It's already ten minutes past the time the shuttle from Huntsville should be arriving in Atlanta and it hasn't even departed from Atlanta for Huntsville yet. My fellow strandees are conversing quietly with one another -- a prototypical Dad-and-Mom-and-Two-Kids re-hashing a recent trip to the Pentagon-In-Orlando, a scattering of older couples comparing notes on their respective retirement communities, some Auburn students alternately dozing and reading, a couple of businessmen laptopping and a solo Mom slowly rocking her six-month-old, who is staring at me in wide-eyed wonder.

"Wow -- lookit him *look* at you."

*grin*

"It's the mustache. Kids think it'll turn into a butterfly if they stare at it long enough."

*return grin*

"His Daddy has a mustache, too. He'll be home on leave next month."

Maybe thirty people at the gate, counting the relief flight crew, and their only immediate concerns are weather-related. Nobody worries that they'll be snuffed in-flight by a bomb planted by someone who thinks they need to die for the crime of being Americans. Nobody worries that someone walking past will scream "Allah akhbar!" and go full auto with an AK into the waiting area.

A Mom doesn't worry that an act of violence by a Death-Worshipper will keep her child from growing and playing and learning.

That's why Uniforms Go Where Uniforms Go and Do What Uniforms Do.

And they also Go and Do so that other moms in Iraq and Afghanistan and Alltheotherstans will have a chance at living without that particular worry and their children, too, will grow and play and learn.

Me? I go where I go and do what I do 'cuz I really hate raking leaves.

Heh. Merry Christmas, kids...