Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year Page 6

  OCTOBER 8

  Real tears leave his eyes now. It is almost more than I can take. Before, he’d be sobbing but there were no tears. Now there are. It seems an unfair advantage. Between the tears and the cooing and his crazy drunken-old-man smiles, it’s almost unbearable. There’s so much joy and pain and love and wonder in my chest and behind my eyes that it’s like The Unbearable Lightness of Being. It’s like Patsy Cline’s voice.

  The Giants got into the World Series today; the A’s got in yesterday. The people in my family have been Giants fans for as long as I can remember. We hate the A’s. We can’t help it. I was explaining to Sam that Jose Canseco shouldn’t get to play because of the obvious steroid use, that there is something really wrong with the guy, something really off, like with Ike Turner or George Bush. Sam studied my face intently, seeming to hang on my every word, all but nodding, looking at me like I was the risen Christ. I can’t help it—I like that in a baby.

  I just can’t get over how much babies cry. I really had no idea what I was getting into. To tell you the truth, I thought it would be more like getting a cat.

  • • •

  Now it’s midnight. I can’t believe I’m in such a good mood, because he has been screaming since 10:00 tonight. I am not speaking to him. He is on the futon having an episode. Every so often I pick him up and try to nurse him or walk him for a while until my yoni aches again, and then I put him back down on the futon. I’m annoyed with him. I don’t think he’s handling things very maturely.

  I can’t believe I have a book coming out soon. After a lifetime of thinking of myself as a writer, I simply cannot imagine how on earth that book managed to get itself written. It seems like someone else must have written it for me, someone who does not cry all the time and have six-inch nipples. I am grateful to whoever that was. I got my first hardback copy the other day and flipped through it. It looks and reads like a real, functioning person was involved, and there is no one fitting that description at this address.

  I can’t even get my teeth brushed some days. I found my toothbrush near the sink one afternoon with a neat stripe of toothpaste on the bristles from the night before, all ready to use.

  Plus I no longer ever have any free hands. If I were going to write, I’d have to sit at my desk like Christie Nolan, with a unicorn stick on my forehead, my mother behind me pushing my head toward the keyboard so I could bang out letters with the stick. But she’d secretly be wanting to play with the baby instead, and she’d stand there feeling all bitter and resentful that my Aunt Pat was getting to hold him more than she was, and then she’d end up being really rough with my head, banging out the letters too hard, like she was hammering a stake into the ground.

  Last night I found a baby-sitter named Megan, a lovely young six-foot-two woman from Kansas who took one of my writing workshops a couple of years ago. I think she is going to end up being a kind of underpaid au pair for us. I am already beginning to think of her as Sam’s governess. Last night was the first time I’ve left him with anyone besides Pammy or relatives. Even though Megan looked very sweet and kind, by the time I had driven to downtown Mill Valley, four blocks away, I had decided that she was a hooker. By the Golden Gate Bridge, I had her pegged as a crack addict. But when I got home from my board meeting in the city, I was so profoundly relieved that Sam was still alive and wasn’t covered with hickeys that I gave Megan my Toyota so she could drive home. Then I spent the rest of the evening worrying that I didn’t know this person from Adam’s housecat; I became convinced at one point that I would never see her again, that she and her pimp had totaled my car and left town. This morning she brought me a bouquet of flowers she had picked from her garden; she handed me the car keys and then rushed over to pick up the baby, while I stood there feeling like a complete idiot.

  OCTOBER 12

  He is losing his hair in a perfect ring that circles his head, like the ring of Saturn. He looks like either a very young or a very very old Buddhist monk.

  OCTOBER 13

  Last night I decided that it is totally nuts to believe in Christ, that it is every bit as crazy as being a Scientologist or a Jehovah’s Witness. But a priest friend said solemnly, “Scientologists and Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses are crazier than they have to be.”

  Then something truly amazing happened. A man from church showed up at our front door, smiling and waving to me and Sam, and I went to let him in. He is a white man named Gordon, fiftyish, married to our associate pastor, and after exchanging pleasantries he said, “Margaret and I wanted to do something for you and the baby. So what I want to ask is, What if a fairy appeared on your doorstep and said that he or she would do any favor for you at all, anything you wanted around the house that you felt too exhausted to do by yourself and too ashamed to ask anyone else to help you with?”

