I became a New Jerseyan twice, in the two ways most people do. I was born in NJ, and was a native of our fair state from day one; I also moved to New Jersey after stints in Pennsylvania and New York, and did the paperwork that made me a resident of NJ (when I turned in my NY license at the DMV in East Orange, they still had my license number on file from when I’d first passed my driving test back when).
My son had to take a more circuitous route to join our ranks. He was born in Texas, to a birth-mom who had been matched with my wife and me through a domestic adoption agency. Because every state has its own laws governing inter-state adoptions, we had to wait several days after his release from the hospital to get approval to fly him out of Texas; and even though we brought him straight to Newark International Airport and our home in Maplewood, he still wasn’t a Jersey Boy.
In fact, he wasn’t even officially ours.
Texas has some of the most adoption-friendly laws in the U.S., but one provision mandates a six-month period where the baby remains a ward of the adoption agency. We were 100% his parents from the minute we laid eyes on him, but on paper it was a tryout. We did not have a birth certificate for our son, couldn’t get him a Social Security number, and couldn’t even legally enforce the name we’d given him. There was a prescribed regimen of social-worker visits and paperwork to be filed with the adoption agency; missing any of them would threaten our standing as his parents.
In practice, none of this was overly difficult, and it only bothered me if I thought about it (which I tried not to). We loved him and cared for him every second of every day in NJ, but there was always the vaguely annoying bureaucratic spectre that, technically, he belonged to people in another state who were judging whether or not we were fit to be his parents.
Last week, that spectre evaporated. We took an early morning flight out of EWR, heading back to Texas just shy of 7 months since we’d become a trio there. In a short but emotional ceremony at the family court building, we were sworn in and told the judge that we would love this kid forever and continue to take care of him. Our baby boy took the cue and gave the judge a big smile; he smiled back and made it official.
So this time when the plane touched down in Newark, our row of seats had three official New Jerseyans. Nothing is substantially different in how we feel about our son or how our family works day to day. But there is a very real difference knowing that our relationship to him is the same on paper as it is in practice.
Story by Brian Glaser, who wrote regularly for The Local, is Barista Kids’ newest contributor.
Congratulations! My son is adopted, too, from over seas, and although the judge in his country approved the adoption, I couldn’t help feeling at any moment the whole thing could disintegrate. I couldn’t wait to touch down in Newark International Airport. Then it would be real.
Fantastic–has the baby blogged yet?
Congratulations. What a happy ending for your new beginning.
The perfect ending to this chapter of your story.
Congrats! I am an adoptive mom so can relate to your experience. We adopted in IL when we were living there and also had to wait the 6 mo.s to have it finalized. A great relief when that waiting period is over. While I didn’t really have a problem with the various hoops we had to jump through, including the fingerprinting, social work visits, medical exam, etc., I couldn’t help but think perhaps we should require all perspective parents to go through that scrutiny before having kids.