Leading up to finalization I was thinking about so much with our adoption journey and J. I couldn't help but think that even though she had no idea that Wednesday had extra meaning, I wish that she knew how he was, who he was. I wish she was here to see him grow up, experience some of the joy that we get to every day. To know he's happy, safe, loved. To know that we love her, that we are forever grateful to her, but that we also support her.
Until you've been through an adoption, whether your own journey or alongside someone else's, you never really understand the complex emotions that come along it all. To feel the honor, joy, unworthiness of raising a child not born to you, but to also feel the pain, hurt, and wonder how birth families are doing. To be happy to finalize, make permanent a child's placement into your family and home, but to know that it means there is a mom, a dad, a family out there who is missing and loving that same child. It's the ultimate in learning that you can experience multiple emotions at once, and a huge lesson in empathy.
For some, finalization is much anticipated and anxiously awaited. However, we've always felt that it would happen when it happened (the fact of the matter is, the courts are slow). Because nothing could really change (we are well past the 90 day revocation period), we've always felt that we just wanted to enjoy our son and when the last paper was signed, it would be joyous, but would not change how we feel about keeping our hearts open to an open adoption, or birth families, or Ephraim. And when our date came, we enjoyed it very much!
Court was scheduled for 10a, prime nap time, so Ephraim had 10 min. of sleep before we scooped him up, dressed him up, and headed out. My parents, Col's parents, our nieces and my sister-in-law accompanied us. Even as we went through security, one of the guards was joking around with us and guessed correctly that we were there for an adoption. He said our judge was a great guy, one who went to his church (yay!). Once we got upstairs, we weren't there long when the clerk said the judge was ready, and we made our way into the surrogacy courtroom. We sat at a table with the judge and our lawyer, confirmed our names, date of births, etc, and signed one paper. Then he shook our hands and said, "It's final!" The judge was great, talking to Ephraim, shaking his hand too. And the whole ordeal took 5 minutes. It's funny, after having our entire lives as one giant open book, signing tons of documents and paperwork, it only took one signature. Then we got some pictures and took over the room for a few minutes until Ephraim had had enough and wanted to go home and sleep (unfortunately that meant no smiles from the man of the hour for pictures).
We spent the rest of the day with family and had dinner with everyone at our house that evening. It was the perfect way to celebrate Ephraim and his Family Day. And when we tell him of it for years to come (if he cares to know), may he know that while he became a permanent part of our family that day, he did not lose a single part of his birth family. His birth certificate may hold our names now, but we will never withhold the truth of his background from him. And I hope that for him, Family Day will mean the love of his entire family, birth and adoptive.
I'm bored guys, so I'm going to blow bubbles.
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