Today is the birthday of our oldest daughter. I realized, as I counted the years, that today also marks a parental equinox of sorts for me: I’ve been a parent as long as I have not. 

What do I see from this perch, from this fine balance? Strangely enough, I see continuity. For me, becoming a mother didn’t mark a revolution of caring but an expansion of it. Parenthood has been a way to give back the love that was given so freely to me by my own parents. It is the completion of a circle. 

I can’t imagine a life without motherhood. I’m grateful beyond measure to have become a parent. But I’ve tried always to live as not-just-a-mother, to honor dear friends who live full lives without children, who are wonderful aunts and uncles (honorary and by blood). I hope this message got through to my daughters; I think it has. 

Most of all today, I’m thinking of the baby with a V-shaped mouth who seldom slept, who sang before she talked, who took us to places we never thought we’d go. She has grown and flourished. She has studied and learned. She has traveled to the other side of the world — the dusty red-dirt roads of the Sahel — and back. She has given us three other wonderful people to love: her husband and children. Because of her and her sisters, our hearts are full. A parental equinox, yes. But if I had to pick one side of the divide to live in always, I know which one I’d choose.

(Three-year-old Suzanne holds her baby sister, Claire.)