Missing My Mom

workmom blogs

Browse the topics @home and @work. Engage with leading bloggers who offer advice on family and career as well as share stories about our rich workmom experience. Share your comments.

engage!

Not a mom blogger?

blog directory

CEO Mom

By Carol Evans

Twitter: @CarolEvansWM

As the founder and President of Working Mother Media I have been involved with the advancement of working moms for 30 years. I am often a keynote speaker on the subject of work-life balance, the advancement of women, barriers facing women of color, and leadership. When asked to appear on major talk shows including The Early Show, The Today Show, Oprah, Good Morning America, PBS's To the Contrary and on hundreds of radio shows or to comment in newspapers nationwide, I love to tell the world how hard working mothers work to keep their families and the businesses they work for moving and growing. I told many of my stories in the award-winning book: This is How We Do It: The Working Mothers' Manifesto.

Join me in this amazing conversation. By the way, I would not be a working mom without my two great kids - all grown up - Julia Rose and Robert Scott; and my husband Bob Coulombe is by my side every step of this journey. Let me know what you are thinking!

Missing My Mom

Posted on January 22, 2007

Here I am wedged in the middle seat between two large men on the express train to New York, missing my mom. She died two years ago today, and I have been thinking about her and imagining her all weekend, and looking forward to devoting some time to her memory.

She lived in Chicago, which can seem like its a million miles away from New York. I was lucky to have an office in Chicago that I needed to travel to at each job in my career. One time I gave a keynote address at a "Speaking of Women's Health" symposium out by O'Hare airport and I invited my mom to come hear me speak. It was a great day in our mother-daughter life. She was pretty frail, but she didn't feel frail, and her enormous Danish vitality came bursting out when I introduced her to the crowd of 800 women. She smiled her trademark huge smile and told the audience that she was proud to have been a working mother to me. And when we got home to dad that night she beamed with pride, "Carol had them in the palm of her hand! She was marvelous!"

That was typical of my mom. She loved to cheerlead, and she was always ready with encouragement, and willing to share her amazement at life with anyone who needed a little dose of her contageous energy.

The last time I had a conversation with her was at the Westchester County airport, when she and dad were flying home from Christmas two years ago. The kids and I drove them to the airport but the plane was delayed. "No, don't wait," she said, "we'll be fine. Go back and be with the kids!"

We took the escalator up to go to the parking area and I could look down at them sitting together. I wanted to rush back down and sit with them but I didn't, and that memory of her and dad sitting at the airport is one of the first images I see when I think of her.

I haven't watched the many miles of videotape that I have of my mom. Somehow I'm afraid to get that sad. But right now, tears flowing down my cheeks, sitting on the Metro North, I am grateful to be able to be in touch with her memory. I never knew how much I would miss her. And I never knew that I would somehow cherish the pain that I feel when I remember her.