Tell Me Thursday - My Mom Rocks!

"What on earth is your mom doing with you at BlogHer?"

No, she's not a blogger, and no, I'm not a baby who needs my mommy all the time. The fact is that I invited her to attend BlogHer after I accepted the speaking engagement. I thought she would like to see me speak and it would be a nice to spend some one-on-one time with her. She and I are the last of our nuclear family, since I am an only child and my father has passed away. Whenever we visit with my family, I spend the whole time yelling at directing my kids instead of talking with her. This isn't the first time that we've met up at a conference, she also attended Lab Automation with me in Palm Springs. There, I was Senior Software Engineer and she was Professor and research scientist, as opposed to blogger and her mom.

We had fun together hitting some of the early parties (I continued to party well after she retired), having meals together and taking walks along the river.


My mom ate breakfast with Christy Matte (More than Mommy, Quirky Fusion) and my backpack.


We ate lunch along the river outside of the Sheraton.


I taught her how to play checkers on a Microsoft Surface table.


We came back for seconds and thirds of the Quaker Oats mudslides (click for the recipe).

But most importantly, she sat in my session, "MommyBlogging: “Balance” is a Big, Fat, Lying, McLiar LIE for Moms who Blog (and the rest of us too)".


Photo by thegirlsmoma. My esteemed colleagues from the left were Lisa Belkin from the NY Times Motherlode blog, Pauline OHMommy from Classy Chaos and Rita Arens from Surrender, Dorothy and Blogher.

About halfway through the session, Pauline nudged me and pointed to the woman holding the microphone for the next question. It was my mom!! I immediately had a moment of dread - OMG, what was she going to say??

She started by saying that she was Angela's mom, and that she was a semi-retired Professor. The rest of the exact words were a blur, so refer to Mommy Geekology's live blog transcript:

2:54pm: Angela’s mom is speaking! She says she is very proud of her daughter. She says she’d like to communicate with her daughter but she’s too heavily scheduled, but she can’t call her because she’s too busy! However, Angela’s blog gave her a lot of comfort because she enjoys reading it and keeping up with her daughter this way. She also says that she’s not a blogger, but she’s here and having a great time!

And from the BlogHer live blog:

Angela's mother - complains that her daughter's schedule is too filled. Finds comfort in her blog and keeps up to date when they can't have time together.

After she spoke, the room was filled with the warm sentiment that mommyblogging was all worthwhile. I was so grateful for her kind words and her full support. Rita came back with, "Wow, I've never seen anything like that happen at BlogHer. You couldn't script it better." My mom totally stole the show, and I was tickled pink.

Afterwards, Twitter was abuzz with comments about my mom's showing.



People came up to us afterwards and said it was great that she came and that I should call her more often (I will, I will). But the best impact, was to inspire Pauline to bring her mom to BlogHer to hear her speak in the community keynote. Pauline wasn't too nervous about sitting on the panel, but she was extremely nervous about speaking in front of the whole 1500 person audience for the keynote. I ran into Pauline and her mother shortly before the keynote and was really glad to see that my mom had this positive influence. She rocks!


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