Titles....

As all three of my kids are happily snoozing in their beds, I find myself perusing blogs online, sipping a glass of wine, and struggling with titles. I need to go to bed, but my brain won't settle this evening, for some reason. Right before he went to bed, my son Lucas came out of his room to tell me something. "Shannon," he said. " Goodnight. I love you." Since shortly after he began to talk, Lucas has called me "Shannon" interchangeably with "mommy" or "momma." In the past, this didn't bother me so much. However, now that I find myself navigating schools and playdates and birthday parties and friends, I am discovering that it bothers me. A lot. Unfortunately, I only have myself to blame. When Ruanita was pregnant with Lucas, we had a plan in place. She would be "mom" and I would be "momma." However, after Lucas was born, I couldn't seem to keep in straight in my sleep-deprived, poopy-addled brain. I referred to both Ruanita and myself as mom and mommy and momma. I managed to completely confuse the poor child. By the time Sophie and Nicholas came along three and a half years later, I finally had it all figured out. They have always referred to us as "mom" and "momma." I am afraid Lucas, however, is a lost cause. Don't get me wrong...he is well aware that he has two moms and will happily tell you who his moms are. However, when he talks about us...or lately, when he talks to us...he refers to us by our first names. We are Shannon and Ruanita...his moms.

So why does this bother me? If Lucas knows that I am his mom, what does it matter what he calls me? It shouldn't matter...right? But it does. The reason it matters is a jumbled, twisted, hodgepodge of emotion...doubt, fear, pride...that I have created in my own little self-torturing mind. I think because I do not have that biological tie to Lucas that I have with the twins, I have this completely unfounded, ludicrous fear...terror, actually...of being somehow "less than" to him. He was my first born and the child that changed my entire world. To think that I could somehow be less than a world-changing person to him is a hard thing for me to stomach. I look at him, and I know that he knows who I am to him. I am absolutely certain that he thinks of me as nothing less than his mother. I just wish that he would refer to me as "momma" all the time so the whole world would have no doubt who I am to Lucas. The woman who brought him into this world...perhaps not physically, but I most definitely gave birth to him mentally and emotionally and spiritually. He belonged to me from day one. And he always will.