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Mother’s Day is here, again. And again, I find myself with an opportunity to brag about some of the great women in my life. Yes, deviating a little from pounding our main marketing message (online ice cream, we’re so cool because we grow the ingredients and make the farm-to—cone ice cream ourselves, etc.), though it fits right in with a booyah for women everywhere, yadah yadah yadah. Moms are universal. My mom and my mother-in-law – very different people with different experiences – share this archetype, each possessing a quiet air of capability, intrinsic authority, a competitive spirit, and a fierce love for their families.

Farmer Bob’s Mom Peg: Born on a dairy farm in upstate New York, the third of four children, she grew up with her three siblings and four cousins enjoying everything that a farm has to offer. Hard work, riding ponies, more hard work, running around barns, playing with siblings and cousins, more hard work. She started out collecting eggs and graduated to cleaning milk buckets (alas, the modern milking parlor was far in the future) earning enough money with a three year effort to buy her new saddle. Peg excelled in school as valedictorian of both her high school class (Farmer Bob’s dad was salutatorian, a dichotomy drilled into Farmer Bob’s family at the dinner table) and her nursing class at Crouse Irving School of Nursing. While she clearly possessed the chops to be a surgeon, it was a different time and instead Peg practiced as a surgical nurse for a decade. Once she became a mom, she practiced nursing only occasionally and turned her attention to raising her kids, managing various family businesses, managing the household, spending time with her grandkids, gardening, volunteering at her church and in the community, and encouraging (and frequently demanding) excellence and dedication in all things,. She was a proud Board member of Vera House, a non-profit that support women experiencing domestic or sexual violence. In short, she was a dynamo.

Becky’s Mom Linda: An identical twin, Linda was born in metropolitan DC and spent summers at her grandparents’ house in Long Island. She and her sister, Ann, were mischievous, willing to go to almost any length for a good joke. During WWII, it was not uncommon for her family to receive late-night knocks on the door from military personnel who had inadvertently driven their jeeps into “jeep-sized” holes dug by Linda and Ann to “catch” jeeps. For college, she studied biology at St. Lawrence University (where she later served on the Board) and went on to work at Rockefeller University doing DNA research for one of the most cutting edge woman scientists (of course) of that time. Leaving the world of genetic research to raise her family of four kids, Linda continued to be the most self-assured, self-actualized person we’ve ever met. Managing the family real estate business, Linda also was the glue of the family, counseling kids and grandkids through numerous life challenges and encouraging us to always be kind and take personal responsibility. She loved playing competitive tennis and paddle tennis, teaching us all that competitiveness never goes out of style. While Dad was a strong personality, Linda clearly wore the pants in the family.

So to the Mom’s in our life: we love you, we’ve never had the amount of time with you that we wish we’d had, and you are largely responsible for whatever good qualities we possess – just like you told us. Enjoy your well-deserved day (and maybe a little farm-to-cone ice cream).