Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year Read online

  ACCLAIM FOR ANNE LAMOTT’S

  Operating Instructions

  “First class all the way.… Lamott, along with her novelist’s eye and often poetic prose, has a terrifically black sense oí humor.… Deeply honest.”

  —The Detroit News

  “Wonderfully candid.… Even non-parents will enjoy this glowing work.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Lamott here shares her humor, faith, friendships, and irreverence.… Operating Instructions is enhanced by Lamott’s colorful and expressive language, her philosophical reflections, and her descriptions of many eccentric friends.”

  —Library Journal

  “One need not be a new parent to appreciate Lamott’s glib and gritty good humor in the face of annihilating weariness. She’ll nourish fans with her entries, and give birth to new ones as well.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Painfully honest, laced with humor and poetry and moments of profound insight. It captures the intense fluctuations of feeling, the rapid alternation of exhilaration and fury, love and despair, that characterizes new parenthood.”

  —San Francisco Examiner

  ANNE LAMOTT

  Operating Instructions

  Anne Lamott is the bestselling author of Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith, and Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith, as well as six novels, including Rosie and Crooked Little Heart. Her column in Salon magazine was voted Best of the Web by Newsweek. A past recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Lamott lives in northern California.

  ALSO BY ANNE LAMOTT

  NONFICTION

  Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

  Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

  Plan B: Further Thought on Faith

  FICTION

  Hard Laughter

  Rosie

  Joe Jones

  All New People

  Crooked Little Hear

  Blue Shoe

  FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, MARCH 2005

  Copyright © 1993 by Anne Lamott

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1993.

  Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  The preface of this work was originally published in slightly different form in Focus Magazine.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

  Alfred A. Knopf: Excerpt from “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” from The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens by Wallace Stevens, copyright © 1954 by Wallace Stevens and renewed 1982 by Holly Stevens. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

  Random House, Inc.: Adaptation of excerpt from “Sonnets to Orpheus,” copyright © 1982 by Stephen Mitchell, from The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell. Used by permission of Random House, Inc.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the Pantheon edition as follows:

  Lamott, Anne.

  Operating instructions : a journal of my son’s first year /

  Anne Lamott.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  PS3562.A4645 O64 1993

  813′.54—dc20

  92030540

  eISBN: 978-0-307-76103-3

  www.anchorbooks.com

  v3.1

  This one

  is for

  Pamela Murray,

  and

  Sam Lamott

  SEAL LULLABY

  Oh! hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us,

  And black are the waters that sparkled so green.

  • • •

  The storm shall not wake thee, no shark overtake thee,

  Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas.

  —RUDYARD KIPLING

  Acknowledgments

  It’s hard to know where to begin. This book would not exist if my old agent, Abby Thomas, had not more or less insisted that I type up the journal I kept of my son’s first year. Come to think of it, the journal would not have existed if my friend John Manning had not insisted, while I was pregnant, that after Sam’s arrival I write down a few observations about him every single day. I am deeply grateful to these two people.

  I want to thank my editor at Pantheon, Jack Shoemaker, for his faith and commitment and tireless efforts, and also my new agent, Chuck Verrill. John Curley, John Kaye, Don Carpenter, Donna Levin, Steve Barclay, Neshama Franklin, Cindy Ehrlich, Jane Vandenburgh, and especially Steve Lamott always offer immeasurable support and insight, even let me sometimes steal their lines.

  Julie and John Woodbridge were there for me a thousand times that first year, as was my beloved reading group—Orville Schell, Deirdre English, Adam Hochschild, John Krich, Larry Friedlander, Lizzie Ehmann, Ethan Canin, and Sedge Thomson. It’s odd that Sue August’s name does not turn up frequently in these pages, for she is always a devoted and insightful friend. Mary Turnbull and Alice Adams have been so loving and generous with both me and Sam for so long that I don’t think I can capture my feelings in words. And I would not still be here at all without the support and love of the people of Saint Andrew Presbyterian Church, Marin City, California.

  Someone somewhere quoted a line from an old New Yorker story to the effect that we are not here to see through one another, but to see one another through. This is so much what the aforementioned people, and the main characters in this book, have done for me.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Acknowledgments

  Some Thoughts on Being Pregnant: A Preface of Sorts

  September 7, 1989

  September 12, 1989

  September 15

  September 16, 5:30 A.M.

  September 17

  September 18, 5:00 A.M.

  September 19

  September 20

  September 21

  September 22

  September 27

  September 29

  October 1

  October 2

  October 4

  October 5

  October 6, 3:45 A.M.

