Witnesses

Today was our witnessing day at the First Family Court of Tijuana. Finally. Finally. Finally. Only seven months after we’d expected it to be. Mum, Maya and I trundled down to the courthouse, met my friend Anna, her daughter Yara, her mother-in-law who drove her, and Yara’s cousin Sophia.

Mum and Anna went in separately to the judge’s secretary and answered questions such as:
How do you know Emma? (My mother laughed)
How long have you known Emma? (My mother laughed again)
Do you think Emma & Ahmed will make good parents? (My mother cried at that one, kind of emotional I guess!) How do you know? Will they treat Maya as their own daughter? Will this adoption be beneficial for the minor? Why? Do Emma or Ahmed abuse alcohol or drugs? Etc, etc.

The next step is to get Maya’s biological mother to sign off her relinquishment of all parental rights, which is to take place next Thursday, and then wait ten working days for … something official, publishing the decree, typing up a letter, twiddling thumbs, etc, and then we can move onto the new birth certificate stage, then the passport application, then the visa application, then… so the theory goes: the trip home. Still many, many weeks away, but it’s starting to almost feel like we might, actually, in fact, perhaps, one day, go home.