“Significant Other”

My Mom was furious when she came back from birthing her ninth-born.

The object of her wrath? A small, plastic identification wristband that had been given to my Dad to wear during the birth. Typed across the band were the offending words: significant other.

“Significant other?” she raged. “Significant other?! We’ve been married twenty-seven years and had nine children together, and they have the nerve to call him ‘significant other’!”

She spent her indignation in a very long letter to the hospital. I was seven and didn’t really understand her ire. In fact, at that point I’m not sure I really even knew the definition of the word “significant”.

But I remembered it. It became one of those memories that you take out every once in a while and look at with the changing eyes of growing maturity. The moment that most helped me to understand my Mom’s feelings was about a year and a half ago.

I was sitting in my prenatal appointment, in the third trimester of my first pregnancy. My husband was not there — he was only able to make a couple of my appointments since I usually had to go during his work hours. In front of me was the doctor, to my left was her assistant — a kind-looking, bespectacled young woman who tended to speak in that kind of voice that one uses at a funeral visitation. The doctor was busy tapping out notes on her computer, and the assistant, turning to me with a sympathetic smile (she seemed always to think I needed sympathy, and I don’t know why), attempted to make small talk.

“How does your — partner-” (she always said it just like that: *awkward pause* “partner” *awkward pause) “-feel about the pregnancy?”

I tried not to let the word nettle me. I had referred to him as my husband multiple times already during the appointment, but I couldn’t really expect her to remember that. Lots of people come in to have babies. Some of them do not have husbands. Some of them are in committed relationships but do not choose marriage. Some of them are no longer with the person who fathered the child. There are a thousand different situations and stories. I understand that. But our situation was that we were two people, in a lifetime commitment to each other, getting ready to become parents together.

“My husband’s really excited to be a dad!” I answered, channeling my irritation into enthusiasm.

I couldn’t help but get the feeling that she somehow didn’t believe me. Later on during the appointment, she more than once referred to him as my “partner” rather than using “husband” or “father”, almost as if she was ever-so-gently correcting me.

I was the baby’s mother. My husband was just the partner of the mother. Here today, maybe gone tomorrow. The sperm donor. The “significant other”.

I have a very different personality from my Mom’s. Where she took pen to paper and let them know how she felt, I have a tendency to take the world as I find it, probably to a fault. But I now understand the sentiment behind her outrage.

To both my Dad and my husband, fatherhood means more than a fertilized ovum and a child support check to sign. Fatherhood is a sacred duty. Neither of them expect a medal for it. You raise your child. You love your child. You provide for your child. That’s what fathers do.

I never knew if my Dad was hurt or offended by the infamous “significant other” wristband.

But I do know that if he was, the last thing he ever would have done is say anything about it.