  October 7

  October 8

  October 12

  October 13

  October 14

  October 15

  October 16

  October 18

  October 23

  October 25

  October 26

  October 28

  October 29

  October 30

  October 31

  November 1

  November 3

  November 4

  November 5

  November 6

  November 16

  November 22

  November 23

  November 26

  November 28

  November 29

  November 30

  December 1

  December 2

  December 3

  December 5

  December 6

  December 7

  December 9

  December 17

  Christmas Eve

  Christmas

  December 27
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  December 31

  January 4

  January 9

  January 10

  January 12

  January 15

  January 19

  January 24

  January 26

  January 27

  January 28

  January 29

  January 30

  January 31

  February 1

  February 6

  February 18

  February 20

  February 22

  February 23

  February 24

  February 27

  March 2

  March 3

  March 4

  March 5

  March 6

  March 16

  March 20

  March 24

  March 25

  March 26

  March 27

  March 28

  March 29

  March 31

  April 3

  April 4

  April 5

  April 6

  April 8

  April 9

  April 10

  April 17

  April 20

  May 1

  May 2

  May 3

  May 4

  May 6

  May 8

  May 9

  May 10

  May 12

  May 16

  May 18

  May 20

  May 31

  June 5

  June 14

  June 16

  June 18

  June 20

  June 21

  June 22

  June 25

  June 27

  June 29

  June 30

  July 1

  July 7

  July 15

  July 21

  July 29

  August 8

  August 9

  August 10

  August 11

  August 13

  August 20

  August 24

  August 29

  Also by Ann Lamott

  SOME THOUGHTS ON BEING PREGNANT: A PREFACE OF SORTS

  I woke up with a start at 4:00 one morning and realized that I was very, very pregnant. Since I had conceived six months earlier, one might have thought that the news would have sunk in before then, and in many ways it had, but it was on that early morning in May that I first realized how severely pregnant I was. What tipped me off was that, lying on my side and needing to turn over, I found myself unable to move. My first thought was that I had had a stroke.

  Nowadays I go around being aware that I am pregnant with the same constancy and lack of surprise with which I go around being aware that I have teeth. But a few times a day the information actually causes me to gasp—how on earth did I come to be in this condition? Well, I have a few suspicions. I mean, I am beginning to put two and two together. See, there was this guy. But the guy is no longer around, and my stomach is noticeably bigger every few days.

  I could have had an abortion—the pressure to do so was extraordinary—and if need be, I would take to the streets, armed, to defend the right of any woman for any reason to terminate a pregnancy, but I was totally unable to do so this time psychologically, psychically, emotionally. Just totally. So I am going to have a baby pretty soon, and this has raised some mind-boggling issues.

  For instance, it occurs to me over and over that I am much too self-centered, cynical, eccentric, and edgy to raise a baby, especially alone. (The baby’s father was dramatically less excited than I was to find out I was pregnant, so much so that I have not seen or heard from him in months and don’t expect to ever again.) At thirty-five years old, I may be too old and too tired to be having my first child. And I really did think for several seconds that I might have had a stroke; it is not second nature for me to believe that everything is more or less okay. Clearly, my nerves are shot.

  For example, the other day one of the innumerable deer that come down here from the mountain to eat in the garden and drink from the stream remained where it was as I got closer and closer. It was standing between me and my front door. I thought, Boy, they’re getting brazen, and I walked closer and closer to it, finally to within four or five feet, when suddenly it tensed. My first thought was that it was about to lunge at me, snarling. Of course it turned instead and bolted through the woods, but I was left with the increasingly familiar sense that I am losing my grasp on reality.

  One moment I’m walking along the salt marsh listening to sacred choral music on headphones, convinced that the music is being piped in through my ears, into my head, down my throat, and into my torso where the baby will be able to hear it, and the next moment I’m walking along coaching the baby on how best to grow various body parts. What are you, some kind of nut? I ask myself, and I know the answer is yes, some kind of nut, and maybe one who is not well enough to be a mother. But this is not the worst fear.

  Even the three weeks of waiting for the results of the amniocentesis weren’t the most fearful part, nor was the amnio itself. It was, in fact, one of the sweetest experiences of my life. My friend Manning drove me into San Francisco and stayed with me through the procedure, and, well, talk about intimate. It made sex look like a game of Twister. I lay there on the little table at the hospital with my stomach sticking out, Manning near my head holding my hands, a nurse by my feet patting me from time to time, one doctor running the ultrasound device around and around the surface of my tummy, the other doctor taking notes until it was his turn with the needles.

