WHO: Mateo Huerta WHEN: Morning of January 31 WHERE: His bedroom SUMMARY: Mateo wakes from a dream about finding out he, or some other version of himself, is adopted and he compares it to his own story. WARNINGS: None
When Mateo woke, it was in a bit of a daze. He found himself torn between two worlds, the one that he was blearily blinking to be able to see in front of him and the one that he'd left behind in his dreams.
Mateo had been six-years-old when he found out that he had been adopted. Having had been brought into a family that looked so much like him given their shared heritage, he likely could have gone his entire life not realizing had his parents chose not to tell him. While it had been an angry outburst courtesy of his sister that had prompted the talk, he knew that his parents would have told him eventually. It wasn't the sort of conversation one could have with a child before a certain age. Even at six, he'd struggled with the idea of his parents not being the ones who had brought him into this world and that there was a man and woman out there somewhere that had. It hadn't occurred to him at the time that he might have met them at one point, that he could have biological siblings in the world somewhere that he had no idea existed thanks to the nature of the closed adoption.
It had been difficult for him to comprehend at the time, but with age and maturity, he had taken in this new information and adjusted. Now almost eighteen, Mateo knew that his parents -- Alejandro and Anita Huerta -- were his parents. They may not have a biological link, but they were the people who had chosen him, raised him, and loved him unconditionally. Both of his parents had told him that his biological parents had been good people that had simply wanted to give him his best chance and that was fine and well to him. It did nothing to bolster his desire to know them; he may have had some curiosity about the man and woman that created him, but that was where their involvement in his life had ended.
The dream that he'd just had, though, had also featured him being told that he'd been adopted, but the conversation had gone very differently. Rather than accepting it and continuing to live with his adopted parents in happiness, he had left to go on a quest to find his parents. He had wanted to know where he had come from, convinced that it would give him a clue on how to proceed in his life and answer questions that he had.
Sitting up, Mateo rubbed his eyes. Never once had he thought that he would make an effort to dig up information on who his biological mother and father were. He hadn't even looked into what would need to go into such a hunt. He might have been the child in question, but it didn't change the fact that his adoption had been closed. There had been no communication in the years since he had become a Huerta; he didn't even know what his surname had been in the few moments between birth and the signing of the adoption papers. In the dream, though, he had been consumed with this need to know. He knew that it would be a difficult journey, but he was convinced it would be worth it.
Mateo didn't know what it meant. He had never been one to think too deeply about the meanings of dreams, even if he did occasionally rehash the details with willing listeners if they were particularly odd. This hadn't felt like just another strange dream, though. It had felt real, from the emotions to the warm air to the cool metal when he'd held the medallion that had given him a clue as to where to start. Was this some part of his subconscious wanting him to look into who his birth parents were?
"Mijo, are you up yet?"
The sound of his mother's voice pulled him from his thoughts. A glance toward his cell phone told him that he'd snoozed one too many times and needed to hurry or he was going to be late.
"SÃ, mamá," Mateo called back, though his tone made it obvious that he'd only just woken up moments before. She'd see through that and would almost definitely make a joke when he made his way down to what smelled like pancakes. "I'm up, I'm up."