Doris is 1.

I haven’t entered milestones into a baby book. I haven’t written many journal entries or blog posts. I have taken many photos, and I have kept every consequential piece of paper. I have been her mother for a year, which is mind-boggling and also consistent with my sense of time in adulthood.

I am writing this soon after Doris’s first birthday party. We had it at the playground closest to my house on the Saturday morning following her birthday. I love being at playgrounds with Doris. A few months ago, I introduced her to the baby swing. She was unsure at first, but soon started to kick her legs and smile with glee. Now, she also explores the play structures with confidence. She crawls up the ramps and stairs to get to the slides that she attempts to go down headfirst. I thought most of the playground wouldn’t be fun for her until she could walk, but I was wrong.

On the swing in late August.

I loved watching her figure out rolling, then how to reach and move from sitting before she could crawl. I love watching her crawl. And on the eve of her first birthday, she took her first steps! My entire post-graduate existence has been in academic spaces where the mind is exalted. This is great, but we are not just brains. I found the physical realities of pregnancy and since Doris’s birth, her gross motor milestones, to be a sort of counterweight to the cerebral emphasis of so much of my life.

The attendees of Doris’s birthday party were much of my Durham community. Many of my friends from queer ultimate were in attendance. Since Doris has been able to ride in the jogging stroller, I have gone to queer ultimate at least one Sunday a month, and often more. My friends have been wonderful about watching Doris when they are taking a break from playing, and this has allowed me to play. As Doris has gotten increasingly mobile, it is more intense to sit with her and make sure she doesn’t put a choking hazard in her mouth, but my friends have been up for it. Queer friends outside of the ultimate community were also at her party. My friend whose vision and determination to have a child on her own inspired me, the friends who were the first and second people to visit Doris after she was born, the friend that I’ve made dinner with once a week all fall. I also have friends in Durham who I first met not in Durham, but during college or graduate school. Two of these people have babies that were born shortly after Doris, and there is also a family with older children with whom I’ve grown quite close. And there are my one-generation-older friends, my next-door neighbors, who offered help from the moment I shared that I was expecting and who have watched Doris in multiple clutch situations; my godmother and her husband, who call Doris ‘Princess’; and two other couples who are multi-generation family friends and have been crucial parts of my community—whether watching Doris during her first daycare fever or welcoming an impromptu visit on a Sunday morning when we had to get out of the house. Also, in attendance were a few work friends and their family members! I feel very lucky to have work friends!

Doris (in her car seat) waiting for her birthday party to start!

Sometimes I am asked whether I have community and support raising Doris as a solo mom, and I often stop and consider for a moment. My community doesn’t look the way I once imagined it would, but I do very much have community. And my first year as Doris’s mom wouldn’t have been possible without it.

It is also really exciting to learn more about who Doris is! Right now, she is obsessed with kitchen cupboards, doors, and pieces of paper. She is learning how to close doors without getting her fingers caught. She loves to crawl at top speed in exactly the direction she knows you don’t want her to go. And then cackle. She loves dogs. She loves mirrors. She is happy to be dropped off at daycare; when I leave her and she is at the table with her “friends” eating her breakfast I barely get an acknowledgment that I’m leaving. She readily eats many foods, but when she doesn’t want to eat the food, she throws it from her highchair to the ground. When she is looking to be comforted and I pick her up, she leans into me and sucks her thumb.

The bottom of one of the big slides at the playground at her birthday party. Photo credit to Chloe.

Doris is one, and I have been a mother for a year. For one year, I have been everything that I am, and also a mother. 

There was a period in my twenties where I felt very deeply the certainty that I wanted to be a mother. I was struggling with graduate school, struggling with dating, but I knew that I wanted to be a mother, and I was so grateful to feel certainty about something. Right now, once again, I am questioning and processing a lot about my life. What I do know, which doesn’t mean that it’s been easy or that it’s not complicated, is that becoming a mother, being a mother, this is a good, good thing for me.

[ Taking month-day photos was not part of my first year of parenthood vision, but I am glad that I was encouraged by a friend to do it. The quilt from the first month is the quilt that I made in 2024. The baby blankets in months two through ten were all gifts to Doris (except month seven which was originally my baby blanket). The reason the dachshund isn't in the last photo is because I tragically lost in on our flight to New York City last month! ]