Adoption: Two Mommies

I'll never forget the day Michael called me "mama" for the first time.  We were driving home, he was 8 months old and had been calling Chris "dada" for a few weeks.  Suddenly he cried out, "Mama!", and my heart was his.  It was validation for the months of care I'd been giving him, the absence of the woman who gave birth to him, the title I hoped to legally be given.  He verbalized the bond that had been forming ever since I held his tiny body in that hospital room.  There was so much joy and newfound purpose every time he called out "Mama" and reached for me, that I allowed myself to forget about Her.  Then one day we were looking through his pictures, and he pointed to Her and exclaimed "Mama!"  My heart broke.  "Yes," I told him, "that's your mama."  I felt demoted, and it stung.  Yes, you can call her that, I wanted to say.  But she doesn't wipe your tears, change your diapers, rock you to sleep.  She doesn't feed you or read to you.  I do that.  I'm the Mama. 

They told us to put our feelings aside.  They said you don't matter; the child's safety is what matters.  It was easier said than done.  Because in my mind, there can only be one Mama.  And I want to be it.  I don't want him to call Her mama too.  But I've come to realize lately that he's not thinking in such rigidly defined terms.  He sees two Mamas and two Daddys.  He knows brothers and sisters.  He knows that the people he lives with are the ones to go to with skinned knees and pinched fingers.  But he also realizes that his family extends out our front door and includes a larger group of people who are related in some way, who love him to the best of their abilities.

I keep thinking that I'll have so much to explain to him someday, that this situation is complicated and he'll need to figure it out.  Yet I seem to be the one who is learning, making new realizations about what it means to be a family.  Like understanding that when he calls Her Mama...I don't lose anything.  It doesn't diminish me.  Its a title that can be shared.  I get to be Mom everyday, doing the amazing and the mundane, the gross and the exhilarating.  What I do isn't any greater or less than what She did.  I just picked up where She left off.  And that's why we are both Mama.