Anne Lamott

I tell everyone. You really have to if you want people to come through. Some people won’t go the extra mile, and then on their birthday, when no one makes a fuss, they feel neglected and bitter. So I start calling people about a month before the actual day. Presents can make up for some of the disappointments that life doles out, such as it makes almost no sense and is coming to an end more quickly than ever. One can’t help but remember the joke that Woody Allen used to tell, about the man at the Catskills resort complaining that the food is so terrible, and the portions so small. Still, I’m not as bad as I used to be. You add alcohol to this level of narcissism and greed, you’ve got a real problem on your hands. Fifteen years ago I had a birthday reminder on my answering machine for weeks, and then, the day after, changed it to include an alphabetized and frequently updated list of family and friends who had neglected to send anything. There were fewer people every day, until one week later, when the message said, “This is an updated and alphabetized list of people who have forgotten my birthday: Evan Connell.”

Sam and I were in Hawaii for my 45th birthday not long ago. I had been given a vacation on Lanai in exchange for a speech, and this would have been perfect without this one pesky fly in the ointment — America had gone to war. So I swam with Sam all day in the warm surf and then watched the news from Kosovo on CNN every night. It was utterly schizophrenic: the tropical beauty filling the windows, the pounding of war on TV. There I was telling everyone I met that my birthday was coming up, and then donating by phone to relief organizations.

Sam kept promising me that he was really on top of my birthday this year, although he was having cash flow problems. So the day before, I gave him money with which to buy me a present at the gift shop. Still, it felt pretty nuts, ordering room service fruit platters to eat while watching the ghastly news at dinner. But what are you supposed to do, call off your life until things improve in most parts of the world? Does common decency dictate that you not play while others are suffering so? I don’t know the answer, only that one moment I’d find myself wanting to volunteer in the refugee camps, and then, a minute later, worrying about my thighs. I’d imagine feeding soup tenderly to little children and then I’d berate myself for having forgotten the self-tanning cream. I’d think about going to Montenegro to be Jesus’ love there, his hands and his heart, and then I’d obsess about how much better tan fat looks than pale fat.

I got up at dawn on my birthday to watch the sunrise — golds, roses, many many blues. There was coffee and the New York Times waiting outside my door from the room service staff, who had wrapped up some bright blue fanny packs for Sam and me. I took a cup of coffee out to the balcony and sat there quietly. The balcony was my cathedral. Little birds sang, unseen. I did not understand why I was on vacation in the tropics, with a healthy boy safe and asleep inside, while much of the world was caught in an ugly dream. But I tell you, Fun means Finally Understanding Nothing. And e.e. cummings sang backup to the morning,

I who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love andwings;and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

And then, the wailing began from the bedroom.

I went to investigate. Sam lay in bed, red-faced, weeping, clutching at his eye like the Cyclops in the “Odyssey.”

“Honey, what’s the matter?” I cried out in alarm.

“My eye is totally scratchy,” he cried. “As if you even care.”

It seemed likely that he had a grain of sand in his eye. I couldn’t see anything there, but I know how painful it can be, so I took him to the bathroom and tried to flush it out with cool water. When this didn’t work, I put him in a lukewarm shower and had him stare up into the spray with his eyes open, so he alternately looked demented and dead. But whatever it was did not dislodge. I cooed and patted him a lot, and he cried and blamed me and rubbed his eyes no matter how many times I said not to, and he said mean things about my ineptitude. But still, somehow, I felt huge and nursey, like John Lithgow’s Roberta Muldoon in “The World According to Garp”: God as transsexual nurse.

“I think I’ve torn my cornea,” he wailed.

“You have a bit of sand in your eye,” I said.

We tried everything — makeshift eye-cups, sitting quietly with our eyes closed, prayer. I gently tried to make him stop rubbing it, and encouraged his tears, promised they would help wash his eye, and through it all, I was kind and patient. Finally I suggested that we go down to the pool so he could swim around with his eyes open, to try and flush it out. He squinted at me, half blind and miserable, Popeye with conjunctivitis, rubbing away at it, and I gently got him to stop. There were other kids in the pool and I thought this might shame him into acting braver. But he kept whining in an aggravating way, and while he swam around, I decided that when Jesus said that we must become as little children to enter the Kingdom, he was not talking about this sort of shit. He meant well-behaved children, full of wonder.

