My son Carter is almost 9 years old. He's at the age where he likes to tell jokes, "What has four wheels and flies?" (a garbage truck). He's my first baby, grown into a toddler, now a boy and even still, I remember my earliest moments with him as if they happened yesterday.

I'm in the hospital and the morning sun is shining through the thin strips of the metal mini-blinds. I'm a brand-new mom, unsure of what to do with myself. In the mauve plastic bucket of my new baby's things, there's a tiny nail clipper. I'd read somewhere that babies can accidentally scratch their faces with their nails, which grow in utero. Carter's nails look long to me, and I don't want him to scratch his face.

So I gently, carefully hold him in my arms and attempt to trim them. I fumble, and a little strip of blood appears where there once was a tiny, perfect thumbnail. He doesn't even cry, only whimpers, which makes me feel horrible about my very first bad-mother moment. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" I whisper.

I put the clippers away in the new baby kit and examine the other supplies. Gauze and ointment. A little paper tape measure. A plastic brush for my bald baby, or maybe it's for me? Diapers, wipes. A blue rubber bulb that narrows to a point, some sort of suctioning device, only I'm not sure what part of my baby's it's meant for.

Carter's still in the crook of my left arm when our doctor comes in. The doc asks how I'm doing, and how the baby's doing. I try to sound as if I know what's going on, lest he notice the damaged thumb and decides I'm not fit to be a mother after all. I ask about the baby's rash, a flaky white circle around his mouth.

"What's to be done about this?" I say, in my very most confident mother voice.

The doc pauses a minute to clear his throat, then says, "It's dried milk. Wash his face."

I wish I could say the incident of the milk mustache was the lowest moment of my mothering and that everything got better from there, but in truth, it was only the beginning. I made dozens of errors, rookie mistakes. Things like waking a perfectly contented, sleeping baby because I was afraid he'd stopped breathing, or scheduling a well-check appointment during nap time, or changing his entire outfit just because of a little spot of spit-up.

And still, despite my many missteps, my baby grew, and grew. Always ready to forgive me, always loving me even wen I felt undeserving of that love. I remember one morning, while pushing our similar-aged toddlers in the baby swings at the park, I admitted to my friend Sarah my feelings of self-doubt.

"I can't even make scrambled eggs," I told her. It seemed to me that this was the epitome of incompetence. Every mother knows how to make scrambled eggs; every mother but me.

My husband's mother, Joyce, makes eggs that are fluffy and golden, buttery and creamy. My scrambled eggs always came out in rubbery crumbles. I tried to improve, adding a bit of water, or milk. Increasing the heat, or lowering it. Switching pans.

I learned that cooking eggs is about having the right tools, and knowing how to use them. It's also about timing--knowing when to stay back and wait, and when to rush in. It's about faith. You have to believe that if you just keep trying, eventually, you'll become a good cook. And it's about forgiveness: my new baby, then toddler, now boy, didn't know that my scrambled eggs were awful. All he knew was that I was his mother, and he needed me.

In time, I found my way. I have a cast iron frying pan that was my great-grandmother's. I add a little canola oil and wait, letting it get hot. I crack fresh brown eggs in a white ceramic bowl and beat them with a fork until they turn a lighter shade of yellow. I pour them into the pan and swirl with the fork, just until they are set. Quickly, I take the pan off the heat and stir in a little butter, which makes the eggs glisten.

This Sunday, I expect my oldest son will wake early, and with the help of his father, putter around the kitchen, buttering toast, pouring juice, cracking eggs into a bowl. I don't know what kind of cook he'll be. His scrambled eggs might be light and fluffy, or they might be dense and brown. I wish I knew then, as a new mother, what I know now: it's not the eggs that matter. It's the effort.

From the mother in me, to the mother in you: Happy Mother's Day.