By Candi Toupin  ·  The Toupin FamilyA lot of people think i get my humor from my dad. But my mom is as goofy and silly as they get.

What My Mom Built: The Infrastructure

I recently posted about my dad — a piece I wrote in my head at 11pm, lying in bed with the weight of the world pressing down the way it does when money is tight and everything feels uncertain. I posted it. People were kind. And then I sat there thinking: I'm not done.

Because here's the thing about my mom, Pam Toupin: she ran that company. She raised four kids. She kept the books in a backyard shed while my dad was out building a reputation, one remodel at a time across the East Bay. And most people who encounter the story of Toupin Construction hear about Tim. Which is fair — he's on the jobsite, he's the face of it.

But I watched my mom from close up. And I want to be very clear: she was not in the background. She was the infrastructure.

She Actually Ran It

When people hear "family business" and "wife handled the books," there's a version of that story that's small. The wife who answered the phones, filed a few things, helped out when she could.

That is not what happened.

My mom managed the entire business operation in those early years — invoices, vendor relationships, payments, materials, accounts. My dad could go out and do what he does best — design, build, supervise, show up for clients — because someone was making sure the whole machine worked. That someone was Pam. Not as a helper. As the person who ran it.

Eventually Toupin became bigger than they anticipated and my mom was able to hire an office staff and take a step back from the day-to-day business, for a bit that is. In 2006 my mom made her return to Toupin side by side with my dad, going to jobsites. As of last year she became the primary owner of Toupin Construction, making it woman-owned and operated.

"You can be the best contractor in the East Bay. But if someone isn't watching the numbers, managing the vendors, making sure every material gets ordered and accounted for — you don't have a business. You have a very exhausting hobby."

There's a version of history where the people doing this work get a footnote. I refuse to write that version.

This was one of my first mothers day- with my inspiration my mom and her mom. 

The Backyard Shed

Toupin Construction started in the early 80s — my dad, his pickup truck, and a skill that most people don't have and can't fake. By the 90s, the business had grown enough that my mom needed a space. Not an office downtown. Not a suite with a nameplate.

A shed. In our backyard in Alamo.

She ran the day-to-day from that shed. And simultaneously — not sequentially, simultaneously — she was driving four kids to tutors and baseball practice and swim team and playdates. She was helping with homework. She was keeping the household going.

Four kids. A company's finances. A backyard shed as command central. And she did all of it without missing a beat, without complaint, without anyone handing her a trophy.

That's not a supporting role. That's two full-time jobs and a third one they don't have a name for yet.

Puffy Paint and the Point

Here's what I think about when I think about my mom's capacity: she also made it magic.

In between the invoices and the homework and the carpooling, she would pull out the puffy paints and craft with us. She would put little seasonal stickers on the windows for the holidays. She found the time — I genuinely do not know how — to make childhood feel special, layered, full of small delights.

I grew up thinking all moms were like this. That was my baseline. Then I got older and started paying attention to how other families operated, and something shifted in me. Other kids were loved, I'm sure of it. But what I had was specific. What I had was a mom who wasn't just going through the motions — she was genuinely, joyfully present. And that's rarer than it should be.

The puffy paint matters because it tells you something about who she is. A person who is overwhelmed cuts corners on the extras. She didn't. She found the extras. She added them. That's character. That's a choice, made over and over again, that says: my kids deserve more than functional. They deserve to feel like life is good.

This was on a Disney trip with Kai, age 2

The Battery That Doesn't Die

Anyone who knows my family will recognize this: my mom is an Energizer Bunny. She does not stop. I have never in my life seen her stop.

She's up before the rest of us. She's going after the rest of us have given up for the night. She moves through the world at a pace that makes me genuinely tired just watching her — and she does it quietly, without drama, without needing anyone to notice. She sees what needs doing and she does it. That's the whole equation.

She was my dad's biggest champion. His loudest fan. His steadiest corner through forty-plus years of building something real. She became his caretaker during some really hard years. I am not even going to go into that part of her story because it is a lot. And she did that while also building something herself — a family, a household, a business operation — and she did it without ever once making it about her.

That's not weakness. That's a specific, deliberate kind of power that our culture doesn't have great language for.

She Didn't Just Love Me. She Liked Me.

This is the thing that gets me when I think about it too hard.

She liked who I was as a person. Not just in the way that mothers are wired to love their children — that's biology. I mean she was genuinely interested in me. In my thoughts. In what I was becoming. She showed up for the person I was, not just the daughter role I filled. I talk to my mom more than any other friend I have had in my life. She is the first person I call when I have any kind of news, exciting or super boring.

That landed differently as I got older. You start to understand that not everyone got that. You start to understand that a parent who genuinely likes you — who treats you like someone worth knowing — is not a given. It's a gift. And it shaped everything about how I move through the world, how I think about myself, how much room I take up in a room.

"She really liked me. It was more than a mother's love. And once I understood how rare that was, I never took it for granted again."

My mom LOVES cards. We would play multiple nights a week and she was in charge of babysitting as well 

I'm a Misandrist, Actually

People call me a feminist and I don't argue with it. But if I'm being honest, I think my position is slightly more specific than that: I think women are often underestimated, frequently uncredited, and quietly doing more than half the work in most rooms — and I have very little patience for a world that keeps acting surprised by this.

My mom is exhibit A.

She modeled something I've been trying to articulate for years: that you can be the most capable person in the operation and have absolutely zero interest in performing that fact for an audience. The work is the thing. The results are the thing. The needing-everyone-to-know-about-it is optional, and she opted out.

Worth Saying Out Loud

Construction is still — in 2026 — a field where women are the exception. I grew up in it. I walked onto job sites where I had to earn the right to be taken seriously, sometimes before I'd even opened my mouth. But I never walked into those rooms believing I didn't belong. That came from my parents. My dad said I belonged there, and I believed him. My mom showed me what it looked like to belong somewhere and not need anyone's permission to act like it.

She didn't raise me to wait for applause. She raised me to do the work and let the work speak. That is, I've come to understand, a deeply underrated superpower — and I got it from her.

Just me & my mom 

What She Built in Me

My dad gave me the trade. He taught me what this industry looks like, what it demands, what it's worth being proud of. I learned craft from watching him — the real kind, the forty-years-of-calluses kind.

My mom gave me the infrastructure of a self.

She gave me the understanding that essential doesn't require loud. That the person holding everything together is not the lesser position — it is frequently the harder one, and often the more important one.

That kind of security in your own contribution — that's not passivity. That's confidence at a level most of us are still working toward.

I am in awe of her. I always have been. I'm just getting better at saying it at a volume she can actually hear.

Happy to make it even, Mom.