Sam came splashing out of the water as if to escape acid burn. “Oh, for God’s sake,” I suddenly wanted to shout, “This is not Kosovo! And you’re ruining my birthday.” I reached for him, but he batted my hand away. I had him sit down beside me and close his eyes, and I rubbed his back gently, and tried to figure out what Jesus would do. I think there are a lot of people, and Jesus was one of them, who glisten when children are around, but this is because it’s only for four minutes at a time; they don’t have to live with them. On bad days, when Sam is being unpleasant, I think Jesus probably could have raised reptiles more easily than a child. He lived with a bunch of bachelors, who acted a lot like whiny children — “Who’s first?” “What about me, Lord?” “Can I be in charge?” — but they were old enough so he could leave them behind when they got too annoying, roll his eyes and head back up the mountain.

So this is what I did. It being a resort in Hawaii, my mountain was a lounge chair at the far end of the pool, where I sat fuming. I listened to KFUCKED radio play in my mind: Sam was an awful person, I had done a terrible job raising him, it was only going to get worse, soon he’d be hurting our animals; also that I don’t actually like children, and should never have had him. Then he staggered over with his hand cupped over his eye, as if barely able to keep the eyeball from spilling out of the socket. His voice was reedy, imperious, blaming, exactly like George Bush must have sounded at nine, and this finally pushed me over the edge.

By now I was so angry at him that I could have screamed. I didn’t actually believe he was in any real distress, and therefore his suffering was not legitimate. My heart was hard, my heart was like held breath, refusing to budge, to give, to breathe. It did not want to beat, not one tiny bit. But the catch is that it can’t help but breathe one tiny bit, and when it does, then grace can find the miniscule opening and get in. That is why grace often arrives in such small measure — the size of a grain of sand — and finally grace did come: I realized Sam really was suffering, not like a child of war, a starving child, a child full of shrapnel, but rather like my child; my crazy child. And Jesus’ heart was not hardened against crazy people, or we would all be doomed. He was not embarrassed by craziness. He just said, “Yeah, well, me too,” then he took care of you anyway. So I scooted over to make room for Sam, closed my eyes, and prayed to stop being such an asshole. When I opened my eyes, I could see how crummy he felt, hunched and lonely and exiled, with a beach towel draped over his skinny self like a dropcloth hung over a lamp. And I got it: Refugees R Us. He was a refugee camp of one, alone, miserable in his own way, far from home. I’m not saying that he shared a great deal with a 9-year-old boy in Albania; only that suffering is suffering, and compassion is compassion.

I put a hand on his shoulder, and said, “Honey, let’s get you some help.” He said in a tiny Tweety Bird voice, “Who could help us?”

“I don’t know. But let’s go look around.”

We stood. I took his hand and we walked inside, and came to the resort’s beauty salon. Believe me, there is no less likely place for me to find spiritual help than in a beauty salon, with all those noxious odors, all those acrylic claws. First aid stations for the soul should not smell like conking solution or hairspray. But we had followed our feet and something had led us here, like we were on a Ouija board. Maybe it was random luck or my subconscious, but on the map of the morning, the X said, “You are here.” So I decided to start with that.

The beautician was young and kind, and she had a bottle of eyewash. She put Sam in a chair at the sink and had him tip his head back as if she was going to shampoo his hair first. She handed me the squirt bottle, and told Sam to pull his upper lid away so I could squirt the stream of water all over his eye. We used the whole bottle, and after a while, he was better.

“It still hurts a bit,” he said grudgingly, as we walked back to the pool.

“Stop,” I cried. “Run to our room and get my present!” and he did.

When he came back out, he had a small pair of binoculars for me. I peered at him through the wrong end, to make him laugh, and he did. The truth is that progress is usually small and sneaky. The lie is that only big will do; only big will change the world, so everyone will be kind to each other and the killing will stop. Big is the magic we look for first, but grace is what makes things work out against all odds. If it were too big, it might sweep away all the bits of knowledge and insight we’re granted as we go along. If it were too big, it couldn’t get through the almost invisible cracks and holes in our walls, in our stone hearts; knowledge comes in tendrils.

