I grew up in a house full of women. They taught me I’m always more than just mom.

• I grew up in a 3-bedroom house with my mom, grandmother, and three aunts.
• We somehow always made room for people to have space to do their thing.
• Growing up with so many women taught me that I am more than just a mom.

I did not grow up in a busy household. It was quiet a lot of the time, which shocked friends who visited and saw that our house was littered with moms.

I lived with my own mom, who was a single mom, one aunt who was a someday mom, and my grandmother, who we called Nana, who was an always mom. Another pregnant aunt I shared a bed with for a while, an almost mom. There were other moms who visited, other aunts and cousins, and friends and bridge partners of my Nana’s coming over for gossip, plus egg salad sandwiches with the crusts cut off.

A revolving door of women and their chatter and the deep joy they took in doing a little bit of nothing together every day. Because none of the women who raised me worshipped at the altar of busy.

My bedroom was never just my bedroom

We lived in a three-bedroom house with one bathroom and a big, unfinished attic. All of our spaces were shared nearly every minute of the day. My bath time as a child was paired up with women doing their makeup side-by-side in front of the big bathroom. My bedroom was never just my bedroom. No one had that luxury apart from my grandparents, who used up two of the three bedrooms. Even they had to share their space. I napped with my Nana, and I played hide-and-seek in my Grandpa’s room. There was a front porch that acted as an extra room, where people smoked and talked and ate snacks and watched it rain from our prized white wicker furniture.

And yet there was always time to find yourself a quiet corner. To curl up on the sofa on a winter afternoon with a book in a room where four other people had found their own quiet little nook for the same reason. There was always time to watch it rain in this house of women. Always time to stop and talk, or to fold laundry and watch soap operas. Or iron shirts and shout out the answers to “Jeopardy.”

Household chores were never the point. They were the things they had to do quickly and haphazardly to get back to their lives. Running a bored cloth over the bathtub before collapsing on my Nana’s bed to talk about the neighbors.

Everyone knew how to give each other space

My mom, my aunts, and my Nana knew how to give each other space and even us space when space did not exist in any real way. They knew how to set boundaries, to prioritize, to return to themselves, before anyone knew that these were things. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the kitchen to wash dishes before settling down for the real business of playing cards all night. They took care of us kids with deep affection but almost accidentally. Like they were bringing us along on a fun ride. Like we were all kids together.

The other mothers I knew as a little girl always seemed busy, almost glamorously so. I recognized my friends’ moms by their retreating backs, by the click of their shoes on their linoleum floors, or their hand resting on the bedroom door, asking us the same questions from faces turned away to their next chore. Always the same questions: How was school? Were we hungry? What time were we getting picked up? Did one of you wear your dirty shoes in the front parlor? Their homes uniformly smelled of evergreen-scented cleaning solutions or cooking, or more often than not, both.

Our house smelled of Chanel No. 5 and cigarettes and lipstick. That particularly tinny scent of a teapot left on the stove to steep far too long. Dust mites in the carpet. Feet, I think I recognize that now. Or perhaps it was the smell of dozens of shoes piled high in the front hallway. It smelled of good things, too. In the summer, the open windows brought in great whiffs of the lilac bush outside. It was strongest in the evening, when Nana and I would play chip rummy for hours and hours at the table. Too hot for dinner on those days, just cheese and crackers and cold cans of Tab to sustain us.

They were who they were

They loved us, all the kids. They thought we were funny and weird and a good time. But I doubt any of us felt like life revolved around us. Because our mothers never disappeared into their roles. They retained who they were through motherhood, through sisterhood, through caring for other people. Everything about these women was sharp and clear. And exactly them.

By the time I was 30, I had become a single mom of four little boys. I looked to these women to be my example, to sustain me, to keep me from losing myself. They taught me how to embrace doing absolutely nothing with my day, to refuse to disappear into my roles, to be me before any of my titles: mother, daughter, partner.

They taught me to watch it rain on a porch, to eat cheese and crackers for dinner, and to deeply luxuriate in the company of the women I love because they were pure love.

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