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.
Tags: joseph campbell, moms, monomyths, motherhood, only so many hours in a day, quests
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you don’t see men being torn apart when they retire from quests! they’re just called wizards!
Mallory, would it be fair to say that for you, dishwasher-unloading has an almost totemic connection to passive aggression?
no one in the entire world wants to do the dishes
And now I bring you the world’s CREEPIEST DISHWASHING COMMERCIAL ever. Is someone going to die in this open house???
“How do you do it?”
“Oh I wash them in Joy… Oh here, smell…” she says OMINOUSLY
Jesus CHRIST that’s creepy. Will the Joy also get their blood out of the carpets? TIME WILL TELL.
“I can see my face…!”
plot twist: Joy turns your dishes into a scry…
whose joy did she put in that bottle
“I can see my face…” she whispered, realizing the true horror of existence.
This is the truest statement ever written.
We’re moving to an apartment that has a dishwasher. I’m 100% convinced that my entire life is about to change for the better.
FALSE. Now you just have the whole “are these clean? did you run this? if you ran this and then you opened it, why didn’t you go ahead and unload it then? it does not take too long. Here, time me. no, seriously, TIME ME. now how long did that take? did it take more time than you had? did it take more time than you having to come all the way in here to tell me that these dishes were clean? yeah. didn’t think so.” bs.
For fuck’s sake people, get your own damn Triforce. Or let Ganon have it, see if I care. My daughter started crawling and I had to put all my swords away.
But how are our daughters to learn of the importance of questing if we stop questing ourselves?! Won’t someone think of the children!
I was an adventurer like you, then I took an arrow in the knee =(
My boyfriend literally just told me about that last night and told me I’d won because I missed that meme.
All those quests seem so shallow and meaningless now, anyway. Earning the eternal admiration of a kingdom after defeating a marauding dragon can’t even begin to compare to seeing my daughter smile (even if it just means that she just dirtied another diaper, lol!). #soblessed
The questing changes when you’re a parent.
The Quest for a Nap.
The Quest for Privacy.
The Quest for a finished plate of food you spent a full hour preparing when all they want to eat is pizza.
The Quest for a Clean Shirt
After the last kid rides off to college, mom is reorganizing the closets (the third time that month) when she catches herself looking wistfully at the summoner’s robes and stave tucked away in the back of the closet. No way, she thinks. Those days are behind me now, and those old rags would never fit anyway. I don’t regret giving it up, not before and certainly not now. She shoves the gear back in their corner, out of sight, out of mind.
But those thoughts have trouble staying where she put them. And Will and Jaina are busy with their new jobs (tavernkeep and new coven initiate), and little Michael is barely ever calling, getting up to god knows what trouble at Mage Knight U. As mom wakes up to another busy day of worrying in an empty house, the want ads catch her eye. “Party Seeking Caster To Retrieve The Gem of Karnak”
Hey, it’s something to do…
(shouts to my wonderful mom who’s finally gotten back to work after running us off)
Aaaaaargh god dammit this is stuck on my mind and I really really wanna write this story now, all with mom walking into her oldest kid’s tavern and asking what quests are available and he’s really not comfortable telling her about anything dangerous, and family events get hard to coordinate and they just have Fantasy Thanksgiving Dinner at his pub (which is open) because it’s easiest for everyone, and mom’s out questing with her youngest son who’s so embarrassed to be tanking for his mother, and listening to her daughter complain about her new job (where she earns more than her mother).
I won’t be able to focus on my classwork for the rest of the semester now, thanks a LOT, Mallory.
This article completely ignores the aspect of privilege, which is huge in this discussion. Sure, this woman feels fulfilled after she’s ceased questing, but what about those who can’t afford to? I’m sure we would all love to just be with our kids and jobs, but some of us have to quest or the entire town will be obliterated by the Beast from the Other Side of the Hill, you know? God, for some people it isn’t a choice to just leave the Great Evil swirling and help the kids with their homework. If left unchallenged it will seep into their souls and eat them and then who gets blamed? The mother!
We need more questing flexibility, is what we need. Oh sure, the Quest Lords claim not to discriminate, but anyone can see that the moms who try to keep questing end up on Satyr duty, or get stuck shooing Wood-Nymphs out of the Intermediate Lands. And don’t even get me started on trying to join a half-decent crusade with a five-year gap in your resume.
And if a father goes questing, it’s all, “look at him, providing for his kids, making sure the safety of their home is never compromised by an insufficient number of protection totems.” But when a mom goes to do the SAME THING, she’s neglecting her kids. It’s like choosing between going the long way through the Howling Wastes or taking the shortcut through the Cave of Lost Souls, you know? Either way, you lose.
Nobody can win on any side of this issue, really. How many times per day do you think a single, 35-year-old barbarian warrior-woman hears “I just figured by this point some dashing swordsman would’ve swept you off your feet and taken you away from all this. This is no life for a, uh, er, someone as great and talented as you!”
I guess the string of ears she’s collected from those who ask is some compensation, but still.
Look, she was defiantly privelaged in the 1st place, and Id wager she went to one of those “progressive” “liberal” schools for women-folk,which was already rife with feminazi questers trying to work against biology……poor hubby and kids who has to deal with her wining LOL!
GET REAL lady. Its NATURAL to stay home and leave the questing and obliteration of sky beasts to MEN. and if she was a good mom she would have known that already..Why was she questing in the 1st place? LOL silly feminazis.
Apparently today’s over-soft menfolk didn’t have the blade skills to slit you from gizzard to gullet, Troll. I’ll not make the same mistake.
lol RELAX it sounds like you’re mom was thinking about questing too much to teach her children manners. Must be hard. Blame Obama for sending hard earned tax money to these women who want “choice”
.
