The unique pain of being an almost-mom on Mother's Day

Last May, I took my 6-year-old niece to the playground. A cute little neighbor boy blurted out, “Whose mom are you?” as he looked up at me.

I inhaled before the tears welled. I wanted to tell him I was always sure I’d be a mom, but at age 44 all I had to show for it was two divorces and one miscarriage. How could I explain to him that I sort of was a mom once? And, of all days, he shouldn’t ask me about being a mom on Mother’s Day.

Mothering has always been part of my personality. As a young girl I obsessed over babies, was the coveted neighborhood babysitter, and, as the oldest cousin in a big family, grew up playing games and coordinating skits the family had to suffer through. I invented the “animal guessing game” and was always up for one more round of Uno. For years, this was all part of the story I told myself: that I was great with kids and destined to be a mother.

Throughout my 20s and early 30s, on Mother’s Day I celebrated my own mom and longed for the day I could give my parents grandchildren, cementing my status on the holiday. But for years I had to tell myself, someday soon it will be you.

Then, I married a man with three beautiful kids. I fell completely in love. My schedule went from rushing to workout classes to planning activities for the kids. Soon my picture frames memorialized our trips to the zoo, the day we took a picnic to the park, her first gymnastics meet, the boys’ soccer game. I decorated my refrigerator with pictures the kids drew for me, affixed with magnets reading “Home Sweet Home” and “Family Forever.”

On my first Mother’s Day as a stepmom, the kids ran into our bedroom early on the Friday morning before the official Sunday holiday. After all, they would be with their mom on the actual holiday. They presented crafts they made at school and a plaque that read, “I love you more than bacon.”

The bacon sign still sits in my kitchen, but their dad and I divorced abruptly after only two years of marriage. The family I thought I built disintegrated, along with my dream of motherhood.

The first Mother’s Day without my stepkids I hid in the bathroom of my parents’ house oscillating between tears and hyperventilation while my niece and nephews played in the yard. My nephew wondered if he’d see his cousins again. They tried to distract me and cheer me up, but I cried off my makeup and drove home to an empty condo, wishing life had turned out differently.

The next year I avoided the holiday by booking a solo trip abroad. In the Tuscan countryside I drank myself into a Chianti coma rather than face Mother’s Day.

The universe then further complicated my maternal status when I started dating again and found myself pregnant for the first time in my life, at the age of 40. I had gone through years of fertility treatment with my ex-husband and was given a less than 5% chance of ever getting pregnant. Yet, there I was, spontaneously and accidentally expecting.

I instantly felt maternal. I struggled to explain the significance of what felt like destiny finally realized. It would be like describing the sensation of swimming to someone who had never touched water. I was finally part of the biological motherhood club I’d so desperately wanted to pledge.

But, before my 8-week ultrasound, I lost the pregnancy. My boyfriend was devastated. The doctor said there was nothing I could have done to prevent it. I slept with the positive pregnancy test under my pillow, sealed in a Ziploc snack bag for cleanliness, for months. We kept trying, but nothing materialized before we amicably split.

I feared then that I would have to go through life being confused about how to think about my maternal status, and that Mother’s Day would forever remain a dreaded holiday that exacerbated my anxiety. It pained me. I journaled about it and talked to my therapist. I knew I needed to evolve past the anxiety.

So, I actively attempted to shift my outlook on what it meant to be a mom. For one, even though I had no legal claim to my stepkids, their mom kept me involved in their lives. The kids are now in their teenage years and I still get to see them regularly. We celebrate holidays and birthdays together. I get the occasional FaceTime from my ex-stepdaughter to show me her new skin care products or unboxed birthday gifts.

I’m also engaged with my niece, nephews and friends’ kids who call me Auntie. I’ve never declined an invitation to a birthday party. Even among my mom friends, I often forgo chatter in the kitchen to host a silly yoga class with their kids in the playroom or rally another game of Ticket To Ride: First Journey.

In the past few years, my mom has included me in Mother’s Day by giving me the same gift she procures for each of my sisters-in-law. I worry about diminishing the holiday for those who have actually raised children, but it seems rude to refuse a vase of tulips on what I wish I could consider a technicality.

I may always want to look at the picture, in my “Favorites” folder, of the one positive pregnancy test I ever took. I may forever feel guilty on Saturdays when I have time to do … whatever I want … while most of my friends are stuck at baseball doubleheaders or making wheeled vehicles for Science Olympiad. It may never get easier to wish I could have given my parents more grandchildren.

With Mother’s Day on the horizon, I live with two realities. The first is that I’m not a mom. And, second, I’m really lucky I get to love so many children in this lifetime.

And, that is enough, only because it has to be.

This article was originally published on TODAY.com