For many years (a little more than 33 in fact), whenever anyone else asked what it was like to be a mother - or a father, for that matter - a certain, wistful smile found it's way to my face.

It wasn't - isn't - a sad or longing wistful, but more a reflective, gently contemplating wistful.

My answer is always some variation on, 'No one can accurately describe the love you will have for your child' (mostly because no one can accurately describe the love you will have for your child). It's wild. There's just no comparison.

I know this because I love - I mean, I really love - the scene where the French guy taunts the knights ('kah-nig-its') in Monty Python's The Holy Grail. And, yet, the love for my children is more, and better.

Sixteen-year-old-Monty-Python-fan me would have never believed it.

The thing about the love we have for our children is that not only is it unmatched in strength and depth and je ne sais quoi (the French killed it when they came up with the phrase for that). It - the love we have for our children - is also incomparable in its nuance and complexity.

Because they are teeny-tiny vampires, that's why.

Hear me out.

One. They show up and you are suddenly their parent... forever. (Forever is big with vampires).

Two: You totally let them come home with you, which is pretty much 'welcoming them in'.

Three: They are astoundingly attract-y. Like little magnets. You just want to look at them all the time... and you don't know why.

Four. They can practically suck you dry - and I am not talking about breast feeding (join me up here in the bigger picture will you). But seriously, emotionally and physically... and you are totally fine with it (I mean, sure, sometimes you complain but you keep going back for more!). Also, if they - the small vampires - are mean and scream things like, "I hate you!" and you find yourself wanting to hide in the bathroom (or duct tape them to a wall), all they have to do is tell you how pretty your hair is and you'll happily offer the proverbial vein all over again.

And Five: They are fast. Like, really really fast.

So. You birthed a vampire.

Maybe more than one.

Then it gets worse.

You find out that they are in charge of your PPRs (Parent Performance Reviews)...

For the rest. Of your life.

I once had a career where I received paychecks (seriously). And, during those years, I got a performance review annually. I also gave the people who worked with me performance reviews... also annually. And yet, in my own household - and in my life to this day - it was/is possible to have an On-The-Spot Parental Performance Review (OTSPPR) at any time...

Including weekends and holidays.

Also, there is no real reset button.

These performance reviews are cumulative.

I know this because, although they all (all three and a half of them) eat my cooking all the time, 'Mom's Evil Meatloaf' hit my Permanent Record in 2006 and is referenced (often with glee) to this very day (and the half-kid wasn't even here back then!).

So they forgave me... but they're still holding on.

Trust issues.

The whole vampire thing hit its crescendo during the teen years, which once featured a harrowing chase through the house in an effort to separate a flip phone from the clutches of a text-happy puberty-infested nosferatu. To add entertainment value, the soundtrack of said chase scene included a backing track of screamed threats to call DSS.

I didn't even participate in the chase. I stood quietly behind the kitchen island as the participants ran past (husband ran track in high school, kid ran track in high school... honestly, it was a high stakes chase all around).

Still: It's on my Permanent Record.

This is because, as my daughter is fond of pointing out, "Mom, it's not about you... but it's always about you."

And so here is what I know.

With all due respect to the advertising agency for the Peace Corps - I believe it was Young and Rubicam - motherhood is indeed the toughest job I've ever loved (all the nuance and complications and joys and terrifyings and other je ne sais quoi-ses).

There is no way to do it perfectly. There is no one way to do it, period. Accepting the human-ness in it all - mine and theirs - was, and is, a big part of being able to find my way back to smiles (and/or some semblance of sanity) from any tears and/or exhaustion and/or fears I goofed (or will goof)). With a nod to C.S. Lewis - these offspring of mine were, and are, my 'most important work'... from fumbles and foibles to phenomenals (and all the in-betweens).

And sometimes, later on - and you are not going to believe this - they replicate.

Fine, not really replicate in the 'duplicate' or 'exact copy' sense, but - like all good vampires - they make more of themselves.

Must be a survival of the species thing.

So now I have this grandvampirechild.

I know. You'd think I'd have a lot of garlic and crosses stashed away due to past encounters with the undead, but I don't (and I'm not planning to any time soon).

Because here I go all over again.

When friends and family ask what it's like to be a grandparent, that gentle smile finds its way onto my face and I tell them that I can't describe it with any accuracy. No one can. It is, once again, more and deeper than words can go.

And it is the strangest and most magical thing to watch your child thoroughly enchanted by theirs. It is enthralling to watch the child you taught to read and jump and dance, reading and jumping and dancing with their little one. There are also the gentle coaxings, and patient trustings, toward confidence and kindness and the considerations of everyday happenings.

They do some of it so similarly to the way I remember doing it that it stops me in my tracks.

They do some of it so differently and I marvel at their confidence, and the resources and support they have far beyond me or JoHn,

I get to take it all in, in a different way than I could when my own kids were young.

I am not balancing jobs and households and playdates and a brain full of 'what if's' and 'when wills'... and worries about doing it 'right' or getting it 'wrong' (and boy, oh boy, there were a lot of 'its' to get right or wrong (or adequate and what if that wasn't good enough?)).

I am Nana.

Not only do I get to clap and cheer at toddler gym class and help at the rather phenomenal water table at the local children's museum, but I get to be greeted by an excited squeal - and be directed to the preferred 'wake up books' - when I'm there for when nap time is over. I get to dance with her and teach her the names of dinosaurs (I was such a dinosaur kid). I get to encourage her to use and/or apply more stickers or colors or bubbles than any project or situation actually requires I am also very funny when I knock down the block towers we build together (I will never get tired of making her laugh).

I get to be a backup fun human.

I get to be a backup safe human.

I get to love, unconditionally (and, yep, I seem to be getting that back).

It would be dangerous for me to overlook the fact that she is still a very small vampire, if only because of the blazing speed thing.

But there is one thing that has been notably different, at least so far.

She is a way, way, way easier grader on my performance reviews.

And I have every reason to believe this will continue into the future.

As long as I bring her a donut every Friday, and give it to her after gym class.

Thanks for readin' ❤️

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