She used to celebrate her adoption day like a birthday, just like she used to celebrate her actual birthday. It was the day she came home to a true family, was loved, and welcomed, and held close and dear.
It was the day she finally had a true mother, a mother who loved and claimed and wanted her. I realized at some point walking along out there, that her adoption birthday would have fallen on Easter. How fitting.
It is probably a special day for many adopted children, the particular day when they are plucked from being some nameless Baby Girl #15 or whoever it is you are when you are living under a temporary name that nobody commits to or believes in. And you can’t really have a temporary name. It is the very symbol of you.
Your name is the trestle of your soul.
And walking across Spain in those last few weeks towards the end, I thought of something she said one afternoon in our New York apartment. She had been talking to a friend, and her adoption had come up, and when she came into ou…
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