There is a peculiar kind of courage in the hands of a child learning to mother. It is not the courage of those who set out prepared and sure-footed, but the quieter, more remarkable bravery of someone who steps forward in spite of uncertainty—who becomes a sanctuary for another even while searching for shelter herself.
This is not the story often painted in gilded frames or celebrated in the pages of history, yet it is as ancient and enduring as love itself. It lives in the lives of young mothers who were asked to grow up before their time, and it lived—in its fullest, most graceful form—in my own mother.
She was sixteen when I was born. Just a girl, really. Her hands still smelled of textbooks and cafeteria lunches, not the warm scent of bread rising in an oven or the sharp tang of baby powder. And yet, when life asked the impossible of her, she answered.
I think now about what that must have felt like. The psychological weight of motherhood layered over the unfinished architecture of adolescence. Erik Erikson’s model of psychosocial development teaches us that adolescence is the stage of identity versus role confusion—a time when the self is meant to be explored, questioned, even rebelled against. And yet, for my mother, there was no space for confusion. Her role arrived early and without mercy.
Did she have nights when she stared at the ceiling, wondering if she would ever find her way? Days when she felt trapped in a life already defined before she could choose it? These are the quiet questions that paintings like Mary Cassatt’s The Child’s Bath ask without words.
Cassatt’s brush does not romanticize the moment. There is no grandeur in the scene—just the mother’s bent posture, her head bowed close to her child’s, the striped fabric of her dress spreading like wings around them. And yet, in that intimacy, in that basin of water and the simple act of washing, there is a profound sanctity.
The psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott once wrote, “There is no such thing as a baby... there is a baby and someone.” By this, he meant that the very survival of an infant is bound to the presence of a caring other. But what of the mother who is still, herself, almost a child? It is here we see the concept of earned security at work—the resilience forged not from having had a perfect childhood, but from consciously choosing to become the caregiver you may never have known.
My mother did this. With my father beside her—himself still barely a man—they did not crumble under the weight of those early years. They built a life, plank by unsteady plank. My mother finished high school, often studying with me on her lap. She went on to earn a college degree, and then a master’s. She became a special education teacher—a profession that, by its very nature, demands an endless reservoir of patience and love.
And what greater testament to her influence than this: both her sons became teachers. We were shaped not by privilege, but by her example.
In The Gift of Therapy, Irvin Yalom writes, “The act of revealing oneself fully to another and still being accepted may be the major vehicle of therapeutic help.” My mother practiced this therapy long before I knew its name. She accepted me, and in doing so, taught me how to accept myself.
Looking back, I realize it wasn’t the grand moments that defined my childhood, but the small and faithful ones. The smell of spiced tea as prepared coloring pages day after day. Her hands folding my clothes, the sleeves rolled just so. Her voice, weary but unwavering, telling me I could be anything, even when she must have wondered if she herself could become all that life demanded.
In psychology, we call this maternal scaffolding—the process by which a caregiver supports a child just enough to allow them to succeed, gradually pulling back those supports as confidence grows. My mother did this instinctively. She held me tightly when I was small, but as I grew, she stepped back, letting me stumble and rise on my own. And when I turned to her later, as an adult, it was not for rescue, but for the quiet reassurance that I already held the strength I needed.
Cassatt’s painting ends at the basin, but the story it tells ripples outward. Today, when I stand before a classroom of my own, when I kneel beside a struggling student, when I offer calm in the midst of their storm, I feel her legacy in my hands.
The water learns to hold. The mother becomes the mirror. And the child—raised by that water, shaped by that mirror—steps forward to teach.
This is how love works its miracles. Not in spectacle or grand declaration, but in the daily, ordinary acts that seem too small to matter until, one day, you look back and realize they mattered most of all.
That is my mother’s story. That is her triumph. And I will carry it quietly, faithfully, just as she once carried me.
Happy Mother's Day, mom.
I love you.