Solitude: Where Can a Mom Find It?

Oh, I didn’t think I would have anything to contribute to this week’s http://www.onedeepbreath.blogspot.com prompt. The reasons are many and varied.

My husband just had a week off…at home. Am I alone in feeling less than relaxed, relieved, rejuvenated? It was like having another kid visiting for the week. A kid who cooks and does laundry, but a kid all the same. Add to this the constant mommy dread I feel at the prospect of my first born going off to all-day kindergarten, and the ever-present, "two weeks until classes start again, will I have enough students? do I have enough exciting art lessons?," and you have quite simply—the reluctant writer.

Solitude is just something I don't have anymore. Even once the kids are in bed, I have a hard time getting to solitude, traveling past the dishes waiting, the books waiting, the cats waiting, so much waiting, even the waiting is wailing.

However, my muse is good. So good. She never fails me. She always shows up when I least expect her. And I have some haiku! Maybe not great haiku, but haiku nonetheless. I am going to work on this topic all week.

Now, if only the new kitten will let me type this. (Friends and family who know me, and fear it is only my husband and children keeping me from achieving crazy cat lady status, please avert your eyes. It is true. We have another cat!)

On to the haiku…

Knife through strawberry
music of child picking fruit.
Sharp blade makes no noise.

Only in the car
snap of twin seatbelts, doors slam.
Mother’s muse can sing.

Loud yellow school bus
lumbers up, swallows first son.
Such silence pains me.

In the shower, soap.
In the garden, ladybugs.
Where is the silence?

Solitude, one soul.
One banana hangs, browning.
The bread is not made.