his favorite about how his grandfather fooled his parents into believing he could speak French.

Tien laughed, shaking just slightly to avoid disturbing his central line, as this story took him out of the world he was in and into the “normal world,” the world he had fully been a part of just a couple of months before—a world where evenings were spent playing games with his family and the biggest concern of the day was deciding which friend to play with after school.

Now, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, when Lillian or Bruno took Tien to dialysis, they left that world when the hospital doors slid closed behind them, leaving “normal” outside along with the bright, California sun. The sounds of cars taking people to and from work and school, dance lessons, and soccer were on the other side of those doors as Tien and his parents made their way to the pediatric dialysis center, where this other world existed.

Dreaming of Paris or a day at Macy’s brought these kids to that other world, that “normal” place, and kept them there through their long hours hooked to dialysis machines.

“I want a French culinary experience,” Tien had said to pediatric nephrology doctor, Dr. Anthony Portale, before sharing his wish with Steve.

Their parents found different ways to cope and bring “normal” back into their lives when they could. From the time Tien was admitted to the hospital, Lillian had found comfort in the other families who were part of this new, unfamiliar world, a world where life could be taken at any moment, where a single moment could change everything.

Lillian was fascinated during long, sleepless nights by another mom with a sick child, who told stories of her truck-driving days—the night she ventured down haunted sections of highway, the time she carried a light truckload of ping-pong balls through a windy section of the Rocky Mountains.

Small talk in the halls, hugs from other parents who had a deep, mutual understanding of their situation, bridged the gap between these two worlds for Lillian and Bruno and became necessary distractions.

Visits from strangers and new friends in the dead of the night reminded Lillian and Bruno that they were not in this alone. The night they got a phone call telling them to rush their son to the nearest emergency room was not uncommon in this world, nor were sharing their concerns and telling their story to other families living similar nightmares just down the halls.

Tien, Lillian, Bruno, Yune, and Vanina left the comfort of their safe, normal world, their previous life, abruptly with no warning.

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