By Kaitlin Derringer

“Best mom in the world!! Am I right?!!” My arms were in the air, mouth open in a grin, asking him to agree with me—I am known for nothing if not a bit of excessive emotion and cheeseball antics. But I knew I had said the wrong thing as soon as I saw my 9-year-old son’s willing smile change to darting eyes and a downcast face. My announcement of fresh baked hot pretzels for a snack and the moment of pure joy combined with smiles up to his eyeballs was broken. It was too much to ask him to say it. I was not the best mom in his world. Not because I am not amazing—I am—but his biological mom died when he was seven months old and he has guarded her memory and her place fiercely for each of his nine years since.

In first grade, he used her high school backpack instead of his own. He was the only first grader at drop-off sporting a faded, blue Jansport covered in pins from the 80s. It was too big for his smaller-than-most frame. The shoulder straps slipped down his skinny arms and the pack itself went from his neck to the back of his thighs. But he carried it loyally, taking a piece of her every day to school and hopefully deriving some comfort from the reminder of her in a world otherwise too big for him. When he finally did ask for a different backpack, it was mostly just to keep that one safe from apple juice spills and stray markers. A responsible choice; in some ways he was the oldest first grader I had ever seen.

***

The pretzels steam and then grow cold… not nearly the treat they could have been. My son picks the coarse grains of salt off of his one by one. We eat in half silence, talking about recess and lunch. Those are always the favorite subjects of the day. It is easy between us, but with a lingering discomfort just beginning to dissipate.

I used to be better at avoiding these awkward moments. For a year when he was seven, it was just me, him, and my husband. He didn’t even call me mom that first year, but even with that, it was easier. I was the equivalent of a nice aunt who picked him up from school and made sure he had snacks in his lunch box. I was an organizer, a nurturer, the chief cook and bottlewasher. And, unbeknownst to him, I was working harder than ever because of this new life under my care. But I wasn’t his true mom, not actually. I was Kaitlin.  

Over time that changed; I stepped into my new role as a mother, as we let our family slowly adjust from dad and son, to dad, mom, and son. Friends started to report he asked them, “Where’s my mom?” at get-togethers and actually meant me! We were in a limbo—he would refer to my role as mom but still call me by my first name. “Do you know my mom, Kaitlin?” 

Slowly my name slipped away, and in its place I found that consistent: “Mom.” It was beautiful to hear that word… it felt like progress, hard earned and slow. 

The birth of our daughter the next year brought a new round of discrepancies in my heart. I thought often of my son’s mother carrying him, feeling him move, concerned if her health would last. I would sometimes talk to her as I nursed my new baby. I’d let this long-gone mother know I was taking care of her son and would be a better mother to him for having brought my own child into the world. I marveled, relieved, at how the oxytocin now coursing through my veins after the birth of my daughter overflowed seamlessly onto my son as well.  

***

My daughter is one and a half now and our language is full of hyperbole toward each other.  “Who’s my best baby girl?!” She points, smiling broadly, at herself. She knows she’s my best baby. And then she points at me—my cue to say “And who’s your best mommy?” She smiles and laughs and hugs me—no reserve, no love saved for a mother lost. 

These are moments I never had with my son, moments that would not elicit the same exuberant smiles and response. But still, I always want to bring him in. I want to give him that mushy gushy mothering experience he never had a chance at having. The love that, surely, his mother would have wanted for him; if not given by her own hands and arms and mouth, then surely by mine?  

But I need to tread lightly, gently. One too-quick moment can set us back. And it is hard, but I need all of the hardest pieces to be mine because he has already had too much to wrestle through in his nine years. 

It is a risky world out there. You could lose a backpack due to a ketchup spill over lunch, or a mom before you ever really knew her. In a world like this, you need a special person to have your back, to pick up the pieces on the bad days and exult with you on the good ones. You might need the mom right in front of you, even if it is not the one you wish you had.  

And so I am always there, with hot pretzels for a snack or a morning snuggle before school. I hold him and brush my hands through his straw stick-up-in-the-back hair and try to imagine holding him as an infant the way I hold my daughter now. I try to conjure up an imagined world where he always had a mother and that mother was always me. Somehow this helps me love him deeper and grab onto that gut feeling of “mineness” that comes so easily with my daughter and that holds children in their mother’s sphere with the undeniability of planets in motion. 

And maybe it makes me feel a little less guilty for how easy it is between my infant daughter and I as I nurse her to sleep, knowing that my son spent those same months in the NICU when he needed more than anything to be held by his mother.   

My son is now mine, and he always will be from this point forward. But I am not the best mom in the world… at least not to him. And so I make space. Lots and lots of space. We create picture books of his mother and remember her on Mother’s Day and in February on the day she died. I mostly remember not to ask him if I am the best mom in the world because for him that is a trick question that sends him into a tailspin of divided loyalties.  And by making that space for him to have other loyalties, other loves, maybe I am becoming at least a better mom in the world. And  one of the best moms in his world.  

Guest essay written by Kaitlin Derringer. Kaitlin lives in Pennsylvania with her family, AKA Team Derringer. She used to bike, hike, and camp solo but now she does it with kids traipsing along, slower but noticing more. Kaitlin believes that the busy world usually has things backwards and strives to make room for things like uncertainty and doing less. She is a lover of adventures, people, books, and campervans.

Photo by Ruth Gyllenhammer.