Royalty

I was on the road for the first time in a good while last week.  While wandering through a major airport en route to an easy connection, I saw a young woman doing the same thing. In a much less easy manner.  Obviously short on time.  A rather small lady.  Almost a girl.  With a VERY small baby in a papoose carrier in front of her.  Car seat in one hand. Pulling a roller suitcase with the other.  The baby peeked out at me from the papoose carrier wide eyed as his mom strode past, no doubt thinking "THIS is the way it is going to be"? 

She did not have the air of someone used to today's air travel.  Rather of someone thrown into the hurly-burly of a huge airport out of absolute necessity.  For the first time.  On a tight schedule.

I mentioned that she strode past me.  Her small frame totally burdened with the demands of the campaign in which she found herself.  But the look on her face.  One of undiluted determination.  Motherly ferocity in its purist form.

Any father knows this look.  Any man who has had the opportunity to observe a woman in action while displaying it, especially for the first time, feels a DNA coded flush of respect that verges upon the martial.  That mother and son WERE going to make the connecting flight, with NO loss of necessary materiel and the child WOULD be fine as well.  The battle would be won.  God help any force obstructing her path.

The focus.  The determination.  The endless attention to detail.  Such is what makes a certain sort of great mother.  Of the warrior-princess class.  Because there was no mistake about it.  This young, disheveled, harried woman had royal blood.  Of the most important kind. 

In my mind I gave her a courtly bow.  A salute, really.  From a safe distance.  And then I went on my way.