I met you on the edge of five,
Your mom said you were a scientist,
An inventor, a mind alive.
And she wasn’t lying.
So I brought you a young scientist kit—
Amazon Prime magic,
But what I didn’t know yet
Was that you’d invent something bigger.
Something that lived inside me.
I remember your shy smile,
Like a secret cracking open,
Your laugh—full of sparks,
And how you shouted upstairs,
“I’m going to my room, AND I’M NOT HAPPY!”
Your rebellion was poetry.
And that day,
I met the boy
Who would make me a mother.
At the zoo, parking lot pavement underfoot,
You slipped your hand into mine.
My heart skipped.
The world paused.
You—unaware of the weight of that moment—
Made me a mother.
At the lake, water lapping at the edges of fear,
I swam with you, though I was terrified.
Because bravery isn’t about not being scared,
It’s about showing up anyway.
You taught me that.
You made me a mother.
I came to you bruised,
Broken by fists, words, shadows.
Childhood was something I escaped,
But you,
You taught me that my scars weren’t poison.
You taught me I could be the parent
I never had.
You made me a mother.
The first Mother’s Day—
A dandelion from the yard,
Tiny, golden, imperfect perfection.
I pressed it between wax and memory,
Tucked it in my grandmother’s Bible.
And then the word—Mommy.
From your lips,
It was a hymn,
A melody that rewrote the song of my life.
You made me a mother.
Christmas wasn’t Christmas
Until I saw it through your eyes.
I hung lights, bought trees,
Spent too much on presents—
Because I wanted you to feel heard.
To feel seen.
Because you gave me family
When I thought I didn’t need one.
Every hug, every laugh,
Every perfectly timed moment of chaos
Showed me the power of love so pure,
It could crush me
And build me back stronger.
When your diabetes struck like a thief in the night,
I drove to the ER with shaking hands,
Afraid I’d lose you.
That fear—that raw, aching panic—
Sparked love in its most primal form.
Because you made me a mother.
To my sour patch kid—sour, then sweet—
I love you beyond the reach of words.
Your mother and I fell apart,
But you’re still my heart.
Enough to make an atheist pray,
Drop to my knees,
Just to hope
That I stay in your life somehow.
If it’s years, if it’s lifetimes,
Know this—
I will love you until the last spark of me fades.
Because you,
You made me a mother.
