Mother’s Day. 

It’s here. 

Again. 

Beautiful and brutal. 

Gut wrenching for the Smiths from a dozen angles while also displaying a vast array of flowers, tropical, indoor-outdoor whites, greens, shades of purple, yellows, sturdy, strong and luscious, endless developing beauty — reaching for sunlight, proclaiming life and charisma  — even within our motherless home. 

It’s the early 2000s and Mother’s Day: the boys wake, wander into my room, at least one son is aware of the day given the many things he had to draw, cut, glue and color at school for me, his dad-mom. He’s also performed in “Mother’s Day Bunny” where I was the only dad in attendance. The school’s admirable efforts to include us, or rather efforts to never exclude us, get a little ridiculous but I play along lest some real mother get whiff that my children be faced with the truth that they don’t know their mothers, a reality from which we, in the privacy of our home, have always openly addressed. Blanket strewn over his shoulders and with an inspiring attempt at positivity, he says, “Happy Mama-Day, Dadda,” and I embrace him and then his brother trailing dutifully behind and I leave it at that.

We meander through the morning, sometimes sluggishly, but with momentary caffeine-stirred urges to “make it memorable for the boys.” 

At lunch the restaurant tables are packed with girls-and-boys-with-mothers and flowers and gifts piled high with color and sweetness. Octogenarian mothers swoop in to hug multiple generations vying for hug-inclusion as raucous laughter buzzes through the air.

Friends see us and platitudes flow as they do when people don’t know how to talk about loss or abandonment or death while attempting kindness to quell their glaring uneasiness. 

“You’re in a better place.” 

“God knew your dad could be both.” 

“You know it’s extra special to be ‘chosen,’” a mother says to my son as if she’s the first to offer adoption this spin.

I’m uncertain. Should I laugh, cry or lead the boys out the door and flee the overload display of all my boys don’t have?

Instead, we’re three-strand strong, and face it as if nothing can touch the Smith-bulwark.

It’s Mother’s Day and about 2015: my first-born off-handedly reports he’s going to make a gift for his mom and, his car loaded with equipment, he leaves. Mid-afternoon he returns, buries himself in his room to emerge hours later with a 4-or-so minute movie that still blows my mind every time I watch it. I don’t know if his mother ever saw her gift on YouTube but within 24 hours he was interviewed on a local news station and his “letter” had traveled the world. I have a hunch his mother did see it but I know she did not respond. A few years later he reached out very directly to her to be firmly and gently rebuffed.

“Adoption is a very powerful tool,” I whispered into his ear as I tried to comfort my distraught son as he sobbed and sobbed. 

“Thank you for the choice you made. I didn’t mean to upset you,” he wrote, time-stamped seconds after his biological mother expressed her wish not to hear from him again. The boy was ashen, disoriented, for days.

Yes. Adoption is a powerful tool. 

Rest assured, my boys’ mothers, despite their physical absence, have been more than present in our lives. They are not sitting proud at our all-male out-of-the-way Mother’s Day table, but they are ever-present guests as we steel ourselves for life together. 

Nate did not learn his gentleness from me. He did not get his unflappable nature from me. I’ve spent much of my life in a hurry, and, apart from when on sports fields or a basketball court, he’s never rushed a moment in his life, not even when chasing the dog. I didn’t teach him to anticipate when I’m not feeling well and to silently — late in the night — enter my bedroom and place ice water next to my bed in the event I may want it. 

I like to think we as a family are generally kind people, but, I tell you, Thulani’s natural kindness cannot be taught, tutored or trained. 

He was born kind. 

Kindness tumbled down through generations of his kin despite the traumas and brutality they knew. Kindness flowed into my boy from unknown generations like the mother’s milk he never tasted. 

My sons’ mothers may not be at the table with us on Mother’s Day but I meet them every day in the beauty with which each of the generous women stamped their claim on the lives of our shared, fabulous sons. 

Had I an opportunity to reunite with my sons’ mothers I’d say a deep and welled up “thank you” for the gifts of two magnificent humans with whom I’ve shared the last 25 years. I’d say “thank you” for the bravery it took each woman to make her generous choice. 

I salute you, your bravery, your untold story, your capacity to engage in enduring, long-distance and painful, love. 

Happy Mother’s Day to birth moms everywhere.