My Mother, the Bride

By Joel Stein

I've got enough weddings to go to. But as much as my gut told me to skip this one, I just couldn't find a tactful way to turn down the invitation to my mother's wedding last month. Especially after I had gone to my father's wedding three years ago. After a divorce, parents get competitive for your attention that way.

Children of prior generations didn't get to go to formal events for their parents, other than funerals. So, by comparison, I guess I'm lucky. And I've developed key coping mechanisms, like buying presents that can't be kept in their home to remind me of my complicity in the union. Things like theater tickets or a gift certificate to a restaurant fit into this category. My mom's suggestion, that we chip in for a Jacuzzi, did not.

I've also learned that unlike at a friend's wedding, it's a bad idea to get drunk and hook up with guests, because of the preponderance of cousins. In some ways, though, your mom's wedding is better. When a friend asks you to recite something at the service, you can't say no. But when your mom asks the family to read a poem, you can get out of it by persuading your little sister to say she's afraid of public speaking. At first I wasn't sure exactly why reading at the ceremony seemed so dreadful. Then she showed me the poem. It turned out my fear had to do with the fact that my mother has terrible taste in poetry. She has a Robert Fulghum poster in her house.

My mother either sensed my discomfort or was just really mad about the poem thing, because she sat me at a table as far away from her as possible. This helped keep me from hearing the speeches, the theme of most of which seemed to be how she was never happier in her life. It was during these speeches I discovered that if I took big enough bites of bruschetta, I couldn't hear a thing.

I also couldn't see much. Which was good, because my mom wore a backless dress. Every other bride wears bows and bustles and basically a 3-to-1 ratio of fabric-to-woman, but my mom was bent on destroying my theory that this was one of those nursing home-companion marriages. I realized after seeing all that exposed flesh that there was no way Pamela Anderson's kids would grow up to be O.K.

I did hear enough to learn that my mom, who'd already changed her name three times, is now Roz Leszczuk, which sounds like a felled Romanian dictator. It made me sad to realize that my mother was now part of a family that was not only separate from mine, but whose members might expect me to remember their birthdays. Plus there's something depressing about realizing you'll never be able to pronounce your own mother's name.

I want to make it clear that I like Mr. Leszczuk. I also want to make it clear that it's not funny to refer to him as my "stepdad." My 15-year-old cousin Adam insisted on saying things like "So, does your stepdad let you have girls over?" I wondered if his hostility came from my having eaten his bruschetta. At the brunch, I discovered I was going to have to speak after the slide show. A slide show that was accompanied by Unforgettable and, I'm pretty sure, included some photos that cropped out my father.

The truth is, I'm happy for my parents. I'm glad they found people who love them. After all, it's not like I'm going to take care of them when they get old.