  “I can’t even say,” I said. “It’s too horrible.”

  But he finally convinced me to tell him, and I said it would be to clean the bathroom, and he ended up spending an hour scrubbing the bathtub and toilet and sink with Ajax and lots of hot water. I sat on the couch while he worked, watching TV, feeling vaguely guilty and nursing Sam to sleep. But it made me feel sure of Christ again, of that kind of love. This, a man scrubbing a new mother’s bathtub, is what Jesus means to me. As Bill Rankin, my priest friend, once said, spare me the earnest Christians.

  OCTOBER 14

  Last night was death. Vietnam. He was colicky from 10:00 till nearly 1:00. At midnight I broke under the strain and called this organization called Pregnancy to Parenthood. They help stressed-out parents and have a twenty-four-hour switchboard that I think is to prevent child abuse. I felt humiliated calling and was crying quite hard, and Sam was crying quite hard, and I told the person on the line that I didn’t think I was going to hurt him but that I didn’t think I could get through the night. So the person rang the clinical director at home, spliced my call through, and we talked for over an hour. Sam eventually went to sleep. She recommended I go on a wheat-free, dairy-free diet to see if it helps. Mostly she was just there for me in the middle of the night. We talked until I was okay again. Sam woke up a few hours later and nursed peacefully.

  This morning someone from North Point Press called and read the Chronicle review of my new book to me, the review that will run on Sunday. I had completely forgotten that today is my publication date, that I actually have a book coming out of the chute right now. Anne Tyler raved in the Chronicle, and the New York Times review reads like my mother wrote it. So that’s all good news. I really can’t relate, though. I keep thinking, Well, that’s nice. I’m pleased and it’s a huge shot in the arm—still, I keep thinking that the jig is just about up. The phone will ring and the authorities will at first gently try to get me to confess that I didn’t actually write the book, and if I continue to claim that I did, they’ll turn vicious, abusive: “Look at yourself! You’re a goddamn mess. You’ve got a functioning IQ of less than 100, your nerves are shot, your hands tremble, you’re covered with milk and spit-up. You have trouble writing out checks, yet you want us to believe you produced a novel? Well. We don’t think so.” Then they’ll make me go get a job with the phone company.

  Later in the day I took Sam into town in his stroller, and I felt like I was waddling. When I got home from the hospital, I had lost all but about five of the twenty-five pounds I’d gained, and nursing, like Lady Pac Man, gobbles up so many calories that I’ve lost a few more, but I tell you, things have not gotten higher and firmer in the last nine or so months. My butt, she is low down in the water now, Mama. I was wearing a skirt and could hear my thighs slap softly against each other as we walked along. They sounded like waves lapping the shore. I remember my friend Nora saying once that she was seriously considering suicide, but that she wanted to lose five pounds first.

  The sun was pouring in through the tops of the redwoods, and the air was like velvet. Birds were singing. I heard the burbling fluty song of a mockingbird. Sam slept.

  We went to the bookst
ore and my book was in the window and there was a huge stack of them right by the cash register, so I didn’t have to do my usual routine of furtively moving them to places where more people would see them. For the first time, I’ve been too wasted and preoccupied to call all the big Bay Area bookstores and ask them if they have copies yet. I’ve always called bookstores over and over again for the first few weeks after publication, disguising my voice, either by pinching my nostrils shut or by trying to sound vaguely English. Sometimes I pretend not to know how to spell my last name. “Do you have Anne Lamott’s new book?” I’ve always asked. “I think it’s L-a-m-o-n-t. No, wait, maybe it’s t-t, L-a-m-o-t-t.” I’m sure I’ve never fooled anyone. I’m sure they put their hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and whisper, “It’s her again” to the other clerks. I held Sam up to the window of the Book Depot so he could study the jacket of my book, and I said, “That’s my book, honey. I write,” and he looked at me with a mildly patronizing expression. You could just tell he was thinking, “Sure you do.”

