Why Is This Mother's Day Different From All Others?

This Mother’s Day presents a conundrum: How to celebrate my 78-year-old mother without accidentally killing her. My mother and I have always had one of those very complicated relationships, the kind you see in seventies movies. But that said, I worship my mother. I love her in that insane way we love our parents — not quite the crushing way we love our children but so overwhelming that I know that much of my current life is shaped in one way or another as a reaction to her.

And so, we come to Mother’s Day. On a normal Mother’s Day, I would pick a cozy restaurant and take my mother out for a meal. I would make my children dress up, maybe even wear ties and uncomfortable shoes. On past Mother’s Days, we’d drive up to Connecticut to see my octogenarian in-laws. Mother’s Day is a day of delightful obligations, a day to eat fancy chocolate, and celebrate the woman who made me such a lunatic. A day to wear floral headbands and celebrate the woman who created me in her likeness but totally different. Nothing can make a person more insane than a bad mother or even a good mother or a mother taken too soon, or no mother at all.

But this Mother’s Day is going to look a little different. In a pandemic, it must. Coronavirus rages in New York, my city, the epicenter, the Wuhan of America. My mother, the feminist writer Erica Jong is across town, locked away in her 27th-floor apartment with my stepfather. They do not go out or in. Recently, she tweeted how much she missed seeing her grandchildren, which was heartbreaking to read. But we are not overreacting, I already have three friends who have lost their dads to coronavirus. (The fatality rate for Coronavirus in her age group is 13.4 percent.) For my generation, coronavirus is the father-killer, wiping out a generation of dads in their seventies and eighties. Dads (and moms too) that we would have had for a few more years if not for the virus. (This is not to say it hasn’t also killed people my age; it has.)

Obviously, it’s the perfect Mother’s Day to send flowers. Yes, flowers are a perfect solution. Well, not so fast: The pandemic has affected the supply chain and few have been hit harder than florists, Mother’s Day has traditionally been one of the biggest days for florists. But this year the supply chain is a fickle mistress, “When flowers come in from around the world, they’re coming in the cargo hold of jetliners carrying people,” Holly Chapple of Hope Flower Farm told the Washingtonian. “Since people aren’t flying, we’re having some abnormal access to product, particularly European product. Also, the minimums are different. We have a Canadian supplier that can’t justify making a trip unless it’s a certain amount of money.”

I got my mom a papier-mâché sculpture of some of our books together; it was made by an artist I found on Instagram named Bernie Kaminski. Tomorrow I am sending her a little cake from my local family-owned Butterfield market. If there were ever a time to support small businesses and young artists it’s now. Next year we’ll go for a meal; this year we’ll Zoom so that we can have a next year.

Mother’s Day without mother feels like an oxymoron. But Mother’s Day without mom in the hopes of keeping mom alive so that you can have future Mother’s Days is absolutely where we are right now as a country. So many of us have lost a parent from this disease and so many of us will. I am grateful that my mother is well and I know the best way I can celebrate her is by not accidentally killing her this Mother’s Day. On Passover, we Jews say “Next year in Jerusalem.” This Mother’s Day we’ll say, “Next year in person.”

Originally Appeared on Vogue