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Yes, I am a mother. I have been a mother for over 40 years, now, and I will continue to be a mother until the day I am carried to the funeral home. I AM a mother.

No, I don't have my children living with me any more. However, I DID have my youngest and her four children living with me last year. They now live with her new husband, his three children, and his mother. However, the fact that she now has a new husband and more children and a new mother-in-law still does not make her any less my child.

You see, once a woman becomes a mother, the only thing that stops her from being a mother is the death of all her children, or her own death. I'm not sure that even their deaths would stop her from actually being a mother, any more than her death would stop her children from being her children. That is a relationship based on birth, not on life or death.

So I am a mother. To my oldest, my son, I am the one who gave him life, taught him the joy of reading, and tried to talk him out of marrying the woman he had chosen. I am the one who has, since his marriage to that woman, come to see that she is the best wife he could possibly have chosen, and I regret my opposition to their marriage. And I have told them both that I am glad they didn't listen to me. He now calls me Mom.

To my middle child, my older daughter, I am the one who not only gave her life, but taught her to read, to write, to talk, and to do most of the household chores, but I am also the one who "left them" when I left her Daddy and filed for divorce. She may never forgive me that I could no longer live with him and could not afford to take her with me. But she is still my daughter, and I am still her mother. She still calls me Mommy, but not usually lovingly.

And to my youngest, who is most like me of the three children, I am the one who has heard all her problems (at least those she was willing to share), her joys, and her sorrows. She comforted me when my aunt died when she was still a pre-schooler, and she also comforted me recently when my only sister died. She still lovingly calls me Mommy.

Since I remarried and my husband has children of his own, I am also now a step-mother. However, I am not close to any of his four, although I am fairly close to the youngest son's wife. He has a carry-over relationship with his second ex's children, and one of them is now living next door, and we have become good friends, after a very rocky start. Her children call me MawMaw, just as all the other grandchildren do.

Mother, Mommy, Mom, MawMaw-these are all names for one of the greatest (and hardest) jobs in the world: being a mother. I AM a mother-and proud of it!

Learn more about this author, Barbara A. Black.
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