The Unsung Hero

When I was in first grade, I wasn't paying attention one day and I slammed my pointer finger into a locker door at school. From what I can recall, there was a lot of blood and I screamed so loudly that most of the school came out of their classrooms to see what had happened. I was in a place very foreign to me as a child; my family had been recently stationed in Minnesota and it was unfamiliar territory from the life I was accustomed to in Virginia. In that moment, I was terrified. I knew only my parents in that time and place, and I was alone and almost completely without the top 1/3 of my finger.

As a kid, in a moment as traumatic as that (or even just a scraped knee), all you want is a parent there to make everything okay. Simply with their presence, Moms make all the pain go away; they bring you back down to earth, they give you love that no one else could ever give, and exhibit an understanding and calmness that is unmatched. In between my sobbing and disorientation sitting in the nurses' office with a foot wide of gauze on my little finger, blood pouring through, I remember just wanting my Mom.

*And just like magic*, after only a few minutes, she came running through the door, leaving whatever responsibilities her job at the time demanded. Despite the panicked look on her face, I immediately became calm. I'll never forget the severity of concern on her face. In a quick moment I went from feeling a very painful frenzy, to her taking on almost seamlessly my exact feeling, and in doing so, she absorbed whatever fears I had and brought them into herself. I got stitches to sew my finger back onto itself, and she was right there with me every moment (I even got a Barbie out of it!)

9/11 was a weird, almost deja-vu experience for me of the aforementioned event. It was a markedly bright and clear Tuesday morning in 2001 in Northern Virginia. I sat down to eat my overly processed middle-school lunch in the cafeteria, and the loud buzz of my peers echoing about "some bomb" that had exploded drowned out my hearing. I was confused as I punched a hole in my bagged milk with its attached straw, and as soon as I looked up, there was my Mother, once again barreling through the doors, scooping me up from any perceived danger. My father was in the Pentagon that day. She got the call. "Your husband's office has been hit, but he is okay." By the grace of God, my father was in another part of that enromous building at the time of the collision. Some of his colleagues perished. We didn't hear from him all day, which was extremely stressful. Turns out he stayed to help those who were injured. Yet, beyond fielding relentless calls from family and friends asking about my Dad, her primary focus was me. She kept her cool, kept me fed, and comforted me when in all honesty, *she* was the one who needed comforting.

This is what All-Star Moms do. They come in and sweep us away from pain, or heartache, or disappointment, when we need it the most. They lift us way up when we are way down. I am nearing 33 years old and that same Mom who brought me back to Earth as a little kid that day STILL brings me back down to Earth when I feel duress (though, with a little less blood present). The calm she brought me back then is still the same calm she brings me today, and I am forever grateful for it. To top it off, she as strong as a bull in her convictions, and an incredible role model. A good Mother is an unsung hero, day in and day out. There are heroes that make remarkable strides in predicaments some of us can never fathom (war, etc). But a present and selfless Mother...that's an entirely different, and equally (if not moreso) important hero to each of us.