There’s a video sweeping You Tube from the Ukrainian version of America’s Got Talent. In the clip, a woman stands before a pallet of sand and shapes it into a variety of images that tell the story of World War II. It’s called sand animation.

I know, I know, right? It’s bad enough that the average monthly income for a Ukrainian household is about what I spent on dairy products last week. Now we have to subject them to our insipid reality television concepts, too?

But whatever. The chick is mesmerizing, and it’s a very cool example of art in progress. I know this because the Diva watched it at school and then made me watch it with her at home.

So I’m sitting at my computer desk watching it, with the Diva perched in front of me, and suddenly she says, “She looks like my mom!”

The woman in the video is thin and pale, with long shiny black hair and a sad face. She does’t look anything like the Diva’s birth mother, except for long black hair and sad face. But what really made me freeze was that she forgot, for the first time ever, to say birth mom. She just said mom. She looks like my mom.

And just like that, I’m jealous. How sick is that? I mean, I’ve got this girl. She’s my child. I get to kiss her sweet head every night. And I’m jealous of the woman who can’t?

Such is the emotional angst of becoming a mom through adoption. I have the paperwork, the photos, the memories – I have everything but the DNA.

The Pterodactyl has been asking questions, too – but his curiosity stems more from his insane desire to know everything about everything in the universe. The Diva worries about her birth mother. She wonders if she’s safe, and if she thinks about the child she gave away. She wonders if she’s happy.

I don’t think she worries about me that way, which is normal – she shouldn’t have to worry about me. I want her to think I’m Wonderwoman until the unfortunate day when she realizes how bad I am at math.

Still. It makes me want to tether her to me. I want to prick both our fingers with a needle and mix our blood together. I want to carry her everywhere, and feel her slender arms around my neck forever.

When she uttered those words – She looks like my mom – an hour passed by in the span of a second, and in my head I said, “I am your mom! I don’t look like that at all! I took you to the beach when you were six months old and put your toes in the water. I heard you say dada for the first time. I cried when you cried, and kissed your dirty toes and scrubbed them clean in a bubble bath. I taught you how to make a strawberry smoothie and how to ride a bike. I am your mom!”

But this is what I said: “You’re right, honey. She does.” Because that’s part of being a mom, too.