Sprout is starting to understand what “adoption” means. Daily, she tells us “you’re my family. My forever family. I’m going to be adopted,” or some variation on that theme. She’s anxious for it to happen soon and be official. Having a kid go through termination of parental rights is hard but having one who is excited to be our forever kid is pretty damn amazing. I’m so utterly honored to be wanted by this incredible little human.
We have asked her any number of times if she wanted to change her name by adding our last name and the answer had always been “no,” because she liked her name. But suddenly, on our drive back from Delaware, she announced she wanted to share Mommy and Daddy’s last name since we are going to be her forever family. I keep finding myself awed by being wanted. We’ll certainly have more conversations with her about whether she wants our last name, but the fact she’s even considering it is cool. I want to be sure she makes the choice and it’s not influenced by us.
I have mixed feelings about her changing her name. Her last name is Burmese and I’d love for her to be able to be identified as such by a last name that sounds like her heritage. But at the same time, I’m human, and honored to be wanted. I don’t know how a 4 year old can weigh all the significance associated with a name change. At least I know we will always support her choices regarding her name. If she takes our last name now we’ll support her changing it back if she feels so inclined when she’s older. Or vice versa. Her name is hers.
The fact that she’s anxious about wanting adoption to happen, like, yesterday, is worrying. I’m sure she’s sensing all my fears and whether she understands them or not, they’re affecting her and I don’t want them to. But I can’t help it. I’m terrified something will go wrong and we won’t be able to adopt her. Things go wrong all the time. The agency will sometimes decide they want someone else to adopt a child for a myriad of reasons. I have a friend who was set to adopt a sibling set and had false allegations made against her between termination of parental rights and adoption and she wasn’t allowed to adopt. There’s one adoption case worker with whom we have a contentious relationship from a past case, and we are praying he’s not assigned to us. Anything – and I mean anything – could happen. We won’t count on adopting her until we are signing the papers. Then I’ll let myself believe it’s actually happening.
Until then, I’ll indulge Sprout when she asks if so-and-so can please be invited to her adoption. She named a family friend this morning and asked for her to be there so I’ll abide by Sprout’s wishes. It’ll be her day. I want it to look exactly how she wants it to.
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