A Most Unlikely Hero

By Turkish Artist Aykut Aydogdu

I was running errands in a typical middle class subdivision, not unlike my own, this week, when I spotted a women, carefully crouched on the street-side of her perfectly manicured hedge. Now, if this wasn’t odd enough, this lady had a Diet Coke in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Strange, yes, but also, rather intriguing, because this woman had completely abandoned her prescribed roles as mother, wife, neighbour, executive, whatever titles she held, for a handful of minutes alone with a Coke and a Smoke and I fucking loved her for it. 


Now, I think, I slowed down in the my basic-bitch Honda CRV, the same car, I’m sure, that sat in her garage, and stared at this woman for a bit too long. She was, like a Gorilla in the "wilds" of a Disney Resort, who was supposed to be swinging arms and grooming babies but decided, instead, to browse the New York Times.


I knew, without really knowing, that this new hero of mine, had a couple of kids in that house behind her. The eldest was probably still calling out grievances from her spot below the Post Malone poster on her wall in her far from tidy bedroom, unaware that her mother had snuck out for some time alone. The youngest was likely making slime with no regard for the dining room chairs or the family dog. And that mother, had decided, without fear of judgment from the outside world, that she needed to remove herself from the grind of maintaining her home, her kids and her sanity, for a moment and since she was going to be crouching in front of her hedge for a little alone time, she might as well indulge in a few of her vices. Vices her ‘beach body’ toting neighbours would likely abhor. 


And as I drove by, that Lulu-clad, cigarette-smoking, diet-coke drinking mom, I nodded in solidarity, and you know what, I’m pretty sure, she nodded right back.

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