To my friends who are mothers,

To my friends who are mothers,

From the outside, you look the same as before. You wear the same clothes that I’ve always known you to wear. You have the same hairstyle and an even better sense of humor, but now I see the slight rings around your eyes, and there is something in your movement, in your voice that feels softer somehow, stronger somehow.

I see your body stretch and grow and shrink in new ways, and I see you learn to accept the change of it all. I love to hear your birthing stories in detail. I gasp and laugh and marvel at the audacity you have, the audacity it takes to become a mother. The confusion, the pain, the fear, the knowing, the joy, the trauma, the sacrifice. Feeling-like-you-can’t-do-it-you-really-can’t when the reality is you are already there, in the doing.

I see you going to school, I see you starting a new career, I see you learning to shift your whole schedule around nap time and tummy time. I see you mourning newborn cuddles as your maternity leave comes to an end.

Sometimes I can’t help but look at you and think you must know things I don’t — that you must look at rainbows and fruit and animals as if seeing them again for all their wonder.

Suddenly, you get excited to see firetrucks on the road to point out to your son.

The whole world becomes something amazing to share: “See these trees? They breathe out oxygen, and we need oxygen to live.”

You and your children see the ocean and snow and rainbows for exactly what they are — magical.

You let your children run free, happy and laughing, but I see you always watching carefully, veering their little steps away from oncoming traffic.

When your daughter starts crying, we all look around at what might’ve upset her, clueless, but you already know it was because the dog is barking next door. She doesn’t have to tell you these things — somehow, you just know.

I see you try to navigate the ideals of womanhood and the ideals of motherhood while still being true to your core. I see you advance in your career and I see you decide to take a step back. I see you host parties after bedtime and read books in precious moments of solitude. I see you vote. I see you add sprinkles to pancakes and use cookie cutters to shape sandwiches into stars just to add a hint of glee to your child’s world. I see you create traditions just so your child can grow up and know you had traditions.

My friends who are mothers, in every sense of the word, you have this thing that I catch in your eyes. There it is — a sort of shine, a glimmer? When your babies crawl for the first time, when they learn a new word, when they learn to navigate the complexities of friendships — that glimmer is there.

This glimmer shows up again when your babies take their first steps, and the baby’s joy becomes your joy, and I wonder if genuine joy is something that just compounds and doesn’t subtract.

In the uncertainty of soul deconstruction, politics, world affairs, wars, climate concerns, tragedy, you friends of mine who are mothers, you celebrate first steps.

You seem to know that your business and God’s business is generally quite separate, and yet, in the realm of motherhood, your business and God’s business seem to bleed into each other, and they seem to look forward together, looking for something to hope for, something to believe in, like celebrating first steps.

Is that not a bit of God in you that I see — this stubborn hope that you have?

Thank you for adding to the world.

Happy Mother’s Day,