Jul

16

Book ‘Em: And Baby Makes Two.

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

July 16, 2007 |

Operating Instructions by Anne Lamott

The irony of the title is that this is not a how-to book on raising children but a funny, brutally honest memoir. At around the same time that Dan Quayle was demonstrating his strength as a leader by taking on Murphy Brown Anne Lamott decided to become a single mother, a decision aided in part by the father’s refusal to provide any support, even going so far as to sign court documents denying he was the father. Fortunately for Lamott, a recovering drug addict and alcoholic who found salvation in the Christian faith, she had a village of friends, family, and fellow church members to help her raise her son Sam. Not that it was easy. Lamott says at one point, “I wonder if it’s normal for a mother to adore her baby so desperately and at the same time to think about choking him or throwing him down the stairs.” She’s blunt about how tired, frustrated, angry, and sad she is, and yet these dark thoughts are more than outnumbered by comments about how surprised she is to be so completely in love with her son. No matter how awful her thoughts she never regrets having Sam. I’m not an expert on parenting, but if Lamott’s experience is any indication no one really is.

The author of several novels, including Crooked Little Heart (Pantheon Books, 1997), Rosie (Viking Press, 1983), as well as another memoir, Hard Laughter, and the excellent book for writers, Bird By Bird, Lamott’s dramatic swings back and forth are both understandable, perhaps even universal among parents, and reassuring to future and present parents that it’s okay to be human.

Also buoying her at the same time was the fact that one of her novels had just been published shortly after Sam’s birth, an experience which was minor compared to motherhood, but which she was thrilled to share with her son. The confluence of these events gives the book one of its funniest moments:

 

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.”

What makes the book, though, are Lamott’s intense expressions of love and faith, such as when she explains her choice of the name Samuel:

It means “God has heard”, like God heard me, heard my heart, and gave me the one thing that’s ever worked in my life, someone to love.


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