Author: Reena Saxena

Photo credit: Flora Borsi

Gwendolyn Anders was being deconstructed. No one else could tell the forty-five year old divorced woman was falling apart. She couldn’t afford to let anyone know. She had to keep moving, go to work each day, make sure her two kids got to and from school, did their homework, ate healthy meals, made it to soccer practice.

She did her best to adhere to the “supermom” stereotype, and as far as the rest of the world was concerned, she was successful.

Inside where no one could see, she was bleeding to death.

Illustration: Al Margen

Parents have expectations, don’t they?

You want your child to be successful in some sort of way acceptable to you.

My parents, I think, wanted us to be competent in whatever we did.

They were very working class people despite my mother’s mother stepping out of that comfort zone and mixing with some people of a higher class we stayed where we belonged.

We had a piano, an old one, out of tune most of the time and an instrument my mother could play one tune on.

So as I must have appeared the most likely of we four kids I was sent to piano lessons. My first teacher was a young nun, Sister Sunshine, whom I loved having lessons with. (She is still alive and thriving in her 80s). But she was moved on soon after I started to like the piano and Sister Demon took…