When I was in grade school, I got my first taste at motherhood through a play we held that reenacted the Nativity of Jesus. 

The play wasn’t anything grand, with what a small school and an even smaller amount of students studying in said school, but it was something that my mother and I thoroughly prepared for. I remember it clearly like it just happened; we didn’t have any of the garb the popular Western depictions of Mary had, so with cloth scraps my mother collected—or found lying around in our house, I’m not too sure on that detail anymore—she had a seamstress make the clothes for me. All for a one-day play that we’ve practiced for less than a month that ended in all of us dancing to Gangnam Style. It was wacky, maybe even something you could label as campy, but nonetheless, it was an experience that’s forever etched in my memory.

This experience resurfaces in my head every so often, especially in the past years, as I studied for probably a decade in a Catholic school. Whenever we celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, my brain promptly reminds me of the play, even though the whole point of the Feast isn’t actually Jesus’ conception—maybe a shocker to some people, but a good mythbuster insertion for me. Yes, it isn’t actually about the Annunciation or what happened after that; it’s about the conception of Mother Mary herself.

Thinking back to that play, I remember being surprised to get the role of Mary. I also remember being in disbelief, like a huge responsibility was suddenly thrust into my arms, as if I’d actually become somebody’s mother soon. Given, motherhood is a big responsibility, but there was no way a 7-year-old could grasp that concept. 12 years forward in time, the reminiscence just made me think, yes, pressure and responsibility were exactly right. To be conceived without original sin and to later bear the Savior of Man weren’t exactly the easiest things to shoulder; what more the aspect of motherhood that came with it?

Much like how a portion of our childhood acts like foreshadowing for who we become in the future, the immaculate conception had been God’s way of laying out the groundwork for the sake of humanity and His Son. It was made so that when the time comes, Mary would be a suitable candidate. It was made so she would be Mary, full of grace; Mary, mother of God.

As the curtain comes to a fall, I can’t say wholeheartedly that I’m religious or spiritual, but one certain thing is that I’ve always seen Mother Mary the same as I did when I pretended to be her. I saw her for her strength interposing her gentleness, cradling God in her arms—someone who has the safety of humanity within her fingertips, yet treating him no differently. A mother, daughter, and the New Eve; the Chosen One, born without original sin.