The more I read of Wintering the more I realize how completely off base I have always been about Sylvia Plath. She had two small children in diapers and a husband who was off with another woman and she pretty much lost her mind. She couldn't write - hell it was an act of God to get the laundry done (no phone in her flat, no washing machine, hardly any heat - it's a miracle she held on as long as she did). If she was a mother and wife and not a writer then I think she would have been able to hold on - if she hadn't felt the burning disappointment over an inability to write because she had no time at all to do it, then maybe she would not have gotten filled with disappointment and dispair. And although it is easy to blame Ted Hughes (scoundrel that he was), he did what many men did during his time. He left his wife and because it was the 1960s, she was supposed to deal with the kids on her own. That's what women did. And Sylvia tried, but she also tried to write and she could not do both.

I'm realizing how much I have in common with Sylvia Plath.

Here's the thing - my husband and I both work out of the house. But our little boy has some health issues and he commands more attention than the average 4 year old (which is a crazy amount of attention anyway). And the hours are just gone in a flash - the whole day is gone. And I don't know when I'm supposed to work on some rewrites to my book on Alaska flying or the work on the YA dragon novel or the many other ideas that jumble about in my head.

I don't know when I'm suppposed to do anything sometimes.

So Sylvia Plath was a real woman, a normal woman, a tired and lonely and overwhelmed mother. And I understand her, finally - shit, I know her. And that doesn't make her suicide okay, but it does make it less unreal, less dramatic and literary. It makes her a mother who needed help sometimes and that is someone I can relate to on every level.

Have I mentioned how much I love Kate Moses's book?

The new issue of Eclectica is up and there is much reviewing goodness to pass along. Also, make sure you read Jessy Randall's essay on motherhood, which only reinforced what I was already thinking. And don't pass up Stanley Jenkins's Dispatches. His short essays are continuously impressing the hell out of me and certainly worth five minutes of your time.