A family with two dads marks ‘real’ Mother’s Day

In 1907, Anna Jarvis promoted the idea of honoring mothers with a holiday, giving them a white carnation because it “does not drop its petals, but hugs them to its heart ... like a mother hugs her children.”

After her campaign to politicians and the press, President Woodrow Wilson declared the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day on May 9, 1914.

There are two things you need to know about Anna Jarvis:

1. She was never a mother. She was, however, a devoted daughter, dedicated to her mother’s mission that there be a day of service to less fortunate mothers.

2. By 1920, she had denounced the holiday, believing that it had gone too commercial, hijacked by confectioners, florists and greeting card companies. She campaigned to see it removed from the American calendar until her death 28 years later.

Right before the world shut down last year, my son Aidan and I (as chaperone) went on a retreat with his eighthgrade graduating class from St. John’s.

We sat in a circle, on old beatenup couches, and talked about growing up, reflecting on the decade these young women and men had shared. Each student blurted out how proud they were of each other and how much they would miss their peers in the coming year.

Sammy, the star baseball player and violinist, looked my son in the eye and said, “And Aidan. I don’t know how you did it, all these years without a real mother.”

That comment has stayed with me.

This weekend brings Mother’s Day, and, as one of two gay men raising sons, it’s like being single on Valentine’s Day. Though I’m listed as “mother” on the birth certificate, there’s no breakfast in bed this Sunday, but rather a little bit of guilt as I ask the boys if they want to go to the psychic Starbucks on Portola. Victor, the barista, will no doubt add cinnamon to my chai as a consolation prize.

Aidan and Zane are our sons. Notice we don’t call them “foster” sons, and they don’t call us “adoptive” fathers, but rather “Daddy and Papa.” Chosen family doesn’t need qualifying adjectives. (And for the record, Queenie calls me “Woof.”)

But are we a real family?

Makes me think of a time when we visited the SASBs, and I asked my sons as we got out of the Kipcap, “For just 15 minutes, can you get off your iPhones and pretend to be real teenagers?”

Aidan rolled his eyes, and Zane, still clicking through TikTok, said, “This is what teenagers do, as real as it gets.”

What is a real mother anyway? As with much of my philosophy, I found the answer through musical theater. For 15 years, my husband Brian danced with ODC/San Francisco in “The Velveteen Rabbit.” He played a character called the Skin Horse, and when a stuffed toy rabbit asked him what is real, he replied, “Real isn’t how you are made. It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become real.”

In the absence of a Hallmark Mother’s Day, we’re going to celebrate Sunday as Jarvis would. Buy a dinner for a woman who’s living in a tent on Duboce Street and doesn’t know where her children are. Give a carnation to a neighbor who never had children, but always remembers my sons’ birthdays — and listen to her complain about the neighborhood coyote for an hour.

Aidan may not have gotten a real mother to celebrate with on this holiday, but he has parents who love him fiercely.

Somewhere in the outer, outer, outer, outer Excelsior lives the Velveteen family. We’re not made of clockwork or things that go buzz inside us. We may not get See’s chocolates or roses, but we are, as Zane says, “as real as it gets.”

Aidan and Zane are our sons. We don’t call them “foster” sons, and they don’t call us “adoptive” fathers, but rather “Daddy and Papa.”