Mother, Alone

I want to be alone. Alone for a long stretch of time, knowing that later tonight I'll spend time with some interesting people. Interesting people include anarchists and artists and mothers. Because mothers are by their nature both artists and anarchists. Except for those that aren't; those who don't understand motherhood as I do.

My children are asleep in the other room. It is time for them to get up. It is past time for them to get up. When I wake them, they will smell like babies, though they are no longer babies. They will smell like babies in a few strategies spots that only I, their mother, know. I will duck in and try to get a whiff of babysmell in these few strategic places, and they will bat me off slowly, sleepily, and not at all seriously. If I get a whiff and plant a kiss they will growl, but they will smile sleepily while they are growling.

Then I will have had a babysmell whiff, but I will not be alone. I will be surrounded by the artists and anarchists I call my children, and it will be my job to reign in the anarchy and stimulate the artistic impulses in them, which often requires putting off my own artistic and anarchic impulses. Putting them off for later. This is a hard thing to do. It is a hard thing to be a mother some times. Other times, it is the easiest thing in the world.

Being an artist is never an easy thing. Being an anarchist is sometimes an easy thing and sometimes not. Everything, except being an artist, is sometimes easy and sometimes not. That is why I am an artist. Because I crave stability. Ha ha. That was a joke. The anarchist in me made a joke about art.

The mother in me needs to wake up my children now. To wake up my little artists and anarchists and to put my craving for art and anarchy away till later. When I am alone. I crave being alone even now when I am alone, my children asleep in the other room. Get up, children, it's your mother calling.