“Don’t you just love being a mom?” the voice on the phone said, an echo of the question posed by my lactation consultant last week.

I decided to tell the truth now as I did then. “Sometimes,” I responded.

Thankfully, earlier in the day, I had indulged in a kid-dominated lunch with a like-minded friend, one to whom I can vent and not be complaining, one to whom I can exult and not be bragging. We commiserated and we laughed, and though I couldn’t complete a sentence without turning to The Kid to monitor his breathing, there was rest. There is always rest in being with those who know.

The question was posed a few hours later, from an older friend whose children are grown, and it came after what is now known around here as The Evening Fussy Period. This phenomenon is documented in books and maternal folklore, but–as with all things child-rearing–there is no way to really prepare for it. Which is why, at around 6 pm last night, I was sitting on my bathroom floor with TK propped up on my thighs as the hair dryer lay on the floor beside us in the ON position.

Ten minutes later, TK had grown weary of that distraction. So we headed back downstairs, where I propped him up on my thighs and placed my iPhone at a safe distance from his ear and turned on my new White Noise app. That worked for about five minutes.

Sometime during these efforts, I realized the particular form of insanity in which I am now enmeshed; the hair dryers and white noise and vibrating chairs and “Sh-shing” and swings and tiptoeing because he knows my smell. The fact that I am inextricably tethered to this new life form, and that this connection fundamentally changes me whether I like it or not.

There are times when I like it. There are times when I don’t. Hence, the answer, “Sometimes.”

What is not in question is my love for the little boy. I look at him, and that love floods me –mentally, emotionally, chemically. He keeps me homebound some days, avoiding the cold. He accompanies me out into the world on others, resting in his stroller as I check out bras and underwear at Victoria’s Secret semi-annual sale. I remember when I headed for silk instead of cotton, then I look at his face and know that sacrifice is the only worthy dialect of love–and I am learning love all over again. Willingly…sometimes.

The Husband calls on his way home from work and I raise TK a little closer to the phone, making sure those decibels extend optimally across the line. I know I’m being a baby myself, but I can’t help it: it’s my milk that’s keeping this child alive, my life lived in three-hour increments, my watch constantly glanced at and the monitor on my bedside keeping me up at night. There is the danger a personality given to self-protection like mine constantly faces, the temptation to languish in bitterness and resentment, to wrap them around me like a cold steel blanket. Then I remember that it will never be just me again. I feel myself strain against the tethers: the tether to TK, calling me for another feeding. The tether to TH, calling me to understanding. What tethers me? What holds me together?

And I breathe, knowing. Sometimes breathing itself can be a form of prayer.

I know what keeps this all from becoming a shouting match, an episode of Jerry Springer, a hot mess. I know what makes it more than I can see, more than I can feel in any one moment, just…more. I know what makes this beautiful, even though, as my friend said across the lunch table, right now is just an investment that will pay off later. I know what transforms later into now, yet into here. I know what makes the mundane sacred.

I breathe, and the tether holds.