Long ago and far away, I thought I could not be a mom, much less a good mom. That while I could be a mother, that mom would not be me. There was something nurturing about it, something of giving over one’s self, something treacly and saccharine, something fundamentally at odds with my persona. So many of the messages we get about what a good mother is- self-sacrificing, creative in the domestic sense, pastel perfect, organized- are so at odds with me. I could not see myself smiling and laughing off a kitchen disaster, having perfectly ordered bins of craft materials, smilingly brushing back hair from a fevered brow or singing just the right song to take a small mind off a skinned knee. I saw myself as a wire monkey mother, completely incapable of providing soft and squishy mommy comfort.

We had a parent project to do, and I put it off as long as possible. We had to write you a ‘love letter’ telling you why we love being your parents, to be posted in the hallway. And I delayed, and squirmed, and chafed, and I could not figure out why. As I sat there staring at the lined heart shape, waiting to be filled with meticulous print that you could read instead of cursive, I was blank. How can I explain to you in words you can grasp how much we love you, and why? How can I express it to you in ways that won’t make the other parents look at you more askance than they already do, my mop-haired little energy ball?

You let me be me. Never once have you looked at me and asked me to be the mom I’m not. You haven’t asked for kid’s music. You haven’t asked for kid’s cuisine. You throw your arms wide and welcome the world your dad and I love. We bounce on your bed and sing ‘Fireflies’ at the top of our lungs. You take my lessons of gender equality in stride. You don’t ace me out of things because I’m a girl. You do tell me when not to look at your computer screen or the book you’re reading because it has spiders and you know I hate spiders not because I’m a girl but because well I just don’t like them. You love my very grown up cooking and delight in watching grown up science shows and cooking shows (in addition to a roster of brain melting kid oriented pablum, natch).

I love you because you are brilliant, and because you are so very smart your challenges to me are because you can understand and you do think deeply, whether it’s about math or history, about religious intolerance or racial injustice, and not that you are merely happy to get a day off of school for MLK Jr. Day and I have to struggle to get you to understand why he was important. Your brain fascinates me, as you work like a normal kid to figure out the order of the world- from house to neighborhood, town to state, state to country, country to continent, continents to earth- yet at the same time you are deeply interested in the revolutionary and civil wars. I love that you are 6 years old and can bloody well remember that both those wars occurred and that they were DIFFERENT, which gives you a leg up on some 20% of high school students according to the test data. I love that you never made me remember a bajillion species of dinosaurs. I love your kindness, and compassion, your devotion to your friends and your awareness of the world and needs beyond your own little sphere.

Someone told me, when I was pregnant, that you would be the ultimate clay I would work. But now, as I reflect on why I love you, little man, I would argue that in raising you I am shaping myself. You make me better, Sean, and not ’someone else’, and I love you for it.