介绍： 044 | 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 ...

介绍： 044 | 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.

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