Traveling Mercies

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An appeal from the author Why you should become a Salon member. By Anne Lamott

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T A B L E_T A L K

Getting straight with those two humans who made you. Discuss your parents in the Mothers Who Think section of Table Talk

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R E C E N T L Y

Blarney for bairns
By Polly Shulman
Forget the leprechauns -- it's irreverence, mythologies and assistant pig-keepers that make Irish stories spellbinding for kids
(03/17/99)

Baby on board
By Katherine Ellison
A seasoned foreign reporter suddenly finds she can't compete on equal terms with men
(03/16/99)

Bring in 'da noise, bring in 'da rat killers
By Jill Wolfson
After preaching respect for animals to my kids, how could I finesse my death wish for the rats in our walls?
(03/15/99)

Kiddie pants or kiddie porn?
By Deborah A. Lott
Nothing comes between kids and their Calvins -- except charges of pedophilia
(03/12/99)

Lost in the supermarket
By Sallie Tisdale
A trip to the store leads to appalling moments in the world of too much and nothing good enough
(03/11/99)

BROWSE THE WORD BY WORD ARCHIVES

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

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Salon Columnists

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_[_W O R D__B Y__W O R D_]
BY ANNE LAMOTT | Late one night 36 years ago, my friend Vicki whispered to me in the dark that when you die, you float through outer space forever. Then she promptly fell asleep. I stayed up all night, staring into the darkness like a cat on acid. I did not tell my parents what she had said or how profoundly afraid it made me feel.

I remembered this the other day when Sam got home from a weekend of snow camping with the Boy Scouts, which, when you're 9 years old, means you sleep on a cot inside a lodge at an old scout camp and in the morning when you wake up and run outside, there's snow. He was wired and ragged when he arrived home Sunday night and, within minutes, started being mean to me and the pets. He was actually mean to our dog, Sadie, which I'd thought was about as low as the limbo pole goes around here. But it wasn't until he was hostile to Goldie the Goldfish, flicking his fingernails against the side of her bowl, that I figured out he was in some kind of emotional trouble; that he was probably scared.

It came out that the boys had stayed up most of the night two nights in a row, discussing (in the pitch dark) what happens to you after death. All the bad bases were covered: The worms going in and out, playing pinochle on your snout, the candle flame of your awareness being snuffed out, rotting in hell -- flames, sulfur, Jon Lovitz in a red devil suit.

Sam and I were sitting on the bathroom floor when he told me this. I told him what Vicki had told me years ago, and also how I had slowly over the years come to believe in heaven. He looked at me with a mix of pity and embarrassment. Then he asked if he could be cryogenically frozen.

What was I going to say? "No, honey, we don't have the money." But before I could answer, he said, "Do you have to die before they freeze you?" I said that was the general order of things, and he said, in great pain, "But that's the problem. I don't want to die."

I said that he would probably not die for 80 years. He said, "I don't even want to die in 80 years. I don't ever want to die."

It was just awful, and no amount of peppy Jesus talk could touch it. So I moved East, into Buddhism and Hinduism, and I said that his body was like an old car that he'd leave by the road someday, and he said (and I quote), "Your body is like an old car. It's like Brian's old car. It's like an old Rambler, with broken windows."

I said that this was nice of him to say. And thanked him for sharing.

"You know what I mean," he said. "But my body is new. It's like a 1998 Dodge Viper." But this wasn't fun for him. He was in dread.

What can you tell your child in the face of this existential bad news? That he will live to be 90? And that then, surrounded by all of his loved ones, including you, who will only be 125, he will slowly, free of pain, drift off into a deep peaceful sleep, en route to a Hallmark heaven where there will he no more fear, tooth decay, homework or girls?

N E X T_ P A G E: "Hi, God. Sam and I need a little help right now"