Just Don’t Call Me Mom

To celebrate our daughter coming into our lives, my husband and I decided to host a party during which Sadie would be blessed by a Catholic priest and be given a Hebrew name by a rabbi. We had the priest from my side of the family. Now we needed a rabbi.

Russell was barely even culturally Jewish and had just started his own consulting business, meaning he had no extra time for anything. So finding a rabbi fell to me.

Many I contacted refused to officiate with a Catholic priest. Others asked about the mother: “Is she Jewish?” They wanted to make it clear that Sadie would not be considered Jewish unless the mother was, even if we gave her a Hebrew name.

Sadie has two fathers. Most people get it when I say, “She has two daddies.” Others persist, asking, “No, but who is her mom?”

With the rabbis, I finally just said, “I’m her mom.”

This response has silenced women in elevators, nannies on playgrounds and bureaucratic clerks in charge of postponing jury duty.

I didn’t realize that saying those three words would, in some people’s eyes, transform me from a married man into June Cleaver. I just thought: If hanging out with a beautiful baby while someone else earns the money is momlike, then sign me up.

Unfortunately, I failed to read the small print explaining that my handsome husband may start seeing me as June Cleaver, too.

As a former Catholic, I come from a long line of passive-aggressive mothers. My own Catholic mother, who lives one floor below us, reminds me of it daily.

“If you really want to get me something nice for my birthday,” she’ll say, “I could use a few tubs of Benecol.” When she saw me in a Broadway show where I appeared briefly in spandex, she said, “It might be fun for us to go on a diet together.”

Mother’s Day is the worst. She invariably turns down my siblings’ invitation for brunch in the suburbs, preferring to complain to neighbors in our building’s elevator that none of her children invited her anywhere.

Russell was on a consulting trip for my first Mother’s Day as a “mom,” where he was enduring the hardships of luxury hotels in Istanbul and London and emphasizing how grueling it was to eat with clients at world-class restaurants (as I dined on Sadie’s leftover puréed spinach and pears). A 9-month-old is expensive, and since I wasn’t earning any money, I was determined to spend as little as possible. I planned on showering my mother with the extravagance of a card I would make myself.

Early that fateful Sunday morning, after a whopping three hours of sleep, I was making my mother’s card when our doorman buzzed.

Loud noises made Sadie cry, so our buzzer — similar to the sound of someone being electrocuted — caused her to scream and me to use language that wasn’t child-friendly. Over the screaming, I heard that I had a package downstairs. I assumed it was our shipment of formula from Diapers.com.

“Thanks, Junior,” I said. “I’ll be down in a bit.” I feared my outfit of boxer shorts and spit-up-encrusted T-shirt was too casual for a full-service lobby.

I’d returned to my card making when my phone rang: my mother.

“Happy Mother’s Day,” I said.

“Thank you,” she said. “You have a package downstairs.”

“I know. I’ll get it later.”

She had clearly been making the rounds in the building, moaning about her ungrateful children, so the pressure was on to make her card so special that it would equal a fancy brunch and bouquet of flowers.

As Sadie and I trekked down to 11B to deliver it, our neighbor said, “You have a package downstairs.”

“Thanks,” I said, nostalgic for brownstone living and anonymous deliveries.

My mother opened the door and I handed her the card, which she pretended to appreciate. “Oh, David, this is lovely,” she said. “Why don’t you go down and get your package?”

As I headed to the elevator, leaving Sadie with my mother, yet another neighbor said, “You have a package downstairs.” I started to wonder where the line is between a “full service” building and a “full annoyance” one.

When exiting our elevator into the lobby, you make a hairpin turn past the shiny brass mailboxes before seeing the doorman at his perch. If I were directing a movie, this sequence would involve a slow pan of me turning the corner, with a jump cut to a close-up of my face as I saw what awaited me.

It was not a package. It was not a shipment from Diapers.com. On the doorman’s stand was a flower arrangement topped by a clump of Mylar balloons. Stapled to the cellophane, a big card yelled, “Happy Mother’s Day David!!!”

Time stood still. I felt as if I were in a vacuum with no sound, movement or feelings.

Somehow I managed to grab the thing and rush it into the elevator. I think I heard Junior call out, “Happy Mother’s Day, David” in a nonmocking way, but, as in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, there was a factory whistle blaring and steam coming out of my ears, so I couldn’t really hear him.

In the elevator, I assessed what I was holding. This was no gaudy embarrassment of pink carnations and baby’s breath. If it’s possible for a mélange of balloons and flowers to be tasteful, this was it. And if my almost three decades with Russell has taught me anything, it’s that the difference between tacky and tasteful is usually the difference between a little money and a lot.

Even so, the more my eyes focused on this expensive riot of mini green hydrangea and garden roses, the more I wanted, instead, a bottle of single-malt Scotch, a therapeutic massage and someone to look after Sadie for five hours. As the elevator ascended, the full weight of the package became almost unbearable.

I felt, more than ever before, the crushing burden of motherhood. We moms may feel closer to the source of all power that exists in the universe, but we are forced to endure the condescension of a society that acknowledges our role with pink balloons.

I envisioned my allegedly hard-working hubby lounging in his London hotel room, suddenly remembering that it was almost Mother’s Day and making a panicked trans-Atlantic call to the pricey florist he has on speed dial. While trying to figure out which arrangement would most impress his mother, he probably thought: “Wait! I have two mothers to think about now. Make it a double.”

The possibility that Russell had merged me in his mind with his own mother hit me so hard that I almost dropped the heavy bouquet on the floor.

I briefly thought about getting off on 11 and presenting it to my mother. I also considered going directly into the trash room and stomping on it until it was unrecognizable, until I realized that the shattering of glass and explosion of balloons would only call more attention to my wretchedness.

That’s when I decided to do what so many moms do every day: suffer in silence. I stowed the humiliating package in my apartment and went back to my mother’s to get Sadie. As I entered, I could tell that even my mother sensed it would be a bad idea to mention Russell’s gift. She again thanked me for my card and asked if we were going out for brunch.

“Mom, Mother’s Day brunch in New York City is like a combination of jury duty, the D.M.V. and the No. 6 train platform at rush hour.”

“So, no?”

“No, Mom. Another time.”

One of the best things about being a new parent is having the license to sleep when your baby does. So even though I’d been up for only an hour, I stretched out with Sadie, and her sleeping breath against my chest gave me a moment to strategize. Why was I so upset? Didn’t I have a great life? Wasn’t I the first to call myself Mom? Why should I be so offended if others follow suit?

My father once gave me two pieces of advice: marry a nice Catholic girl, and always be sure to look, and overlook.

“Look, and overlook” is one of those pithy phrases that makes sense one moment and baffles the next. As I stared at the balloons, however, those words gave me much-needed clarity. I needed to overlook how much I felt like a stay-at-home loser and look a little more closely at the actual message on the card attached to the floral elephant in the room.

So I ripped open the envelope. It read:

“Dear Daddy David,

Just as we’ve decided that our daughter should celebrate both Hanukkah and Christmas, there’s no reason we can’t co-opt every holiday celebrating parenthood. Thanks for being the best parent in the world and making Sadie and me feel so lucky. Love you tons, Daddy Russell.

P.S. Because I know you’re wondering, I sent a different (and much smaller) arrangement to my mom.”

Best Mother’s Day ever.