  The ultrasound doctor was showing me the first pictures of my baby, who was at that point a four-month-old fetus. He was saying, “Ah, there’s the head now … there’s the leg … there’s its bottom,” and I was watching it all on the screen, nodding, even though it was all just underwater photography, all quite ethereal and murky. Manning said it was like watching those first men on the moon. I pretended to be able to distinguish each section of the baby because I didn’t want the doctor to think I was a lousy mother who was already judging the kid for not being photogenically distinct enough. He pointed out the vertebrae, a sweet curved strand of pearls, and then the heart, beating as visibly as a pulsar, and that was when I started to cry.

  Then the other doctor took one of his needles and put it right through my stomach, near my belly button, in a circle that the ultrasound doctor had described with the end of a straw. I felt a pinch, and then mild cramping, and that was all, as the doctor began to withdraw some amniotic fluid. Now you probably think, like I thought, that this fluid is some vaguely holy saltwater, flown in from the coast for the occasion, but it is mostly baby pee, light green in color. What they do with it then is to send it to the lab, where they culture it, growing enough cells from the tissue the baby has sloughed off into the amniotic fluid to determine if there are chromosomal abnormalities and whether it is a boy or a girl, if you care to know.

  During the first week of waiting, you actually believe your baby is okay, because you saw it scoot around during the ultrasound and because most babies are okay. By the middle of the second week, things are getting a bit dicey in your head, but most of the time you still think the baby is okay. But on the cusp of the second and third weeks, you come to know—not to believe but to know—that you are carrying a baby inside you in only the broadest sense of the word baby, because what is growing in there has a head the size of a mung bean, with almost no brain at all because all available tissue has gone into the building of a breathtaking collection of arms and knees—maybe not too many arms but knees absolutely everywhere.

  Finally, though, the nurse who had patted my feet during the amnio called, and the first thing she said was that she had good news, and I thought I might actually throw up from sheer joy. Then she talked about the findings for a while, although I did not hear a word, and then she said, “Do you want to know its sex?” And I said yes I did.

  It is a boy. His name is Sam Lamott. Samuel John Stephen Lamott. (My brothers’ names are John and Stev
e.)

  A boy. Do you know what that means? Do you know what boys have that girls don’t? That’s right, there you go. They have penises. And like most of my women friends, I have somewhat mixed feelings about this. Now, I don’t know how to put this delicately, but I have never been quite the same since seeing a penis up close while I was on LSD years and years ago. It was an actual penis; I mean, it wasn’t like I was staring at my hand for an hour and watched it turn into my grandfather’s face and then into a bat and then into a penis. It was the real thing. It was my boyfriend’s real thing, and what it looked like was the root of all my insanity, of a lot of my suffering and obsession. It looked like a cross between a snake and a heart.

  That is a really intense thing you boys have there, and we internal Americans of the hetero persuasion have really, really conflicted feelings about you external Americans because of the way you wield those things, their power over us, and especially their power over you. I ask you once again to remember the old joke in which the puzzled, defensive man says, “I didn’t want to go to Las Vegas,” then points to his crotch and says, “He wanted to go to Las Vegas.” So it has given me pause to learn that there is a baby boy growing in my belly who apparently has all the right number of hands and feet and arms and legs and knees, a normal-size head, and a penis.

  Penises are so—what is the word?—-funky. They’re wonderful, too, and I love them, but over the years such bad things have happened to me because of them. I’ve gotten pregnant, even when I tried so hard not to, and I’ve gotten diseases, where you couldn’t see any evidence of disease on the man’s dick and he claims not to have anything, but you end up having to get treatment and it’s totally humiliating and weird, and the man’s always mad at you for having caught it, even though you haven’t slept with anyone else for months or even years. It is my secret belief that men love their penises so much that when they take them in to show their doctors, after their women claim to have caught a little something, the male doctors get caught up in this penis love, whack the patient (your lover) on the back, and say thunderously, “Now don’t be silly, that’s a damn fine penis you’ve got there.”

  A man told me once that all men like to look at themselves in the mirror when they’re hard, and now I keep picturing Sam in twenty years, gazing at his penis in the mirror while feeling psychologically somewhere between Ivan Boesky and Mickey Mantle. I also know he will be someone who will one day pee with pride, because all men do, standing there manfully tearing bits of toilet paper to shreds with their straight and forceful sprays, carrying on as if this were one of history’s great naval battles—the Battle of Midway, for instance. So of course I’m a little edgy about the whole thing, about my child having a penis instead of a nice delicate little lamb of a vagina. But even so, this is still not the worst fear.