Adopting a child is often a long, and costly, process.
And that was the dilemma that Jay Pages and his partner Lisa faced when Jay wanted to adopt Lisa’s daughter Celissa.
Celissa was only two years old when Jay and her mom met for the first time when they were twenty-one years old. The fact that Jay couldn’t officially adopt Celissa always pulled at Lisa because both he and her daughter had hit it off from the start and he raised Celissa as if she was his own biological daughter.
Fast forward to 2016. Celissa was already in college and her stepdad’s birthday was coming up. But she had a gift for him that would make it even more special: her adoption papers!
How was such a feat accomplished? With the help of a legal secretary at Lisa’s gym, both mother and daughter found out that they could work on the adoption papers on their own. They did all the paperwork until only Jay’s signature was needed for the process to officially start.
They wanted to wait until Father’s Day to surprise Jay but it was too far away so they decided to spring the surprise on his birthday instead.
In the accompanying video, Jay can be seen opening a long rectangular box with a silver ribbon on it. He eventually gets to the manila envelope and when he pulls out the papers and realizes what they were, he couldn’t help but break down in tears.
Jay is a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt who runs his own academy and is an accomplished combat athlete as can be seen from his athletic physique. Yet he was sobbing like a baby the whole time when he realized that his long-time dream was finally going to come true.
“It was the happiest moment in my life,” he said. “She’s finally and completely my baby girl. For me, it doesn’t get better than that.”
And what makes it even more special is that just a few years ago, they found out that Jay couldn’t have children of his own. So for Celissa to finally be able to use “Pages” as her official last name meant the world to both of them.