Walking Dreamer and Laughing Frog Boy find challenges and fun

Originally published Saturday, March 4, 2000

By JON HAHN  
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

She was childless and fiftysomething when she took in an infant Indian boy without reservation.

Caroline Orr, who also goes by the name Walking Dreamer, seems unperturbed by the perpetual motions of her foster son, whom she's dubbed Laughing Frog Boy, as he runs through their small Magnolia house in pursuit of the family dog.

"Whenever I've been able to accomplish something, I always tell myself: 'Not bad for a half-breed!' " she said, smiling across the kitchen table. Her great-great-grandparents on both sides married non-Indians, she said. One side of the family is from the Colville tribal group, and one grandfather was from the Lillooett Band, a horse trainer who left his tribe in British Columbia and married Caroline's grandmother here.

Many people see her across a desk at the University of Washington, where Caroline is manager of program operations in the Department of Architecture. It's perhaps the most demanding position of the 10 or so university jobs she's held since coming to Seattle with her former husband.

And she is pursuing a foster-parent-to-adoption program with the boy, not only as a single mom but also a full-time administrator and a professional artist whose prints, sculptures and glass art are known throughout the Northwest. Much of her art is built around mythical themes from her native heritage.

Her adopted name of Walking Dreamer tells a little of the gentle humor behind the ready smile. "I used to have an personal voicemail message that usually said that I was probably 'walking Dreamer,' my dog. And pretty soon people began calling me Walking Dreamer!"

As for the name "Laughing Frog Boy," it seemed most appropriate for an always-smiling infant who loved to bounce up and down in his spring-mounted infant seat, Caroline said. He's still smiling, bouncing and running much of the time.

"Dreamer was a little jealous when the boy first came, but they've become great friends. She always checks on him when he's sleeping. And she taught him how to 'hunt' our cats, which is a game they all play."

Motherhood is more demanding and more satisfying than her art career or her full-time day job, she said. "I always wanted children," said the eldest of three sisters, who grew up riding horses and roping cattle on a Colville Indian Reservation ranch. Caroline married "right out of college in 1965" (bachelor's degree in art, University of Washington), and followed her husband's studies to the University of Manitoba.

There she earned a bachelor's of fine arts in printmaking and worked for eight years before returning to Seattle and the U-Dub, where she again continued working while she earned still another degree in painting.

But it wasn't until her father had to come over the mountains for cancer therapy that Caroline, already divorced, thought about children.

"My father stayed with me awhile, and we really got to know one another . . . much more than when I was younger. And he would say things like: 'You'd make a good mother.' And, 'It's a shame you don't have children; maybe you should adopt some.' "

After her father died several years ago, Caroline began making inquiries about adoption. "My own tribe didn't support me," she said of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation. But through the Ina Maka program of the United Indians of All Tribes here, she was able to sign up for state-sanctioned pre-parenting courses.

"I've always teased (Caroline) about how much she reads when she wants to know about something," said her close friend, Louise Edmonds of Seattle. "And you should've seen all the books she got and read cover to cover before she got the boy. Of course, the books can't prepare you for everything -- I know; I raised three boys -- but she has responded well to the challenge of a single mom raising a very active little boy."

The artist-mother who bought the boy an artist's easel for Christmas has a home decorated with beautiful Indian artifacts, her own work and his paintings.

The brightly painted small house, across 36th Avenue West from Army Reserve headquarters at Fort Lawton, is an interactive idea factory, jammed with baskets, books, artwork and toys and filled with music and the noise of three parrots and the whirlwinds of a small boy playing with Dreamer, the transplanted reservation dog, and the three cats.

Her foster son, who is from the Gros Ventre tribe, an offshoot of the Algonquins transplanted to Montana, has almost waist-length raven-black hair and long eyelashes. "He's a real charmer! He has lots of little girlfriends at school and day care," said Caroline, whom he calls Mom.

She was about to have his hair cut for the first time several weeks ago, because of "comments from people about 'what a beautiful little girl you have,' " Caroline said. "But after I talked to his godmother, I learned how important his hair is to his Indian identity," she said. Besides, he now brushes his own hair as they start their busy days.

On weekdays, after day care and alternative preschool, he's picked up by Caroline. "Usually we roam a bit through the University Village nearby. He knows most of the merchants and workers there by name," she said.

In their free time, when they're not doing some hands-on artwork or other activity at home, "we go to the Burke Museum or the zoo -- he loves the zoo -- or we just hang out together," Caroline said. They live not far from the Daybreak Star Arts Center at the tip of Discovery Park, where Caroline's artwork frequently has been displayed.

For all her academic degrees and work experience, Caroline has found motherhood a constant learning experience. Even coming from a ranching family, where riding horses and branding cattle was part of the lifestyle, didn't prepare her for this newest challenge.

"I'd never even changed a diaper before he came into my life," she said, rolling her eyes. And then there have been all the childhood health emergencies, those late-night, 103-degree temperatures, and even some corrective kidney surgery. "I've gotten lots of advice from my friend Louise and from my sisters, Margaret and Veronica, who have children," Caroline said.

"But I've learned a lot from him, too," she conceded. "He has a wonderful sense of humor. Not long ago, we were trying to clean up a house that very much looked like a boy and a dog and three cats had turned it upside down, and he and one of the cats were rolled up inside one of the Navajo rugs and Dreamer was barking at them and I was trying to clean around them. I finally shouted over their noise: 'Is all we do around this house is have fun?'

"And a little boy's voice from inside the rolled-up rug yelled back: 'YES!' "

P-I columnist Jon Hahn writes three times a week. Contact him at 206-448-8317 or jonhahn@seattle-pi.com