Guess what came in the mail today?
Ava’s official US birth certificate listing J and I as her parents. We’ve been waiting (impatiently) on this since her readoption was completed so it was a very pleasant surprise to open the mailbox and see it waiting there for me.
I was a little weepy when I opened it up and saw it. This means a lot to us – on both an emotional level and on a practical level – and is the main reason we went through all the hassle of readopting her in Virginia. We didn’t have to since her adoption was complete and legal in China but this was the only way we could get a VA birth certificate so we sucked it up and did it.
I don’t know why but (emotionally) it makes everything seem a bit more real to see it laid out in black and white on an official US document naming us as her parents. I guess because we’re conditioned over the years that a birth certificate is like the gold standard of identity documents but it also hit me that she now has a birth certificate just like everybody else’s – one that lists her parents’ names and isn’t in a foreign language requiring explanations and translations every time we have to produce it. Before this she only had a Chinese birth certificate which truly pained me every single time I looked at it. Trust me, it’s really, really hard to look at your much loved and desperately wanted child’s documents and see the words ‘Abandoned – Parents Unknown.’ I know what they mean but I just wanted to protest and say that her (now) parents ARE known. Not to mention that I didn’t want her or us to have to answer nosy questions down the road when we did have to provide her birth certificate for things like school enrollment nor did I want that on file for anyone to see – if it’s painful for me to see it then I have to assume it will be for her at some point in her future.
I don’t know – is this a big deal to others or is it just me? Will it matter to Ava? I don’t know that either. Maybe she’ll think we’re trying to wipe away her Chinese birth identity or maybe she won’t even think of it at all. Regardless, it’s a big deal to us (J and I) right now (we’re her parents, y’all – officially!) and we’re happy that the commonwealth finally got around to sending it only 5 months after the judge signed the final order of adoption.
Not that I was counting or anything.