You all know the fairy tales about the good or evil queen, the good or wicked witch, the evil stepmother, the poor mother, the absent mother, the good daughter, the fair maiden, the bewitched maiden…but what about the forgotten queen?
You may not have noticed her since she never sat on an official throne. Yet you’ve heard the whispers about her. Remember that saying, “The hand that rocks the cradle, rules the world”? Ah, yes, that expression is about the forgotten queen.
She isn’t the one with the smallest foot or longest hair or in need of a princely kiss or has some business all alone in an enchanted forest.
It is she with eyes in the back of her head, monitoring the sounds of her children while performing some everyday phenomenon like cooking, who knows when to turn around and give the Mother stare, which rips through her guilty children as a warning to stop the offending behavior or else.
It is she, who sacrifices sleep, time, and a quiet dinner to tend to her children, including a temporarily regressed significant other.
It is she, who, in case of an emergency, walks into the middle of a riot and slaps her child out of it to save his life.
She is the kisser of wounds; the teacher of lessons, moral and academic; the general medical practitioner; the judge and jury.
She is the infuser of strength and common sense, sending her children out into the world, separation anxiety be damned.
She is the giver of unconditional love, occasional tough love and timely, sometimes unwanted, free advice.
Her standards are her children’s everlasting measuring stick when judging the cleanliness of their room, the appropriateness of their attire or hairstyle and the worthiness of their current love interest being introduced to her.
Her honor is fought for when another mother’s child dare utters a vicious “Yo Mama” insult.
Her thoughts are worth more than a penny, her true financial compensation values more than a CEO of a fortune 500 company and her services are priceless.
Her power of creation extends beyond fertility to innovations in all domains of knowledge to make the world a better place for her children and future generations.
No league of superheroes can hold a society together more securely than the superglue that is the forgotten queens, the collective mothers of the world.
For all these things and infinitely more, I honor the mothers of the world whose individual names may never appear in a history book, but whose positive attributes will be successfully carried forth in the DNA of every surviving child.