Mother's Day looks different to us: A first without mom, to celebrating with 2 dads

A traditional Mother’s Day scene might involve Dad coaching the kids from the sidelines as they make Mom eggs and pancakes and serve her breakfast in bed on a tray. While that version of the holiday may still exist, there are also families where it looks quite different.

Here are how four Long Island families will be marking the holiday this year — a single mom with her preschooler, two dads with their children, a grown man experiencing his first Mother’s Day since losing his mom to breast cancer, and a mom who celebrates the two daughters she has while still grieving the babies she lost.

This is Jonathan Sujecki's first Mother's Day without his mother, Darlene, who was 63 when she died of metastatic breast cancer in December, one day before her 64th birthday. Sujecki, 37, owner of Sujecki Farms in Calverton, lived two houses away from his mom and says he did everything he could to celebrate her before she died.

“She wanted to go to Key West,” he says, but that couldn’t happen this past fall so Sujecki went to Plan B with the help of family. “We created Key West in her own backyard and surprised her with that.” The family recreated the famed Key West buoy at the southernmost tip of the United States and hired a steel drummer and served Southern foods.

Now Sujecki is working on a flower garden memorial for his mother next to a pond on the farm property that he plans to finish by Mother’s Day. A rock the size of a golf cart will have a plaque affixed to it with a message his mother sent him before she died. “Please smile, don’t cry, when I fly with the angels.”

Baal Surujpaul, 40, who works in finance, and Nathan Huddleston, 46, a letter carrier, of Mineola, have two children, Emmanuel, 7, and Riley, 5. “It’s always kind of weird for us,” Surujpaul says of Mother’s Day for his family. 

Surujpaul and Huddleston’s kids do a lot of Mother’s Day crafts at school — they are in kindergarten and second grade — so Surujpaul reminds the teachers that his children have two dads and no mom. Instead, he encourages his children to focus on creating crafts for the women who influence their lives.

“They do question, ‘Whey don’t we have a mom?’ ” Surujpaul says. He and Huddleston explain to them that every family is different, that some have one parent, some have two dads, some have two moms. “We try to pivot and say, ‘Think of the women in your lives and try to celebrate the women who influence you, your aunt, your grandmother,’” Surujpaul says. "The actual day, we're just kind of low key."

Each Mother's Day, MeLinda Kann, 39, an interior designer from Central Islip, and her husband, Benjamin, 41, a union plumber, take their daughters, Lena Faith, 2, and Hope Grace, 1, to visit the grave of the twins the couple lost before Lena Faith and Hope Grace were born.

“In 2019, I was pregnant with twin girls and I lost them at 20 weeks,” Kann says. She had Lena Faith in 2020 and Hope Grace in 2021 (Hope was also a twin, but her twin was lost very early in Kann’s pregnancy). The Kanns named Lena Faith and Hope Grace for the older sisters who were lost, and on Mother’s Day the family goes together to the cemetery.

“I can’t endure a Mother’s Day without acknowledging that part of my motherhood. This is healing for me,” Kann says, adding she hopes sharing her story will comfort other women who may have lost babies. “There are some moms who feel like they have to hide it because other people don’t understand that grief remains,” she says.

The day at the cemetery becomes uplifting, Kann says, thanks to the toddlers she does have. “They’re silly and they're running and they're laughing,” she says. “After that it’s just a heartwarming moment being together with their sisters.”

Kelly Puertas, 44, of Port Washington, is a single mother who owns a knitting business. There's no spouse involved to ensure Penny, 4, presents mom with a homemade gift. So Puertas' Mother’s Day gift from Penny won’t be a surprise: she's helping her daughter to create a craft to give her.

Puertas says this is the first Mother’s Day that Penny might really understand what the holiday is about. “I’m going to explain what it is — that we celebrate moms for all they do in the year,” Puertas says. 

The duo picked flowers together to use in a suncatcher craft, laying the flowers in the lid of a jar and covering them with gelatin to dry. “When you take it out gently, you can see through it. You can hang it on a window and the sun will shine through,” Puertas says. “She’s going to make one for mommy.”