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By the time I was old enough to leave home, I thought I understood the basics of motherhood. I had spent 18 years being raised by a mom, so I knew what was involved.

In my mind, being a good mother was simple. Mothers had the kids. They fed the kids. They washed the kids, tucked them in at night, encouraged them to behave, and occasionally threatened to tell their fathers when they got out of line.

Mothers also cried over their children. At my house, the best I could hope for was that it wasn't me who made Mom cry. That invariably involved the abrupt appearance of the Old Man.

When Mom cried over me leaving, I pleaded with her to tell her husband that she had stubbed her toe, watched a sad movie, or got bit by a horse. Anything. Just so he didn't connect her tears to me.

For all this experience, I really had no more of an idea about actual motherhood than I did about quantum physics. I wouldn't start learning the truth about it for another five years.

My education began two seconds after my wife gave birth to our first child. She was still on the delivery table when I saw her transition from this totally gorgeous woman I had married to the mother of our child.

It was disconcerting at first. Suddenly I wasn't her only (or even most) important concern. Our world, previously based on doing whatever we wanted, began to revolve around what the child needed.

Keeping the child alive, healthy and happy was hard work. And I was expected to get fully involved. I learned that a handful of dry Cocoa Puffs was not a complete and balanced breakfast. There was formula and baby food and nutrition.

My wife naturally understood the physical rhythm that babies prefer when falling asleep. It was impossible to calm down a tired baby by bellowing Led Zeppelin songs at it while watching TV.

There came other previously unimaginable things. Babies are full of noxious fluids, some of them still being studied by the military for weaponry.

I'm not easily grossed out. I have carried parts of human beings in buckets, bags and even my own pockets. I have seen some hideous things, but my own flesh and blood neatly packaged in feces was more than I could take.

Eventually I changed diapers, but I had to suit up before I did — air freshener, nose plugs, rubber gloves. I even stole a coroner's apron. And I always needed a few moments to calm down afterwards. My wife did the same thing several times a day barehanded and without blinking.

She did a million other things that I hadn't considered necessary, including getting up with our daughters in the middle of the night.

They didn't want me. Hell, I once fired two .38-caliber blanks into their closet to "kill" a night monster. Not only did it make things worse, it woke the neighbors. No, the girls wanted mom.

It was beautiful. I have rarely been more in love with my wife than those nights I woke and listened to her singing softly as she walked a darkened hall with a feverish baby, or seen her more radiant than while bathing our girls.

My wife spent countless hours tending to what I saw as the most inconsequential needs of kids — homework, heartbreaks, hormones and a myriad of other growing-girl angsts.

And it never stopped. For nearly 40 years she traded her own desires, happiness and even some of her hot looks for the needs of our girls. It didn't help that she had to finish raising me.

But through it all she's still the most beautiful woman in the world, especially to those who count on her for so much.

Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com or facebook.com/stillnotpatbagley. Find his past columns at http://www.sltrib.com/lifestyle/kirby