A question has been eating away at me. I haven't admitted this to anyone before, haven't asked it aloud as it has started to overwhelm my thoughts. But watching my babies growing up, and knowing that soon they'll be gone, I can no longer hold it in:

How does one just stop being a mom?

I have been blessed with a big family - 3 kids, 4 cats, a dog. Two houses. My daughter has 2 dads. All the kids have 2 moms. Four grandma's, a grandpa or two. Aunts and uncles and cousins and then more aunts and uncles and cousins.

As they grow up and away, how do you just turn that off?

Ok, technically we're not family. Technically, I'm the single mom of a 15 year old daughter, Lizzie. Technically, Dimitri is my business partner, with a wife (Dyan) and 2 sons - Mito (17) and Derek (14). But family isn't really a technical thing, at least not in this one.

When ReSolve began to form itself back in 1993, our discussions and planning sessions went long past 5 o'clock, eking their way through dinner time and beyond - exciting discussions about values and what we really wanted out of life. And while we three grown-ups (Dyan, too) talked into the night, the kids, so close in age, spent more and more time together.

After working and thinking together all week, on the weekends, we might head out for an excursion - a movie, a hike. We'd share a dinner together here, an adventure together there. As our travel increased for work, Lizzie started staying with Dyan and the boys when we were away.

And one day, we looked around, and our families had merged into one.

The kids were so young back then! Mito was 9; Lizzie 7 and Derek 6. They've actually known each other since always - I have pictures of baby Mito kissing baby Lizzie at barely a year old. But since ReSolve, they've grown up thinking of each other as brothers and sister, with three parents among them.

I am so proud of them. Mito is witty and warm and charming as hell. Adding all that to his amazing computer skills, he does consulting work part time after school. He is a passionate debater who cares intensely about the issues that affect our world, but he is also a normal 17 year old boy, caring equally passionately about his car and his love life.

Lizzie is enthusiastic about pretty much everything, all the time - upbeat and bright, silly and outspoken. She is an articulate public speaker with a photographic memory for trivia, including what anyone was wearing at any given event. And although she says she wants to be a rock star, I see her spending her life fighting for social justice.

Derek is the funny one, bright and sarcastic and unabashed. Among the three of them, he is the most normal kid, loving his video games and being goofy with his friends. If one of the children will break a tense moment by making huge wet farting sounds, it will be Derek. His one dream is to be an actor, a dream that is backed by tremendous talent; he's done both small local commercials and ads for Nickelodeon, and has lived in New York City to learn the ropes.

They are so different from each other in so many ways, even the ones who were actually born brothers. And they are all our kids.

Just like any family, we all have our responsibilities, the things we're good at or simply just need to do. Dyan is the nurse, the one who knows the symptoms and the remedies, down to the bourbon-based toddy she makes me when my throat is sore. She takes the kids clothes shopping, enjoying the fact that even though she's inherited a daughter, it's a daughter that dresses just like the boys. If the clothes don't fit one, they'll fit the next one down.

Dimitri is the camp director, the one in charge of wacky adventures. Taking the kids to the bottom of Hoover Dam. Downtown Saturday Night. The drive-in. He's also the cook, the one for whom food is joy and love. When they were younger, he would cook a different meal for each of the kids, depending on their tastes, and then a different meal again for the adults. He gets that from his mom, a whole 'nother Mother's Day tale (click here).

And me? I grow the vegies and make the soup. I clip the nails of all the cats, regardless of which house they live in, and I prune the tree Dyan bought years ago when I still owned my plant nursery - the tree she planted in memory of her father and named for him - Arthur. I am the homework task-master, the English and history tutor who has taught not only these kids, but their friends, to write and edit and think in paragraphs and sentences.

And I make them breakfast.

Every morning, Mito picks up Lizzie to take her to school. Every morning, I make them pancakes and sausage, bagels and lox. I get to see them when their day is still ahead of them, before anything good or bad has happened. Next year Derek will join them, the only year of their lives when all three of them will be at the same school together. And every morning, I will watch them grow up, their conversation changing to adult conversation. I will watch them leave, one by one, day by day.

Our family has its rituals and traditions, just like any family. Every fall, we head to Willcox to pick apples. Every Thanksgiving morning, we hike the same trail. Every Chanukah brings matzo balls and potato latkes and candles. Greek Easter of sweet egg bread, lamb, and breaking the red-dyed eggs. Birthday gifts layered inside computer cases and other inside jokes. And ice cream night every Sunday, regardless of the season.

Back when we started ReSolve, one of our goals was to travel, and to be able to bring the family along, and there's barely a place our work has taken us that the family hasn't seen. They've white water rafted down the Colorado and dragged a cow skull through a swamp along Lake Patzcuaro in the Mexican state of Michoacan. They've eaten fresh oysters from the estuary in Puerto Peñasco and explored the newly child-friendly Las Vegas strip. The kids share a room, mattresses piled onto the floor. They fight about who's snoring and whether the air conditioner should be on low or high. But it's made them world class travelers, anywhere, any time.

Our kids have been blessed throughout their childhood with all four living grandma's and two surviving grandpa's, all living here in Tucson, indulging them at every turn. And so, last summer, we began the Grandma Project, a videotaped history of the 20^th Century, through the eyes of all the Grandma's. A German girl growing up in Nazi Germany, marrying an American Jewish soldier. The daughter of a contractor and home-builder, living well in the Pittsburgh suburbs. A Greek peasant girl from the hills of the Peloponnese. A first generation Jewish girl growing up in New York.

We wanted the kids to have a living history, listening to the different experiences of all their grandma's (with kibitzing on the side, of course, from their grandpa's!). Losing Dimitri's mom this year has increased our sense of urgency to finish the project, to have all the Grandma's on tape, to document the history of our oversized family. We've said it's for the kids, but we know, at least in the short term, we will probably cherish it more.

I always wanted 3 kids. For lots of reasons, I wound up the single mom of an only child. And so for me, this big family has been a blessing every day. Lizzie has learned what family really is - both the jockeying for position and the standing up for each other. She's learned that the same set of emotions that can turn a stray dog into an adored part of the family, can make people who aren't really related into brothers and mothers and dads. She's seen that love is something more miraculous than blood could ever be.

The kids don't know any different. To them, there have always been 3 parents telling them to do their homework, to get more sleep, or to just stop bickering. And there are 3 parents to laugh at gross jokes at the dinner table, to get them what they want for their birthdays, to pick them up after school and make them breakfast to start the day. Three parents who adore them, who think they are the most special kids in all the world.

Mito will graduate next year - he just took his SAT's and went to his first prom. Lizzie is heading to Europe this summer, and when she returns, she will get her driver's permit. Derek will start High School in the fall.

And so this morning, as I clean up the mess from pancakes and peanut butter sandwiches, I am cherishing every moment I have with them. They are all my kids.