No expiration on curiosity for a truly radical mother

Diane Keaton showed us how womanhood can be expansive and that the 'rules' are mostly imaginary, writes Zoë Beaty

- Zoë Beaty

Diane Keaton always marched a few beats off tempo. As the world mourns her sudden death at 79 this weekend, the way she lived her life - with a little mischief, a lot of grace, often without convention - is now being discussed with the same awe and affection that long followed her career. Much of her magnetism lay in her unpredictability and sweet originality: it would have been strange to see her “settling down” in the traditional sense, for instance, or to pick up her Oscar in anything other than two linen skirts, a linen jacket, a black string tie, scarf, and high heels worn with socks. That unpredictability was also in evidence in the way she became a mother.

Keaton didn’t have children in her twenties, thirties or even her forties as you might expect, but was well into her fifties - a time when most people would have assumed that the opportunity and impetus were long over. But by the time her decision was made, she was long past the point of being defined by the expectations of other people.

“Motherhood was not an urge I couldn’t resist,” she once told Ladies Home Fournal, according to People. “It was more like a thought I’d been thinking for a very long time. So I plunged in.” In 1996, she adopted her daughter, Dexter, and her son, Duke, came along in 2001.

In her own words, Keaton’s decision sounds simple - in reality, it was far from it. In fact, there’s arguably something profoundly remarkable about it. It might be almost 30 years later, but the idea that women's lives should shrink with age is still firmly entrenched in our collective imagination, stitched into a culture that still equates youth with possibility. Instead, Keaton expanded her world at an age that our culture often shrinks a woman's life. Her choices were a quiet rebellion against a lifetime of soft misogyny that still tells women what they should want, and when.