My nana turns 95 today! Doesn't she look great?! My mum (the other lady in the photo) comes in at a young 72. My husband calls them "hearty French stock." I can only hope I'll look as good.
Happy Birthday, Nana!
___________
The Anne Report:
I'm a hundred pages into the Anne Sexton biography and the situation, her life, her history, is extreme & complex. A good friend of mine said a student in her class recently gave an oral presentation on Sexton. The student stood in front of the class and said, "Anne Sexton was crazy & hated her kids." Oh it life was only that black and white. No. It's not that simple. It's a gray area. From what I understand, Sexton seemed to be suffering from a bi-polar disorder along with post-partum depression. She had a terrible chemical imbalance. She wasn't crazy, she was in a manic state and needed medication.
I think we need to remember the time this took place. It started in the 50's and she ultimately killed herself (after numerous suicide attempts) in 1974. There wasn't as much help available for women as there is now. Yes, there was abuse that took place in regards to her daughters and things I have no tolerance for, but I find myself also seeing her as the abused child and the circle of abuse continuing because she never learned how to stop it or love herself.
How easy it is to say she was crazy, hated her kids, and "she wasn’t a poet, she was a housewife who used poetry as therapy." Wouldn’t it be simple if all our lives could fit into one sentence? It’s much to complex. Sexton was doing what many mothers today are trying to do—myself included—not lose herself. I can’t praise her for how she handled the situation, she is the exact opposite of me in so many ways and did things that I personally could never do, but I can see beyond the labels—crazy, abuser, sex-starved, adulteress, lunatic—and see her as someone who wanted desperately wanted to have a purpose and poetry gave that to her. It probably helped her keep her alive for as long as it did.
