Tragedy!

A few weeks ago Catalina met with her mom for only the second time in her life.  We met her on the steps of the courthouse in Bucharest.  Catalina was filled with emotions that day...happy, sad, nervous.  You see when Catalina came to the Girl's Transition House she did not have a birth certificate or any form of identification (in Romania it is called a bulletin).  Costel, our Romanian president, made a couple hundred phone calls and located her mom in Bucharest.  She and her current husband agreed to help us.  Thus the meeting at the courthouse.  That day, we went to the mayor's house in the sector that she was born in to try to get a copy of her original birth certificate.  Of course they wouldn't give it to us because we didn't have any act of identification saying that she really was and is Catalina.  Her mom's word was not good enough.  To make a very long story short, the mayor sent us to the town (Rosiori de Vede) where she was registered and we were able to get her a provisional one-year bulletin.  Now we can go back and get the original birth certificate.  The other thing that makes this whole story very interesting is that Catalina's mom is deaf and mute.  She is able to speak/mumble a little bit, but because of her disability is illiterate and doesn't write.

Catalina and her mom

So, why is this such a tragedy?  I can't imagine being in Catalina's place, being 26 years old and meeting my mom for the first time.  Catalina went home and met her mom one other time, however, she didn't like it and missed her friends at the orphanage, so she went back.  Why did her mom not fight for her?  A question that I don't have an answer to.  My prayer is that this meeting we helped to spur on will be the beginning of a relationship between mother and daughter.