I am writing this in the final month of pregnancy, with our daughter sitting low in my belly, eagerly straining to meet the world. By the time you read this, she will be on my breast. By the time you read this, I will be a mother.

And yet, perhaps I already am. The birth of a child requests—but does not necessitate—the birth of a mother. When, then, does motherhood begin? If not a child, what are the conditions that create it? Mothering does not have to belong to our kin alone; mothers abound in every shape and form because trusted guardians come in every shape and form. The clasp of the ancient and wise branches of an oak tree may be the very bosom in which one person feels safest. Mothers nurture and bend, mothers discipline and hold. Mothers and their bodies form the first webs of the world through which we explore what it means to be alive, to be here, to be now. When does one transform from the exploring subject to the web itself? When does one extend the invitation: I will nurture, I will bend, I will discipline and I will hold. Come. 

She came, and my body became two. The edges between who I was and who I hoped to become began to blur, just as the edges between who I am and she is took on more definition. As I approach the end of pregnancy, her presence feels singular, definite, and constrained. She is a wriggling paradox, her independence both encased inside and wholly dependent on my body, a body that is no longer singular, definite and constrained. My physical form has expanded beyond the confines of my imagination to grow our daughter; my body has become a whole world. I have been reduced to a universe. 

I have been reduced to a universe, the first she will ever know and the first she must soon go beyond. A beyond that is into an even greater universe, with as many mothers as she could hope for, as many webs as she can explore, as many worlds as there could be. Soon, she will be born, from me and into the bosom of Earth. Her childhood will be a long transfer of guardianship of her freedom. Her father and I will be the constraint upon and the condition of her freedom until one day she goes beyond us, as one day she must. Then, her independence will be encased inside and wholly dependent on Earth’s body, and on her community’s body, and on her own. Then, she will know the origin of her nature, and the wriggling paradox from which all life has come, and to which we all return.

One day, we will all be reduced to a universe.

Perhaps, then, motherhood begins with death: the death of the distinct edge. Perhaps motherhood begins when the boundaries of what is known start to blur, and the singular desire of something unknowable takes root. Perhaps motherhood begins when the need to go beyond leads you, finally, back. Perhaps motherhood begins with the death of a freedom that can only be granted, and the gift of a freedom that can only be given. 

The freedom that matters most to me now is the freedom to never be free of her. May my body forever be an expanse in whose clasp she feels safe; may my words forever be written for her, spoken for her, promised for her; may my choices forever be commitments to her. May I have the privilege of seeing her go far beyond her mother and father; may we be the compass points to which she returns, having found the very edges of who she is, of what the world is, of what may yet be. May we forever be reduced to her universe. 

I have come home to have our child, to my own mother; my first universe. I left sixteen years ago to go as far beyond as I could envision, and then farther still, and the edges of the world led me back here, back to the heart of where I come from, and who I hope to become. It is a profound wonder watching the edges of my own mother blur as she becomes an even greater expanse than she once was, as our daughter takes up residence inside her, too. Where my body encases, my mother’s encompasses, her orbit expanding over her growing family as she becomes beyond what she once was so that I may become beyond what I am. We are concentric circles of guardianship. We are a solar system of mothers. We have been reduced to a universe, together. 

Perhaps motherhood begins with a reduction into the infinite; from here, the paradox of life wiggles her way into being.

Perhaps I would have never found freedom without my daughter’s father, whose own expansiveness revealed the brittle edges of a self I was desperately fighting to protect from the world. Through him, I let the world move through me. With him, I learned the greatest beyond is the one contained within each other. Is there any greater miracle than finding that your heart beats in another body? That another throat sings with your song? That your soul has gone beyond the confines of your flesh and made a world within a world on an Earth and not a single part of it can be reduced to anything less than a universe?

May we never be free of each other.