SMC Archives - Mothering in the Middle

The Father Fix (From a Single Mother by Choice)

Andrea Lynn

Father’s Day has never been a big deal in our house. My girls are too young to know the occasion exists, since they are still at home and sheltered from both Hallmark and earnest preschool teachers. But my legion of Single Mothers By Choice friends all have tales to tell about school projects mislabeled to “daddy” and efforts to substitute variations of grandpa and uncle on hand-written cards and macaroni photo frames. It is an annual discussion that is sometimes painful but mostly handled in stride. I’m pretty sure Jewish kids have more trouble with Christmas than fatherless children have trouble with Father’s Day, though perhaps I’m in denial. […]

Mother’s Day, Unmarked

by Andrea Lynn

On my very first Mother’s Day, I was three and a half weeks pregnant. Anyone who knows fertility (and infertility) and the bizarre world of pregnancy dating knows that a woman who is three and a half weeks pregnant doesn’t even KNOW she is pregnant yet. But I knew. It was about a week after my IVF, and I was gardening in the backyard. I dug holes to plant a new rose of Sharon and five lilies, and I became so overcome with that little exertion that I laid down on the grass, on my back, and looked up through the green of my maple tree to the blue sky above, and felt nearly faint with exhaustion. And that Sunday afternoon, Mother’s Day, I wondered if I was suddenly very tired for a very good reason. And I felt happy. By Monday I was debating baby names, though it wasn’t until Wednesday that I peed on a stick and got the two pink lines that I’d begun to think might never, never appear. […]