The Pages of Personhood

Speaking of paper that defines us.  At about four o'clock on a Friday morning not long ago, a very dear professor of mine welcomed a new child into the world.  Just minutes old, this baby was assigned its very first piece of paperwork, a document which confirms a legal identity for the state and all parties with whom the baby does business, basically forever.

I guess it must be true that people existed before birth certificates, but the idea of not having one now seems absurd.  How did people verify their identity when they applied for a passport?  How did kids register for school?  What in the world, in the days before birth certificates, did a Notary Public do for a living? 

A Birth Certificate is a funny thing.  It is a piece of paper which one must have in order to acquire a lot of other pieces of paper.  It is important, not just for a person beginning their life, but for any person at ay stage of life.  It establishes, immediately, one's citizenship, one's name (as well as initial weight and height), and one's parentage.  Even so, if you asked me to locate mine today, I'd have to tear my whole house apart.  Clearly, it's a significant piece of paper, but it is significant in a "put it in a drawer and never look at it" kind of way. 

Some people spend their entire lives trying to escape the place they came from.  Others are so consumed by the place of their origin, their family history, their cultural comfort zone, that they never progress.  Neither person would deny that birth narratives are significant.  The Christian faith retells its favorite birth story every December, of a man born under most unusual circumstances, who throughout his life was tied to the place from whence he had come: Jesus of Nazareth.

I've successfully written this whole post without in any way identifying my professor's new progeny, which was at least a little harder than I at first imagined it would be.  The child's already got a paper trail, no point in prematurely creating a digital footprint to match.