And that Obama is nothing if not brilliant. This guy has had some liberal victories legislatively, and when word of these victories — the realities of healthcare, financial reform, student loan reform, etc. — trickles out, we will have pride and stamina again. We will experience grace again, the grace of generosity to the underdog; the grace of second winds, and psychic WD-40. The grace of unseen water wings.

I say, buckle up, buckeroos and buckerinas. Fingers crossed and heads high. Once more into the breach. Also, figure out how you, in your area, can help mobilize the Latino vote. We owe Harry Reid to Hispanic outrage and get-out-the-vote efforts — send someone money today. (I love Mi Familia Vota, but there are organizations in every state.) Or go somewhere nearby and register Latino voters, and the youth, who accidentally forgot to show up on Tuesday — the “yout,” to quote the great Joe Pesci in “My Cousin Vinnie.” Help whip up the Youts for 2012. Lots to do! Kids to mentor, wars to protest, homeless people to help through the coming winter night. Time to rest and get ready.

So goodnight, moon. Goodnight, long national nightmare of the last two months, when it looked like we might lose John Dingell, and Barney Frank, and HAR-RY. Good night, Carl Paladino, with your cute red bat! Goodnight, Christine O’Donnell, with your election night list of demands — fabulous! I don’t know a living writer who could have thought that up, or the “I Am not a Witch” campaign. Maybe the late, great Terry Southern? But anyway, excellent — and goodnight. Goodnight, Dino Rossi, but can we keep the name? And goodnight, icky Meg Whitman, thank you from the bottom of my heart for not being my new governor. Money and power and ego can’t buy ya love, huh? Does that suck, or WHAT? And we all know what it’s like to spend money unwisely — who among us does not have some crazy purchase in our closet or drawer and garage right now? The stories I could tell — the blisters, the eyeglass frames that look so adorable on Justin Timberlake. Oh well, good night, Meg; and thank you for your courage, Meg Whitman’s housekeeper. And good night, Joe Sestak — but DON’T go very far away. You’re the real thing. Good night, Joe Miller, even with all those rascally votes still to count. But goodnight, and thank you for sharing.

Let’s all go have some well-earned rest. A new day dawns.

I’m not thinking of the San Francisco Giants here, although I have been following them with love and a sick stomach for most of my 56 years. This year they are almost certainly going to the Series, a great and unique team. Yet some of my earliest memories are of coming into the kitchen of the small coffee-colored house we rented in the late ’50s, to find my parents and older brother seated around the radio, with their arms folded across their stomachs. They’d be doubled over with worry as the Giants seemed poised once again to throw away victory, blowing a comeback at the last possible minute.

I’m not thinking about how much being a lifelong Giants fan is like having been a lifelong Democrat — they are both such beautiful teams, from the Willies May and McCovey in that coffee-colored house, to Tim Lincecum and Pablo Sandoval; from Adlai Stevenson to Lynn Woolsey and Russ Feingold. They have taught me that when it comes to playoff games and midterm elections, you can’t let your hopes get too high — but of course you do, and once again, the Giants or the Democrats break your heart — or totally, hilariously kick butt.

The Giants are usually described as rag tag, kind of a great garage sale team, and the Democrats are described as the Mommies to the Republican Daddies; and everyone hates the mommies, but wait, wait — I didn’t intend to get into the pathos and thrill of being a Democratic Giants fan. There is a certain delusional nobility in the wild ride.

And I’m not even thinking of a recent discussion I had with my Sunday School kids, about how when we as individuals or nations get so terribly lost, we have prophets to call us back. The prophets aren’t like the guys on Christian radio, predicting the end of the world for sometime next Thursday, right after lunch. They are truth tellers, lights, Dr. King or Nelson Mandela, calling us back to decency, sanity, to each person being treated exactly the same.

