Mother’s Day felt like cruel irony for Barb Higgins.

Her thirteen-year-old daughter Molly died the day before Mother’s Day in 2016. She didn’t want the cards, flowers and gifts that came along with the holiday after that.

That is, until Jack came along.

“I didn’t celebrate Mother’s Day at all for years and years,” she said. “Now I have Jack, and I’m a whole different kind of mother.”

In 2021, at age 57, Higgins became one of the oldest women in state history to give birth.

Now, four-year-old Jack Banzhoff, who has wild blond curls and loves to play t-ball, is giving her a second chance at defining what it’s like to be a mom.

“There are so many things I don’t have to be structured by that I did 20 years ago, just because I’m in a different place in my life,” she said. “So Jack – Jack has a pretty good life.”

Jack is quick to show off his battery-powered dinosaurs that walk at the push of a button. For his fourth birthday, his parents fulfilled a promised he wouldn’t let them live down: that he could watch Jurassic Park, even if it might be a little scary.

His toy room off the family living room is any toddler’s paradise, with plastic pieces covering the floor and shelves overflowing with dump trucks, race cars and fire trucks.

And unlike his older sisters, bedtime depends on the day and if his parents are home to play.

To Higgins, a longtime member of the Concord school board, that’s the beauty of raising a child later in life.

“We don’t have all the pressures that you have when you’re in your 30s, when your job is important and your mortgage is important,” she said. “I’ve said this a million times. If we don’t have a good night’s sleep, I just sleep late. I don’t care if he’s late to school. So what?”

Higgins and Kenny Banzhoff raised their two daughters Molly and Gracie – who were born two years apart – in the same Concord home. The two could be found in lock step, performing in dance recitals and theater productions on stages across the state.

When Molly died at age 13, now nearly 10 years ago, an immeasurable hole was left in the family. A white synthetic Christmas tree remains up year-round off the living room, with pink streamers, ornaments and a violin in honor of Molly.

Gone are the holiday collectibles that Higgins used to gift her girls – intricate snow globes and Christmas trees that she thought they’d keep in their house as adults.

Having Jack brought her family a new sense of direction, she said.

“Jack is a wonderful distraction and babies keep you in the here and now,” she said. “It’s given a nice optimistic structure to our lives that we wouldn’t have had.”

Higgins wondered what she and her husband would do when Gracie moved out of the house. Frankly, she thought they’d be quite lonely.

But Jack didn’t leave much time for those thoughts to ruminate.

Now that he’s retired, Banzhoff has the luxury of time he didn’t have with his older children. He has the chance to bring Jack to preschool and make dinner most nights.

Higgins and Banzhoff considered having a child a few years after Molly died, consulting doctors about using IVF to get pregnant.

Yes, she was 57 at the time and had “old lady ovaries,” as she’ll joke, but Higgins had no issues. Jack was born weighing 5 pounds and 13 ounces, just days before Molly’s birthday.

The medical miracle, or mystery, has continued. At 61, she’s still breastfeeding – a wonder that has attracted interview requests from television stations in the United Kingdom – and something that her doctors said would initially be unlikely.

“My age makes me a bit of a unicorn,” said Higgins. “But otherwise I’m just a mom like everyone else.”

Higgins sees people her age on the sidelines at Jack’s t-ball games. Granted, they’re there for their grandchildren. The nature of that company makes the experience less isolating, she said.

And when you’ve lived in Concord as long as Higgins has, it’s not uncommon that people already know her story.

Higgins sees Molly in Jack in ways that will make the hair on her neck raise. He has the same wit and smarts. He gets a kick out of being told he sounds a lot like his older sister.

“If I believe that the human soul can come back and visit you, then Molly stops by a lot through Jack,” she said.

On the anniversary of her death they’ll go to her graveside and release balloons to celebrate her birthday. At four, he has simple questions: Why is Molly in the ground? Why doesn’t Molly live with us?

But to Higgins, these conversations drive a healthy understanding of death that most kids can’t grasp.

Each year, Higgins has two days to celebrate: the first Sunday of May, which honors bereaved mothers, and then second Sunday for traditional mother’s day.

This Sunday, she’ll run a 5k race with a friend and then head home to Banzhoff and Jack. They’ll have a family day, she said and spend time with her mother as well.

Often she thinks of her three kids, and what mothering them looks like. For Gracie, who currently works at Disney World in Florida, that means trips to the park, FaceTimes and comments on her social media.

For Jack, that means lining up the ball on his T-Ball stand in the yard and tucking him into bed each night.

And for Molly, Higgins now runs a nonprofit that honors her daughter’s legacy, awarding scholarships and doing random acts of kindness the second Monday of May each year.

“I mother Molly as much as I mother Jack or Gracie,” she said. “I don’t know how not to.”