The day my youngest drew me a poster telling me I was the number one mom, I tried not to make a big deal of it. I am not his mother, but somehow fate made me his mommy.

I was beyond lucky as a child. My mother and my mommy were and still are the same person. The same person who gave birth to me, brought me home from the hospital. She is a remarkable woman. She molded me into the in your face, bite me type of woman I am today. I call her everyday and everyday she answers. For twenty five years, my mother was the same person.

My youngest, however, has a mommy and a mother. His mother brought him home from the hospital and I picked him up in a parking lot from a foster mom via a judges order 6 years later.

He doesn’t call me mom and that’s okay. It’s hard concept to understand, but I never want him to feel as though he has to choose between his moms. We both are important to him. We will both play our own rolls in molding his life to the big person he will become.

I am the mom who raised him, who takes him to school, feeds, and clothes him. I am the mom who makes sure he eats and sleeps like he’s supposed to (or as close as any little boy really gets). I will host his birthday parties and watch him open gifts on Christmas morning.

But I’m the number one mom to a little boy born to another woman. The tragedy in that blessing is not forgotten to me.