There is Anne Lamott, the author of "Bird by Bird" and "Operating Instructions." There was the idea that she write a sort of diary for SALON. There was her reluctance to do so. There was another idea, that she'd just sit down and tell a story and we'd arrange it into paragraphs, trying to keep it as true to her voice as possible. And since her speaking voice resembles her writing voice, it would be something like her real diary. We've never tried anything like this before, but we've never eaten haggis either. This is the Valentine's issue and so we asked her to tell us a story about love.

---

This is a story about love and confusion and pain and snack platters. It starts in Chicago, when I was on tour promoting "Bird by Bird," every home should own one, and I took my six-year-old son Sam along on the tour.

A woman came up to me at a bookstore reading with a boy, her son, he was exactly Sam's age, the same birthday, and it turned out she'd made her own Play-Doh for her son. From scratch. And she asked me, "Do you make Sam's Play-Doh?"

And I said, "I don't make Sam's dinner."

I think she was taken aback just a little. She said: "What does Sam eat?" And I said, "Snack platters," which is true.

And it happened that this was the very day in October when daylight savings ended, so we gained an hour the next morning which made Sam and me very happy, but then we had to fly to Indianapolis which is about 25 minutes away and we lost the hour right away, like we never had it at all, and that made us both deeply confused and depressed. And then we spoke before about a million people at the Indianapolis Public Library where I discussed my personal problems which are legion, and then I signed books and by that time I was channeling Tricia Nixon, I was Tricia Nixon, just smiling and smiling no matter what. Then we went back to the hotel and I did the only sane thing to do when you are very tired and confused and you don't know what time it is and you still have bits of Tricia Nixon on your shoes: I over-ordered room service.

This is how Sam gets his snack platters. I order two entrees for myself and then I make up bits from both entrees and that's Sam's meal. Club sandwiches are really good for that. And I was so tired I could not brush my teeth or take off my clothes, I just lay there boneless on the bed with the entree crumbs desperate for sleep.

And Sam said, "Can I ask you something?"

And I said, "Honey, can this wait?"

And he said, "Have you ever loved anyone who didn't love you back?"

Sam was undergoing a spiritual crisis because the girl I like to call "the slut who broke my child's heart," who was at that moment two or perhaps four time zones away, had chosen someone else to be her boyfriend.

So I dragged my pathetic body up into a sitting position and said yes, I had loved someone who hadn't loved me back, and how it felt like a knife in my heart and I never learned what to do about it, and I was hoping that my willingness to tell the truth and say how messy and inconvenient and confusing love is would somehow match this Shakespearean level of despair he was feeling at whatever time it was in Indianapolis.

So he said, "Can I ask you one more thing?"

With great dread I said, "Yes."

"Do you think you and me will die at the exact same moment?"

And I thought that was the question that we always want to ask but we never do because we know better, but it's the question that really does paint a map of the human heart, how terrifying and touching it is to love another person.

So I told him no, we wouldn't, and the next day we went to the zoo, and it was the happiest day of the year.