On a Mother’s Day a decade ago I was a CIA station chief in a South Asian war zone, missing home while watching other parents try to keep family life intact across long distances. The piece looks at the private cost of that work, how kids cope without the full story, the quiet pride that grows over time, and why forward-deployed mothers matter to our national security.
Ten years back, being overseas on Mother’s Day meant swapping casserole and hugs for briefings and radios. Our station was full of married officers with young kids, and the loneliness showed in the way we talked about every small milestone we missed. We leaned on each other and on the conviction that our mission mattered for the safety of Americans at home.
Many of the women serving there were mothers to little ones who could not possibly understand why Mom was gone for so long. The go-to consolation was the occasional FaceTime if the internet cooperated, but most of the time the truth of the work stayed hidden. Families were told simplified versions: she works for a company, she works for another agency, anything that kept classified details out of bedtime stories.
FIRST LADY MELANIA TRUMP WELCOMES MILITARY MOMS TO WHITE HOUSE FOR MOTHER’S DAY
The secrecy was for good reason. These moms sometimes left home to meet sources in dangerous places, wearing body armor and carrying firearms, or to sit through high-threat meetings that could steer the course of an investigation. They spent their mornings polishing marksmanship or studying trauma first aid and their evenings in secure calls to brief leaders back in Washington. None of that fit into a child’s picture of what Mom “does” when she leaves the house.
My late wife, Kim, was a disguise technician at the CIA, a job that sounds like something out of a novel. To our sons, she was the pancake maker and the birthday-party architect, the comforter and the Halloween mastermind, not the person who cloaked officers so they could recruit sources without blowing cover. That contrast between domestic warmth and clandestine work was a kind of secret the boys lived with until they were old enough to grasp the stakes.
THE QUIET WAR: HOW TERROR HAS EVOLVED SINCE SEPT 11
Kids sometimes only appreciate the meaning of a parent’s service years later, when the fog of childhood clears and patriotism and sacrifice land in sharper focus. Charles Krauthammer made the point that a strong forward-deployed presence prevents threats from growing into homeland attacks, and Sept. 11 showed how danger can come from distant, ungoverned spaces. That reality is exactly why those deployed moms do the uncomfortable, unseen, and often dangerous work they do.
There is a real parenting lesson in all this: role modeling is not only about shared soccer games or bedtime stories; it can be about showing courage and putting country before comfort. A mom who leaves for months at a time teaches resilience in a way that only hindsight can clarify for her children. The trade-offs are heavy, but they are not meaningless to the family or to the nation.
So on Mother’s Day, spare a thought for the moms who are physically away from their families because they answered a call to keep Americans safe. Hold space for their unseen sacrifices without needing to know classified details. Pray for their safe return and for the quiet reunions that follow, when a long-missed mother walks back into a home that has been waiting with open arms and tears of joy.
