Previously: I’m leaving New York because of all the wizards.

There’s nothing in my life I love more than being a mother. I thought I knew what love was (heck, I thought I knew what being tired was) as a single person, but once I had children all my old ideas were totally wiped away. There’s a bond between you and your child that’s impossible to define or explain. It used to be that I couldn’t imagine being happy staying home every night of the week, and now that’s all I want to do. I find reasons to leave parties early so I can get back to my kids. Something about seeing your child look up at you with perfect love and perfect trust — there’s nothing else like it in the world. And I love my single friends, I really do, but they just don’t get it sometimes, that now that I have kids I don’t have the same time I did when we were all in college to answer the call to adventure and retrieve a grail or heal a Fisher King or found Troy at the drop of a hat. It was fun being the Hero With A Thousand Faces, but that’s just not who I am anymore.

Don’t get me wrong. Motherhood’s no picnic. Sure, some days — when I’m running late for the carpool and my seven-year-old’s just started running a fever and my three-year-old announces he made potty in the bed last night and I realize I’ve missed a dentist’s appointment — I think to myself, God, what I wouldn’t give to have a simple problem to solve, like the bronze-winged and poisonous Stymphalian birds. And sure, I still remember what a thrill I got the first time I successfully completed the Descent Into the Underworld without supernatural aid, or passing through the Belly of the Beast before the Blessing of the Goddess. It was great. I hope my kids get to experience questing like that when they grow up. But there’s only so many questions you can ask Utnapishtim, you know?

And frankly, unchaining Andromeda from her sea-prison once was enough.

I’ve made my choice, and I’m happy with it. Nobody keeps questing forever. Even Eurystheus ran out of commissions, you know? I can’t retrieve my seven brothers every time our stepmother transforms them into ravens. I’ve got a family of my own to think of. I have to feed my kids, and that’s pretty hard to do when I’m sharing my single jug of wine and loaf of bread my stingy stepmother gave me to every old woman standing near a well just in case she’s a fairy in disguise and wants to bless me by having pearls and rubies fall from my lips whenever I speak. Besides, I’m a mom. I don’t need pearls and rubies. Maybe if she could grant me wet naps and Cheerios every time I spoke, that would be helpful. Or a husband who helped when the dishwasher needed unloading. (Kidding!! Love ya babe:)

Some mornings I don’t even get the chance to finish a cup of coffee, much less drink the brew of immortality and experience apotheosis. And can you imagine fitting my Windstar on the Road of Trials? How’s a mom supposed to answer the riddles of the Sphinx when she has three curious kids in the backseat asking “How come we’re right-handed?”

I mean, that’s amazing, right? Kids have such a sense of wonder. Why are we right-handed? And of course, before you know it, the Sphinx has eaten my heart and lungs before I’ve even had the chance to think about her question.

“Oh,” I hear you saying, “but what about all those questing mothers you read about so much nowadays? Haven’t they figured out how to juggle a home/work/curse-breaking balance?” I know this isn’t going to be a very popular or P.C. thing to say, but let’s be honest: when you try to be a perfect mother and a perfect quester, something suffers, and it’s usually the quest. Daycare is expensive and the Golden Fleece is leagues away.

But I don’t want to start up another round of the Mommy Questing Wars. Follow your bliss, choose your choice. But remember: anyone with a staff and semi-divine ancestry can find the Temple of the Spider Goddess. Only a mom can fix a skinned knee with kisses.

You know, last night my daughter accidentally ate a cashew and we spent about an hour at urgent care. Then another hour waiting at the pharmacy to get her medication, an hour at home eating dinner (two hours later than usual) and an hour taking the dogs for a walk after being cooped up in the den all evening. In bed by midnight, with my alarm set for five AM.

The next day I got up and went to work, just like anybody else. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to have to retrieve an enchanted princess from an ogre (and where there’s an ogre to defeat, you know there’s an ogre’s mother to flee after she gets wind of her son’s untimely death) on top of all the rest of it.

It doesn’t make me a superhero. I’m so far from perfect, as a parent and as a boss and as a coworker and wife. Some days I feel like I’m barely hanging on. The other day the enchanted gray parrot I stole from the Djinn of the Iron Armies sighed loudly and said, “Why do I always have so much stuff to do?”

And it made me laugh and cry at the same time. There’s always something to get done, when you’re a mother. But the questing? That’s a job for another day.