Love and Sleep (or lack thereof)

Over the last six months in my household, we have been reliving the joy
of those sleepless nights caring for our daughters as newborns. Literally, as my
oldest would say. My husband and I have been awakened many times a
night by our youngest, needing us like she did at five weeks old, to cuddle
and soothe her, despite the fact that she is five years old. It’s been hard
on us all, well me mostly, as I sleep closest to the door. My youngest flies
open our bedroom door and lets the bright hall light shine in my eyes,
which are shut tight, hoping it’s all part of a dream. Like most parents I
know, sleep is a delicacy which I look forward to indulging in each night.
I had imagined that after my youngest slept through the night at three
months old, that my next sleepless nights would come sometime in the
teenage years, when she willingly broke curfew and was up to no good. Oh
man, was I off by a decade!

My daughter’s sleepwalking, which was funny when it started last spring,
with her appearing at night hovering over her sister in bed, has morphed
into full-blown insomnia. While I’ve been so sleepless, I have been
prowling on Google for answers to my youngest’s insomnia, which has led
to my own iPhone induced insomnia. As I lay in bed, awake at 2:00am,
I find myself drifting from the wisdom of the Mayo Clinic, and off into a
wormhole of my own creation.

My searches are often for my daughters’ birth family members whom I do
not yet know. Perhaps, one downside to living in our open adoptions, is
the immense amount of information I have collected, sometimes only tiny
bits, about different family members on our daughters’ birth family’s sides.
I know most of the names on both of our girls’ family trees, at least back to
their great grandparents, but I don’t know much beyond their basic data.
Some family members I know only their nickname, or part of their name.
I search to complete the puzzle to who these people are, and how they fit
into our family.

Usually, my search comes to a screeching halt, either by the limits
of Google to read my mind in the middle of the night, or due to my
realization of the fruitlessness of these searches. I suppose that’s why
my genealogical scavenger hunts are reserved to the sleepless nights, to
the times when my brain doesn’t know any better, than to search for the
answers to questions I do not yet know.

I wonder, what is the question I am searching for. Is it; who are these
people who run through my daughters’ DNA, what part do they play in our
family’s life, or where does my oldest get her love (ok, lust) for Cantaloupe?
These are the questions that may seem important, but they are also
questions that I can easily find answers to, by asking my daughters’ birth
moms and families. I think the question I am searching to answer to is why.
I want to know the why of their adoption stories. Why is the question I will
not be able to answer for my girls. Why is the question that I think haunts
me, late at night on my insomnia induced internet searches. How can I one
day shepherd my girls on their own journey, to answer the question, Why? I
have no idea, and neither does Google.