It's funny how quickly being a mom overwhelmed my identity. Like, two years ago, I was just a person, then last year I was a pregnant person and that was a little different, but mostly I was still sleeping all night. Then last fall, I spent forever pushing that baby out, but in the seconds between he's not here yet, and he's here forever, I became a mom and I am infinitely different. It is all-consuming.

I know now, a bit more intimately, what I should have been thanking my mom for all these years. Before I had Duke, I thought the nice stuff she did for me, like cutting the crusts off my sandwiches even though I am 28 damn years old and that one time she ran the car into the ditch while trying to help me open a bag of warheads while driving, were the epitome of kindly mom duties. Like, happy mother's day, Mom. Those things? You rock.

But now I know -- those were the easy things. Here's there real talk. Thanks Mom - thanks for wiping the tar poop off my ass the day after I was born. The nasty, dried up belly button thing that fell off a week or so after I was born? I know now that it didn't bother you a bit, and you hugged my body to your own and didn't even gag once. Thanks for breastfeeding even after I got teeth. Thanks for going to work and finding my barf in your hair and on your shirt, and just going about your day like it ain't no big thing. Thanks for removing "fuck" from your home vocabulary. I feel your sacrifice. Thanks for every sleep regression, every tooth popping up through my gums, and every nap I thought I didn't need.

****

It took me 28 years to understand how much my mom loves me, not because my mom isn't a giant showboat of emotions -- she totally is -- but because it was incomprehensible how deeply I could love until all of my preexisting parameters wore off with the epidural on September 13, 2016.

So grateful for my mom, and so grateful to be a mom.