Who is this “Obama” you speak of? High Magister Wird the Silent rules this land, stranger.
Reading this was physically painful, bravo!
“seeing your child look up at you with perfect love and perfect trust ”
Did you tell them that it was better that they should rush upon this blade than enter the circle with fear in their hearts?
If you didn’t insist on being such a hovering-being-of-light parent, you’d have a lot more time for questing. And your children would have a much better backstory for their own quests one day if you allowed them to be badly neglected or, ideally, orphaned.
If you really loved them, you’d convince them you’re not really their mother and force them to do hard labor. Nothing motivates a teen to head out questing like the promise of finding her real family!
Another classic victim of the Leaky Magical Conduit. It’s not enough to get our daughters to major in the dark arts or to recruit more shield-maidens. We have to create an environment where they can actually see themselves one day leading their own disparate band of adventurers. Better mentoring by wizened crones and reliable access to magical forest animal-based childcare would solve a lot of these problems.
Lean In over this cauldron
Wish I could give this comment more thumbs-ups (or charms).
Not to mention increased representation by questing women across all forms of media. We can’t all be Valkyries, you know–our daughters need to see that there are opportunities for them in all fields of magic, regardless of where their particular strengths lie. If I’d seen more women studying Pegasus Training and Management or Teleportation Planning when I was younger, my life would have been much different.
Tell me about it, sister.
Read this and scream forever:
http://www.bethesdamagazine.com/Bethesda-Magazine…
nopenopenope
HELL NOPE
Really, it’s just a matter of priorities. I can totally understand if your heart isn’t in questing anymore, but I really feel like that’s essential Me Time and I make sure to make space for it in my life. Sometimes that means strapping little Santheria the Unworthy into a mei tai carrier and taking her with me as we unlock the Dread Casket of Aramarth and thwart the Rain of Molten Gold. And sometimes that means sacrificing some of my quester’s bounty on a part-time nanny so I can really concentrate on untangling the Unwieldy Knot of Granthur.
I mean, if you don’t keep up questing after you have kids, maybe you weren’t ever really in the questing game for real, you know?
Back in my grand-matriarch’s day, a woman had two choices: potions or scribes. That was it. And you gave up your mortar and pestle as soon as you achieve that “MRS degree” (“Mastered by a Resplendent Sorcerer.”)
Well, I’ve lived a century or two and I can tell you, women in your era want to act like they’re so powerful because they went on a quest or two in college. So they emerged victorious from a labyrinth during their junior years underseas. Oooh, look at those pics of them “banding together” (like we don’t all know what THAT means) with those hunky mermen. Sooo special, and now they’re mommies and that’s soooooo special, and everything they will ever do is sooooooo special.
What about those of us who levitated beyond the Tropical Mysts in the first place? Did you think we just came up with inverted juggling and the earlobe chant by accident? That we stumbled across harnessing three mutts and a purebred to our Temporal Chariots? That was fucking WORK, my friends, and it was a lifetime of REAL SACRIFICE. We didn’t just answer some mage’s call. We imagined things NO ONE had imagined, things men weren’t doing, things centaurs weren’t doing, things even goddamn hummingbirds hadn’t even begun to think of, and we did it at a time when our Maters and Paters insisted that we should sit quietly and memorize Volume IV of Hilda Helpmeet’s Handy Household Hexes.
So go on, tell me about Widdle Wanda’s first Witchy Wednesday. No, really? She cast a prism that makes “I love Mommy” rainbows? How. Fucking. Sweet.
Just be sure to tell Wanda, someday, will you, that your generation wouldn’t have been able to SPELL the word “quest,” much less use it in an incantation, if it weren’t for the likes of me. Because I don’t get to have grandchildren of my own, do I? Nope. I had to leave all of my eggs in the Dismal Caves of the Lost Visions of the Fathomless Depths of the Endless Solitudes, because if I hadn’t, we’d all still be testing variations on Hilda Helpmeet’s famous quince and qilin quiche right about now.*
*try adding just a dash of moth wing; it really makes it pop!
hahah oh no oh no this sounds like something I would do oh nooooo
(I may or may not be exaggerating actual conversations in my house.)
Disagree! Dishwashing is my favorite chore. It's very zen. I'm actually in the process of ripping out my dishwasher to make more shelf room in my kitchen.
Floors, on the other hand . . . A few weeks ago, I bought a robot to clean my floors and it changed my life.
So, please write a D&D adventure.
Please.
Parenthood IS a quest!
We begin in the Ordinary World of being a woman or man without children. Then we end up with the Call to be a Parent (which one could always refuse by various methods).
We find fellow heroes (usually one’s spouse, sometimes also a parent or sibling), our magic tools in the unimagined depths we find in ourselves to face the challenges of parenting, and a life direction as we change from independent man or woman into father or mother.
The Road of Trials includes the wonder journey, remember, and there are a lot of wonderful things we find in our kids. There are also all the challenges which parallel the classic examples of Brother Battle, Dragon Battle, Night-Sea Journey, etc.
Often, during the first few years of the child’s life, we have no time except for the child, with even our jobs and our marriages taking a back seat — i.e. our time in the Belly of the Whale.
Later, as our baby becomes child becomes teen, we come to a better understanding of what life had been like for our own mothers and fathers (Meeting with the Goddess or God)(Atonement with the Mother or Father).
Finally, we face the Ordeal of letting our children go, which feels almost like death yet also feels like a triumph, and return to our child-free lives with the Magical Boon of the wisdom and strength we have acquired during our Questing time as a parent.
And the day may come when we sit back, watch our own children embark upon that same Quest (thereby providing us with grandchildren), and this time, instead of playing the Hero, we get to play the Mentor, a far less exhausting job and one we have truly earned!