Around this time a year ago, over plenty of wine and revelry, a friend of mine proclaimed, “Well, we can’t all have you as our mother!” Her outcry was meant as compliment- probably because we were joking about my weekly bread-baking habit or the fact that I was maniacal about breastfeeding my kids. (She might not have praised my mothering if she had heard me this morning, for example, threaten to outlaw fingernail polish for a year if my daughter could not stop crying about a chip on her pinkie finger. Or if she saw the plentitude of potato chips and Go-Gurt I stuffed in our picnic basket today, because I couldn’t stand to make another sandwich.) The sweetest irony is not that I subsequently promised to mother that friend- who is ten years my senior- with all my heart, but that I know I am a better mother because she is my friend.

Living far away from family makes you realize the importance of connections you might otherwise simply expect. In my family’s case, we cherish the people who encircle us and hold us close just because they want to. In turn, it has taught me the magnitude of how much one friend can impact another. It’s also lucky that no matter how selflessly and consistently that love shows up, it will never replace an actual mom. So we have carte blanche to nurture the people around us with abandon, if there is a gap to fill. I mother better because of who surrounds me. In that way, we are a mother to each other.

Last week I joined my daughter at her school for Mother’s Day Tea. Moms, grandmas, and a few other maternal stand-ins sat at folding tables in the church gym and beamed as our children sang their way through the Mother’s Day songs they had been rehearsing for weeks. It was a white-bread-and-cheese-sandwich-with-store-bought-cookies kind of event, full of adorable children performing for parents who probably forced their coworkers to watch the video when they returned from their lunch break. It was one of the shiniest parts of motherhood. No whining, no racing out the door, and paid teachers to tend the potty accidents.

In the midst of all the cuteness, however, I had to remind myself yet again that there is no pie. The young mom across the table from me, who sat with her sister and both grandmothers, had not stolen my piece of it. They did not have a bigger slice, nor did I have a smaller one. All the same, part of me wanted to lean across the table with my best Liam Neeson voice and ask, “Do you know how lucky you are? You better! Tell me you know you are lucky!” Did these four unassuming women realize what it is to have four women available to take off work, all in the same zip code, just to watch a little girl sing some songs? I couldn’t even attend the event last year because I had run out of sick time, and our grandmothers live hours away- and here this little girl had four women applauding like she was Beyonce wearing Osh Kosh B’Gosh.

But back to the pie thing. I know some incredible women whose equally incredible moms have already gone. They could just as easily shake me down for calling my mom for a chat on the way to work, or planning summer visits with the kids to see Nana. “Do you know how lucky you are? You better.” I didn’t take their pie, either. But lord knows if I were gone, I would want the rest of the world to stand in for me and be a crazy loving mother to my kids. There is no time to check birth certificates and bloodlines. We have just got to madly love and protect one another, and that’s it. Motherhood is a call for us all.

Some of Christ’s last words were spent assigning his mother to his friend, and declaring that his friend now be her son. It was a practical request, but also one that had to be meant as a heart salve. A mothering love cuts both ways: becoming a mom carves out a place in you that wants nurture and protect- even beyond your own kids. Knowing a mother’s love- whether it comes from your biological mom or not- can embolden and comfort in a potent way.

My little nuclear family has a network of Napa Family on whom I can depend to help me show my children the way the world is supposed to be. I make lunches and coordinate carpools and wipe bottoms, but if I need someone to lock eyes with my six year-old and take honest delight in hearing his very slow stories to the end, I’ve got it. My children believe that it is normal to have compassionate adults around who: a) are not their parents, and b) think it is the funnest thing ever to watch them play in the back yard ‘til sundown. Who gets to have that?! The work of parenting is made so much more joyful for us by having people close by who sincerely love us and our kids. If those people were related to me by blood, I might take it for granted. But they are not, and I don’t. It is one thing to love one another; it is a better thing to love one another like a mother.