  OCTOBER 15

  Three days off wheat and milk products, two nights with no colic. I’m sure it’s a fluke and that the crying will start again. He coos and gurgles.

  Yesterday was day one of the World Series, S.F. against Oakland. Steve came by to watch. We had all these fabulous wheat-free, dairy-free snacks, and he and Sam lay on the couch together wearing their Giants shirts. Sam’s is the size of your hand. He looks very sporting in it, very manly. The Giants got slaughtered. Steve explained all the key plays to Sam and hinted darkly that if Sam grows up to be an A’s fan, he will lose his share of the vast Lamott estate. It was obvious from Sam’s expressions that he didn’t think much of Canseco.

  He’s very active all of a sudden, kicking all over the place, like Nadia Comaneci. He looks ready to walk. I hold him up so he’s standing on the dressing table or floor or whatever, and I say urgently, “Lock your knees! Lock your knees, I’m going to let go!” He looks puzzled but game.

  His hands are like little stars.

  OCTOBER 16

  Last night I crawled into bed with Sam and the kitty on the futon in the living room, with religious music on the tape player; the kitty curled up next to Sam’s head, and both of them purred. After a minute I felt something under the covers with my bare foot. Whatever it was, it was big and wet. With a seven-week-old baby you just know it’s gotta be something funky. I lay there not moving, thinking about the scene in The Godfather with the horse’s head, and I slowly pushed back the covers, sort of expecting the worst because on top of everything the kitty has had such doubts about my abilities as a hunter that she’s been bringing me and the baby all sorts of delicacies lately. It turned out to be a wet diaper.

  OCTOBER 18

  There was a huge earthquake in the Bay Area yesterday. I came in from the kitchen to check on Sam, who was sleeping and who has a cold, and suddenly the whole house was swaying and there was a low roar. Everything was shaking, and I actually thought at first that John and Julie, who live in the flat above us, were using an industrial floor waxer. Then I realized what was going on, and I looked over at where Sam lay asleep in his bassinet, right beneath the built-in bookcases, and I was immobilized. All of the big heavy books could have fallen down onto him and crushed him, and I couldn’t move. Like a nightmare. It felt like it lasted about fifteen seconds, and when it was over I rushed to the bassinet and picked up the baby. He continued to sleep. Then Julie came running down to make sure we were okay, and we turned on the TV. At first there was no reception, but then finally there was a picture, and the first reports made it sound like San Francisco looked like Nagasaki, like the whole city was on fire. A section of the Bay Bridge was down, and there was total pandemonium and also immediate acts of heroism and bravery. Julie and I both voiced huge, concerned, compassionate thoughts about what was going on, feeling really awful and impotent. One small difference in our reaction was that Julie, near tears, sat staring at the set, wondering out loud if her husband was still alive, while I was rather horrified to discover that I was worried about how this would affect sales of the book. This made me feel just great about myself, as you can imagine. So did my other main concern, which was that if the World Series had to be postponed, it would completely ruin my life, and when I got up to make Julie a cup of tea, I limped to the kitchen feeling like a medieval dwarf with a lot of small broken teeth.

  In the old days this feeling of loathsomeness would have lasted for days, would have triggered that old familiar fear that if people could really know me, they would discover that I make the Joan Collins character on “Dynasty” look like Helen Keller. But now I’m just too tired. I know Sam will grow up and have all these terrible secret thoughts, too. His self-centered, petty, envious, conniving mule-stupid side will haunt him; he will be plagued by terrible self-doubts and fear. I hope I can remember to tell him then that on the night of the 1989 earthquake, I was trying to figure out how distributors would be able to get copies of my book into the stores, what with the Bay Bridge down and all. I guess he’ll have to figure out someday that he is supposed to have this dark side, that it is part of what it means to be human, to have the darkness just as much as the light—that in fact the dark parts make the light visible; without them, the light would disappear. But I guess he has to figure other stuff out first, like how to keep his neck from flopping all over the place and how to sit up.

