Anne Tyler is not of my favorite authors, not really. I find her too middle-aged chatty. Though she's the eccentric at the neighborhood coffee klatche, nevertheless you'd only be talking to her if you had for some reason to stay at the klatche, a condition I can't imagine in real life. It's not that I don't like eccentric women, I do. My favorite characters in SIX FEET UNDER (on the second viewing) are Brenda, the nutcase, and Claire, the angst-ridden artiste.
But in her book LADDER OF YEARS Tyler postulates a middle-aged eccentric woman named Delia Grinstead who decides whimsically one day (refreshingly ignoring the psycho-medical implications) to walk away from her family. The beauty of the story is that she is not abused, is not a drug addict or married to one, doesn't even hate her husband. She just feels that she has lost her life, lost her independent existence and one day it calls to her and she follows. She leaves the family at the beach and takes a bus to nowhere. Many times over the years of parenting (and I am still raising two teenage boys) I think about this story. It is an archetype. This morning my wife mentioned it (though if you mention it you're probably not going to do it). In my version she walks away with them, leaving me to wonder why I am alone in the house, and to quote the great line from THE LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA: "Oh, well."
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