When does motherhood begin?

On beginnings, binaries, and coats with pockets

I finally bought myself a serious winter coat. You know the kind: long, dark, and puffy, with a sensible hood and huge pockets. A sleeping bag with a belt, basically.

It sounds silly to say, but the coat felt significant. In my head, I think of it as my ‘mum’ coat: perfect for standing around in cold playparks and pushing the pram through the mizzle. When I tried it on last month and decided I would keep it, I felt a kind of slotting together; like I’d landed upon the right piece in a jigsaw I’ve been working away at for quite some time with no idea what it was supposed to look like.

It felt right, this coat. I liked how I looked in it. I was excited to wear it when the weather turned. But, as I stood there checking the fit in our bedroom mirror, I also felt certain that if I’d bought this ‘mum’ coat any sooner it would have felt like cos-play.

Despite the fact that I have been a mother with a child at home for more than two years now, it is only relatively recently that I feel truly comfortable in my identity as a mum.

The coat isn’t the final piece of the jigsaw, you understand – motherhood isn’t a completed puzzle for me by any means – but something about this particular piece revealed the bigger picture.