Many of you may be familiar with the sweet story of the Velveteen Rabbit who became “real” after years of being loved until he was threadbare and worn out. Or the story of Pinocchio who wanted to be a “real” boy and had a series of misadventures until he returned to Geppetto who loved him into becoming “real.”

This is how I think of my journey as a mother and stepmother to my five kids.

When I started dating Traci’s dad Mike, she was 5 years old and her mom lived out of town. The first time I met her we were picking her up from Mike’s mother’s. This tiny child I did not know crawled into my childless, 24-year-old lap (pre car seats) and promptly fell asleep. I loved her almost immediately and became her stepmother a year later.

She called me Cindy. And I was careful about my role as a stepmother, dancing between the raindrops of overstepping my position whether it was cutting her hair, enforcing table manners or making her clean her room. Then we moved in the middle of her second grade year, and one day, as we shopped in the produce aisle of the grocery store, Adam in the cart seat, she looked up and said, “Would it be alright if I called you Mommy?”

I’m not sure if her request came from social pressure at school to have a mother in the home or if referring to myself as mommy around Adam gave her that notion, or if her little 7-year-old self just wanted to feel more normal with me. No matter. I don’t care why. I just care that it happened.

That day I became “real.”

Traci still calls me Mom, and it gives me joy every time.

When Scott and I got married, Traci was grown and living on her own. Adam was 15, Molly and Erin were 11, Sarah was only 8. Sarah and Erin’s mother Robin was fully present in their lives, although they lived with us. So once again, I straddled the stepmother fence.

As with Traci, discipline was never an issue. So my job fell mostly to communication, coordination, counseling and cooking. Pretty much what parenting teens and pre-teens is all about. The girls called me Cindy and that was that for a long time.

Things changed forever the day Robin died. At just 22 and 19, Erin and Sarah were in college, And to lose their mother was like losing a rudder in their life, a stabilizing force, a haven in the storm. It was then that Erin said to me, “You’re our mom, now.”

And I became “real” once again.

We do not refer to “step” or “half” or “bio” when introducing ourselves. The distinctions are of no consequence. I am Mom to them all. I love them all desperately and they know it, I hope. And I also know that in crisis or joy, we support each other. We celebrate milestones and setbacks, big and small. We are family.

And I am a real mom.

Happy Mother’s Day.