“How did you make me, Mom?” my toddler asked.

Someday he’ll get the full explanation, but since he’s only two-and-a-half I just told him about how I was pregnant. I said that he grew inside me, and that I had to make sure to eat plenty of nutritious foods and take my vitamins so he could get all the nutrients he needed. I told him he started out very small and grew big enough to come out as a baby, just like his little sister did.

“Thank you for making me,” he said. I snuggled him and told him I was so happy I had made him.

I don’t think I can adequately describe the wonder I felt when I saw my son for the first time. I remember staring at him in his hospital bassinet and just marveling at his very existence. I remember the way his smooth, soft skin looked before the jaundice set in. He was perfect, and I remember feeling so imperfect by comparison as I watched him sleeping silently in front of me.

Being a mother is feeling so fulfilled and utterly depleted all at once. It’s watching the baby smile and coo and roll and play, and helplessly holding that same baby through her first fever. It’s pouring my toddler the same cup of milk every morning, hoping it won’t be one of the mornings he demands chocolate milk instead, when all I can do is let the meltdown run its course. It’s knowing how to make the baby giggle. It’s listening with pride as my son tells me about all the different types of tools in the workshop. It’s packing away little clothes that will never fit again. It’s watching the baby monitor, seeing their quiet bodies sleeping, knowing I’m their safe place, their everything, and still feeling that I can never be what they deserve. It’s loving them simply because they exist.

I look at my children and I realize there’s someone out there who feels about me the same way I feel about them.

I could never come close to listing all the things my mom did for me and my siblings. She was always there, and her love for us is woven into everything I can remember from my childhood. She made us home-cooked meals for dinner, and sometimes eggs-on-a-raft or grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. Clean clothes would appear on our beds, folded, just before we ran out of underwear. She chaperoned field trips and made sure we had treats to bring to school on our birthdays. Her presence was comforting when we were sick or scared or sad, even if she couldn’t do anything to make it better. She knew our favorites and our least favorites and when we needed new shoes. She was steadfast in her loving, committed presence in our lives.

Now that I have my own children, I’m grateful to her in a way I never could be before. Not just for the way she mothered me and my siblings as we were growing up, but for the support and care she continues to give me as I make my way through my own motherhood journey. When parenting feels like a cold, dark January morning, she’s a warm blanket that just came out of the dryer.

One evening my husband was gone and she came over to help me put the kids to bed. I told her I was thankful for her help, but that I wished I didn’t feel like I needed so much of it.

And she just said, “This is how it’s supposed to be.”

But when she agrees to watch my kids for an extra hour so I can make lunch plans or go to the store or get my hair done, I still wonder, Am I asking too much? Sometimes she washes my dirty dishes or sends me jars of beef stew when she makes extra, and I think, She doesn’t have to do that; she already does enough.

She does it all anyway, because she never stopped being my mom.

She doesn’t need my words to understand the wonder I felt when I met my son. It’s the same wonder she must have felt when she met me. Now I know a mother’s love from both sides, and it’s both inspiring and humbling to understand just how much my mom loves me. I feel small and innocent and safe and important and infinitely grateful all at once. My goal as a mother is to be for my children what my mom was, and is, for me.

I feed the baby and measure out pumped milk for her bottles. I fold the tiny clothes, the bibs, the burp cloths, and sometimes I let the toddler help. I put Band-Aids on scraped knees and I kiss bumped heads. I laugh when the baby blows raspberries. I read the same books, sing the same songs, and answer the same questions about robot vacuums. I know I’ll never stop being their mom. I marvel that they exist, and that I made them.

I marvel at the mother who made me.