All I started out to say was that I remember so many matches I played as a junior tennis star, when I got off to a bad start, and was losing big time to someone I either should have been able to beat, or needed to beat to keep up my ranking. My opponent was frequently an awful arrogant, stupid person, which I say without judgment. It was simple reality — most competitive tennis players in my day were privileged, spoiled, entitled and white. Also, many of them were beautiful, fit, tan and of good stock — great big hair and white teeth and long legs. Then there were the rest of us.

Future Democrats, and Giants fans.

Anyway, you’d be losing by a set and a service break, say 6-3, 4-1, to an athlete whose practice partner has come to watch her, and whose father was hiding behind a bush nearby, giving her hand signals (whereas your pathetic Giants-and-Adlai-Stevenson-fan father has such bad nerves that he couldn’t even watch you play, even when you were in the finals). Your stomach ached, but you held serve, 4-2. Then, about to serve for 5-2, your opponent got a little cocky, began wondering who was winning the match over on court 12, which would be her next opponent on the march to the finals. And so your opponent double-faulted. Love-15. And because you had nothing to lose, and the game was surely over, and you did not have much of a chance, let alone great hair, long legs and braces on your future perfect white choppers, you secretly got back in the game. You secretly dared to hope.

When your nonplussed opponent crossed over to ace you from the backhand side, you’d nick one of your stealth serial killer moves with your eyes looking away quickly. Then she caught your eye as she aimed at a spot on your service court. You flicked your eyes over to the left, and it threw her. She served long, and her second serve is weak, and you suddenly have the advantage, because you have nothing to lose. And you rallied hard for, and eventually won the point.

Now it’s love-30, and your opponent starts to fall apart. Her nerves fail her, and her left arm on the next toss is as herky-jerky as a tennis ball machine, and she actually has to change down the toss to hit it, or do it over. She’s reduced to pushing in her serve, and you make winners. And she begins to come apart like a two-dollar watch. She’s grinding down those teeth, and her father is losing his mind in the hydrangeas, signaling for her either to serve as hard as she can, or smash in your head at the net. You can’t tell, but he’s furious. Oh, well. Ha ha, as we Christians like to say.

I won a lot of matches when there was almost no hope, and even less time, and it always started with winning one point here, and one point there. It always depended on not giving up, on getting my focus and courage back. It was the greatest feeling on earth, and, I imagine, it would still be so today, to take such a risk, and God only knows, maybe prevail.

But Mother’s Day celebrates a huge lie about the value of women: that mothers are superior beings, that they have done more with their lives and chosen a more difficult path. Ha! Every woman’s path is difficult, and many mothers were as equipped to raise children as wire monkey mothers. I say that without judgment: It is, sadly, true. An unhealthy mother’s love is withering.

The illusion is that mothers are automatically happier, more fulfilled and complete. But the craziest, grimmest people this Sunday will be the mothers themselves, stuck herding their own mothers and weeping children and husbands’ mothers into seats at restaurants. These mothers do not want a box of chocolate. These mothers are on a diet.

I hate the way the holiday makes all non-mothers, and the daughters of dead mothers, and the mothers of dead or severely damaged children, feel the deepest kind of grief and failure. The non-mothers must sit in their churches, temples, mosques, recovery rooms and pretend to feel good about the day while they are excluded from a holiday that benefits no one but Hallmark and See’s. There is no refuge — not at the horse races, movies, malls, museums. Even the turn-off-your-cellphone announcer is going to open by saying, “Happy Mother’s Day!” You could always hide in a nice seedy bar, I suppose. Or an ER.

It should go without saying that I also hate Valentine’s Day.

Mothering has been the richest experience of my life, but I am still opposed to Mother’s Day. It perpetuates the dangerous idea that all parents are somehow superior to non-parents. (Meanwhile, we know the worst, skeeviest, most evil people in the world are CEOs and politicians who are proud parents.)

