Today is my wife’s birthday. It’s a bittersweet day, and not because the candles on her cake number more than 40 – my wife is adopted.

Let me rephrase that: today is the most wonderful day in the world because my wife is adopted. On January 14, 1972 four people made a very difficult choice, and it was a choice I will be thankful for forever.

Not only was my wife given up by her birth parents, she was chosen by her adoptive parents. I am thankful every day to all 4 of them.

Still, when you’re adopted there is a piece missing, and my wife looks for that piece everyday.

She’s obsessed with who inherited what in our family. She’s always saying how our boys have my grandmother’s nose, or my dad’s legs. We know who my family is, so there’s a frame of reference there. Still, there’s a side of the equation that is empty. People often ask where our boys get their crazy curls from, and we look at each other blankly.

Now that we have children together, it’s not just my wife that is missing a backstory, my boys are missing half of theirs too.

Read the rest of this story at Babble.com

Tags: adoption, babble, personal