  Julie’s husband, John, finally got home around 8:00 with reports of chaos in the city, and of course the Bay Bridge Series has been postponed. I am trying to be a good sport about the whole thing, but it is not going terribly well. Steve came over and ended up spending the night. We watched the news until well past midnight, and it was strangely comforting for normal life to have ceased temporarily. You knew you were going to get to sit around in front of the television set for the next few days and eat your wheat-free, dairy-free snacks. In a terrible way, it was like being in the middle of a long, lurid thriller, where no matter what else happened in your private life, you knew your plans were set for the next few days. I found that I was getting stoned on all the drama and adrenaline. It was so mesmerizing, so compelling, that I found it mood-altering, even though I couldn’t really relate. I’d thought I was going to spend the next few days watching the World Series on TV. Instead I’d be watching the earthquake reports, and there was a blasé part of me that thought, Well, whatever, just as long as there’s something.

  No one I know was hurt. It’s very sad, but it could have been a thousand times worse. I kept praying that everyone would be okay and stick together and take care of one another. I kept thinking of small good-guy things I could do to help, but I couldn’t really concentrate because Sam had a cold. I couldn’t suck out the mucus with the rubber-bulb aspirator like normal functioning mothers are supposed to be able to do, and he was obviously quite uncomfortable even though I had a humidifier going. I wanted to call 911 and say, “I’m sorry about the earthquake, but my baby’s terribly congested! You must come immediately!”

  • • •

  I notice I’m not so wildly surprised to find him alive every morning. In the earlier days, when I’d first hear his kvetchy little voice, I’d feel that it was proof enough that there was a God in heaven. Now when I hear him start to whimper, I feel just the merest bit testy. I try to con him into sucking on his pacifier for a while so I can sleep for a few more minutes.

  The diet is definitely working. I’d say the colic is 85 percent gone. He still fusses and whines for a couple of hours every evening, but it’s pretty manageable now. Steve says Sam cries just like Cheswick, the short, bald, frantic guy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, who was always whining, “I don’t want McMurphy’s cigarettes, Nurse Ratched, I want my cigarettes …”

  OCTOBER 23

  My friend Orville dropped by yesterday with a beautiful red and green satin stuffed fish from China, embroidered with all sorts of things that the presence of this fish will protect us from: scorpions, spiders, snakes. I
kept trying to convey to Orville how wasted I am by the baby’s needs, while the whole time Sam lay there doing his baby Jesus routine. He’s so beautiful you can’t take your eyes off him. But Orville, who raised a baby son fifteen years ago, says he remembers clearly how insane things get with an infant around. He said that even with a mate, it’s like having a clock radio in your room that goes off erratically every few hours, always tuned to heavy metal.

  Sam sleeps for four hours at a stretch now, which is one of the main reasons I’ve decided to keep him. Also, he lies by himself on the bed staring and kicking and cooing for fifteen to twenty minutes at a time. I had these fears late at night when I was pregnant that I wouldn’t be able to really love him, that there’s something missing in me, that half the time I’d feel about him like he was a Pet Rock and half the time I’d be wishing I never had him. So there must have been some kind of a miracle.

  I never ever wish I hadn’t had him.

  But I do sometimes wish I had a husband and a full-time nanny. And that I could still have a few drinks now and then. I am coming up on three and a half years clean and sober. The memories are still very clear of how lost and debauched and secretly sad my twenties and early thirties were, how sick and anxious I felt every morning. I thought at the time that I was having a lot of fun, except that the mornings were really pretty terrible. But there are still times when these movies start to play in my head, where I see myself putting the baby down to sleep and then sitting and sipping one big, delicious Scotch on the rocks. Just sipping, just sipping one fucking drink. Is that so goddamn much to ask? I just want that kind of relief, that smoothing of the sharp edges. The only fly in the ointment is that if I went to a liquor store and put some money on the counter for a bottle of good whiskey, I might as well put Sam on the counter, too, because I know I will lose him if I start drinking again. I know I would lose every single thing in my life that is of any real value. I couldn’t take decent care of cats when I was drinking. They’d run off or get hit by cars or get stolen, because I’d forget to leave windows open for them or wouldn’t come home for a couple of nights in a row. So I don’t know, I guess I won’t have a drink today. Maybe tomorrow, probably tomorrow, but not today.