Two more generations of wonderful mothers I can call family

"Put them all together they spell mother ..."

I think my mother's generation was the first in which significant numbers of women made the decision to combine motherhood with a career. Of course, it was a new enough thing that many of them -- including my mother -- had lesser careers than they could have had in later years.

Since it was the years after World War II, the years of the baby boom, many of them had large families. My mother had five children, and she was past 50 before the last two finished high school.

Nicole, 2005

The next generation -- my generation -- had far more choices. For quite a few, family took a back seat to career. Of the first three women who played important roles in my adult life, including one I married, none of them ever had children.

All are now on the far side of their child-bearing years.

When I met the love of my life, Nicole and I were both 42. She was in the middle of an amazing career in space science, and she also had two wonderful children.

She combined motherhood and a career and did both of them very well. In the years just before we met, she would come home from a long day at work, prepare dinner for Pauline and Virgile and then do something that must have been very difficult. Each night, she spent one hour with each child doing whatever it was they wanted to do.

We made a lot of fun of yuppies and their "quality time" in the '80s, but that two hours every night was truly quality time.

Add to that the fact that she was tougher than any tiger in defending her children against anyone outside the family and she was a pretty amazing mother. So amazing in fact that every year Mothers Day came around, we celebrated Mothers Day Weekend.

Pauline with Maddie & Lex, 2011

Pauline certainly learned from her. So far she is a wonderful mother to three children and is on her way to an exceptional career in the Foreign Service.

She has something the three previous generations of mothers didn't have, and it has made a big difference in her life. She has a husband who put his own plans for a career subordinate to hers. Ryan works, but when it has been necessary, he stays home and looks out for the children.

That's anything but easy and it says something exceptional about him.

Without any sarcasm at all, I think when Mothers Day rolls around, maybe he deserves a little salute as well.