Mother’s Day Goes Gay

For the child of lesbians, Mother’s Day is never simple. Sunday was no exception.

For starters, how many Mother’s Day cards should my daughter buy? As with everything else in our family, this one is particularly complicated. You may want to jot down a few notes.

My daughter has two moms, one stepmom, one ex-stepmom and one future stepmom, maybe. Every year, she scopes out Mother’s Day cards in multiple configurations, depending on relationship statuses.

My (now ex-) wife gave birth to her via artificial insemination 25 years ago. Some time later, we divorced. We each remarried. More precisely, I remarried and she got into a committed relationship, during which her partner bore a son and daughter. Both were the products of AI, which in this case had nothing to do with Allen Iverson, that we know of.

Many years later, she and her partner broke up. They worked out a time-share for the kids, who were raised with my daughter as her brother and sister. The fact that the (now ex-) partner and her progeny moved across the street streamlined the process considerably.

In the world of politically-correct lesbians, of which I am thankfully not a part, this is pretty much business as usual. Except there are no cats.

My ex is now dating a soft-spoken woman with a Ph.D. and good table manners. That means nothing to my daughter, but it scores points with her other mom (me.) Regardless, my ex and her new girlfriend fit in nicely with our raucous tribe. We all celebrated Mother’s Day together, along with my wife’s son and his new Romanian girlfriend, who is half his age.

Should we take a short break for refreshments?

Pending the outcome of my ex’s current relationship, my daughter may at some point add another ‘Stepmom’ card to her annual Mother’s Day list. In this case, adding would be far superior to subtracting. We like the girlfriend. She laughs at my jokes.

As a child, my daughter would complain every Mother’s Day that she had to make more cards than did her classmates. “Look at it this way,” I would say, trying to cheer her up. “You have it easy on Father’s Day. And if it’s show-and-tell, just bring in a petrie dish.” Inexplicably, this never worked.

Mother’s Day logistics are tricky, too. Where do we gather—at Mom’s or Mom’s? Does the Equal-Time doctrine apply? Can we skip “Kumbaya” and the friendship circle this year?

By any measure, Mother’s Day was a roaring success. We ate bagels and whitefish. We schmoozed. We laughed from the belly. Most important, we never lost sight of what brought us, and keeps us, together, year after year.

Motherhood. No matter how many mothers there are.