Dear Medical and Educational professionals,
My name is Sarah. My name is not Mom, as in “We’ll be right with you Mom,” or “Mom, if you’d come this way,” or “keep pushing, Mom.” There are two people in this world who get to call me that, my daughter and her father. And he only gets to use that moniker in context like, “Did Mom say you could eat that?” “I don’t think Mom wants you making these pants into cut-offs” or “This in Mom’s necklace so I don’t think you should wear it in the tub.”
My name is Sarah. Yes, I understand there are many, many mothers that come across your path, mothers that you must address in some fashion and I realize that you can’t learn, let alone remember, all their names. That’s fine. You can call me Miss, or even Mam, if you’ve decided you don’t like me and want me to feel old and bitchy. In lieu of a salutation, I’d settle for direct eye contact. These are appropriate ways to address someone you don’t know. Calling me “Mom” is far too familiar, too intimate. Calling me “Mom” does two things, it degrades a very special and unique name that belongs to me and my daughter, it also robs me of my identity. What is an expansive, expression of love, becomes a somewhat demeaning label. I am not just a mother, I’m her mother. I am also a woman, a writer, a daughter, a wife, a teacher, a friend, a bitch (so Mam is often appropriate). If you want to be informal, if you want to treat me like a friend, if you want to seem as if you know me . . .my name is Sarah. Use it.
Sarah Moriarty is a writer, editor and adjunct professor. Sarah’s writing has appeared in such hallowed places as her blog, her mother’s email inbox, the backs of Value Pack envelopes and a waist-high stack of mole skin journals. In addition, Sarah has contributed to F’Dinparkslope.com, WhattoExpect.com and edited fiction for Lost Magazine. An excerpt from Sarah’s novel, The Rusticators, is forthcoming in The Brooklyn Writers Space 2013/2014 anthology, The Reader. A resident of Brooklyn for the last eleven years, Sarah lives with her husband, daughter and a dwindling population of cats. Check out more of Sarah’s work at sarahmoriarty.com.