Don’t get me wrong: There were times I could have literally died of love for my son, and I’ve felt stoned on his rich, desperate love for me. But I bristle at the whispered lie that you can know this level of love and self-sacrifice only if you are a parent. We talk about “loving one’s child” as if a child were a mystical unicorn. Ninety-eight percent of American parents secretly feel that if you have not had and raised a child, your capacity for love is somehow diminished. Ninety-eight percent of American parents secretly believe that non-parents cannot possibly know what it is to love unconditionally, to be selfless, to put yourself at risk for the gravest loss. But in my experience, it’s parents who are prone to exhibit terrible self-satisfaction and selfishness, who can raise children as adjuncts, like rooms added on in a remodel. Their children’s value and achievements in the world are reflected glory, necessary for these parents’ self-esteem, and sometimes, for the family’s survival. This is how children’s souls are destroyed.

But my main gripe about Mother’s Day is that it feels incomplete and imprecise. The main thing that ever helped mothers was other people mothering them; a chain of mothering that keeps the whole shebang afloat. I am the woman I grew to be partly in spite of my mother, and partly because of the extraordinary love of her best friends, and my own best friends’ mothers, and from surrogates, many of whom were not women at all but gay men. I have loved them my entire life, even after their passing.

No one is more sentimentalized in America than mothers on Mother’s Day, but no one is more often blamed for the culture’s bad people and behavior. You want to give me chocolate and flowers? That would be great. I love them both. I just don’t want them out of guilt, and I don’t want them if you’re not going to give them to all the people who helped mother our children. But if you are going to include everyone, then make mine something like M&M’s, and maybe flowers you picked yourself, even from my own garden, the cut stems wrapped in wet paper towels, then tin foil and a waxed-paper bag from my kitchen drawers. I don’t want something special. I want something beautifully plain. Like everything else, it can fill me only if it is ordinary and available to all.

Anne Lamott’s latest novel is “Imperfect Birds.”

I mean no offense, but the belief that Snowe’s vote made the bill bipartisan was delusional from the start. It was exactly the sort of thing my mother would have come up with — and she was from Liverpool. I rest my case: Those of us with English parents faithfully attend special 12-step meetings to break through the uniquely English forms of denial. The vote of one extremely withholding woman — and I say that without judgment — never changed the nature of the bill, no matter how much you and your staff convinced yourselves it did. It is a Democratic bill — a quintessentially Democratic bill, in that it’s about trying to help those in need. It is about fairness, decency and the common good, the values most Americans were raised on. But you can’t even mention those words and ideals these days without getting laughed at by the Republican leadership — or, worse, tea-bagged.

A great pastor in New York City once said that if you wanted to get into heaven, you needed a letter of recommendation from the poor. Teddy Kennedy got his. So did Lincoln, FDR, Shirley Chisholm. And now it’s up to you.

To get Ms. Snowe’s mingy vote, you would have needed to include her little pet rock, the trigger option. But the trigger option was the emperor’s new clothes. Perhaps a more precise way of saying this is that the trigger option was a figment, a dodge from greatness. My mother would have called it a “crock.” My 20-year-old son, “Totally bogus.”

I am not saying that continuing to waste our time — while people die every day from lack of healthcare — will keep you out of heaven, although you may get an inferior seat, possibly in the room serving only nursery snacks. How will you face Teddy if you muff this historic moment? Do you think he will share his eclairs with you? His brie?

It’s OK that you wanted Ms. Snowe’s vote so desperately, but the truth is that she was getting high on not giving it to you. She was getting a hit, like a junkie, from withholding. Believe me, I have dated men like her. She had a chance to participate in greatness, which does not happen all that often anymore in American politics, but the possibility is there now — for you, for us, for our country.

A huge majority of people in America and specifically in Maine want the public option. For a few months there, she had the power to kill it. Dude, what was that about? Was it some form of Kabuki theater, wherein you knew she would never give you her vote, but you needed to pretend she might for another week? Was it a multilevel chess game that all the people who voted for you were too dumb to figure out? She didn’t want decent medical care for the poor and middle class: She wanted power. She, like so many of us, is hungry for what she is not giving — for generosity of spirit, the only thing that can fill us up. And yet, she chooses to withhold, this woman who happens to have great government healthcare. I bet she and her extended family never worry when they get sick, or even when they need psychiatric care. Not to mention dental, which just kills me to think about — me and my family, with our terrible English teeth.

So we’ve lost two or three months to that business. And now we have Lieberman. In some ways, he’s even worse, because of — well, you know — the voice.

We do not personally blame you for the fact that we have to listen to him. It’s political life, on political life’s terms. And maybe his therapist or rabbi will help staunch his latest episode of swerving sickness. But recently on “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the great Jane Hamsher compared the healthcare debate to a beauty contest in which the contestants who feel ignored start stripping and said that, at some point, one of the directors will convince Lieberman to put his shirt back on. So I am wondering, why can’t that be you? Why can’t you do what Leon on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” keeps urging Larry to do? Take him the ruckus.

Use your most reliable parenting skills: Joe Lieberman is acting like a petulant, icky little kid — I say that with love. Use those classic parental standbys, bribes and threats. Back-channel him. Try reverse psychiatry — “Thank God you stepped in, Joe. Otherwise, we would have been responsible for all those slacker poor people. All those feverish babies and children. All those English expats, with their bad teeth.” If that doesn’t work, maybe you could just remind him of the famous story from 15 years ago, that family with a 5-year-old girl with leukemia who needed blood in massive quantities to stay alive. You remember: Everyone in her family except her older brother was tested and found to be incompatible. But the boy was afraid of having blood drawn in order to test it, and his parents respected him enough to let him come to the decision by himself.

One day he came to them and told them he was ready. They took him to the doctor, his blood was tested, and it was an almost exact match with his little sister. So the two of them were put on beds side by side in a hospital room, and the nurses withdrew blood from his arm, and let it flow into his sister’s. He lay with his eyes closed, in silence for the entire procedure, until the doctor gripped his shoulder and asked how he was doing. The boy opened his eyes.

“How soon ’til I start to die?” he asked.

This kind of profound and innocent moral courage is the most attractive characteristic a person can display, especially a politician. It is time for you to come out vigorously and loudly for Harry Reid by getting your people in line. Reid has managed, with a lot of help from liberals and progressives and too much time lost, to whip most of the Senate Democrats behind what you campaigned for. Now it is time for you to roar. Ms. Snowe and Joe can still choose greatness, too: They have free will, and they may surprise us all. Or, hey, while we are at it, why not hit up George Voinovich? He is not running for reelection and is — or should be — rooting around for a legacy. Otherwise, people will scratch their heads while trying to remember who he was. “Oh, Voinovich? Wasn’t he the guy up on Laurel who had to tent his house for termites?” He could go out a hero, by simply doing what public servants are supposed to do — stand up for the people, for greatness, for compassion, fairness and the common good.

So again I ask you, do the right thing, and do it now. Shoot the moon, Boss: right between the eyes. 

Another troubling thing: I do not know when you first began to insist that Sarah Palin’s baby boy would need to appear before one of your panels, but I can tell you this, Mr. President, it is not going to fly with the American people. If you are going to try to ram the death panels through Congress, I have three words of advice: Easy does it. Certainly there are people we can all agree are of borderline value. For instance, there is this guy I know named Harold who is a total monster. Everyone hates him. No matter how friendly we are to him, he never returns our greetings, but instead gives us the stink-eye, and a sneer. It is hard for me to believe that even Jesus would argue on his behalf at one of your panels. But the little Palin baby? No way, no how.

There would need to be a system of checks and balances so that we could all rest assured that favoritism was not a part of determining who would receive healthcare. Some people would say that if someone more closely resembled an Alturien than an American citizen, that person might be considered for the death pile. But that strikes me as being very cavalier. Life is precious, Mr. President, and just because somebody’s appearance makes you think of space aliens and anal probes rather than car seats and root beer, it is no reason to throw them away, as you have proposed. Obviously, if there is going to be a lot of killing going on in your healthcare program, panels would have to be made up of people with impeccable credentials. Otherwise, this would be a real deal-breaker for a lot us. For God’s sake, what if someone like Harold ends up as a judge on the panel, instead of coming before it, like the little Palin baby, or someone’s perfectly good grandparents?

This death panel of yours will require people of sensitivity, fairness, efficiency and patience. And that is why I would like to volunteer to serve: I am fair, fast and fun. Mr. President, I am at your service.

Best wishes,

Anne Lamott