Anne Lamott - Dusk Night Dawn: On Revival and Courage

NONFICTION

Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Sons First Year

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith

Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Sons First Son (with Sam Lamott)

Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers

Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair

Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace

Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy

Almost Everything: Notes on Hope

FICTION

Hard Laughter

Rosie

Joe Jones

All New People

Crooked Little Heart

Blue Shoe

Imperfect Birds

Prologue:
Ribbons

Coda:
Big Heart

Hymn to Time

Time says Let there be

every moment and instantly

there is space and the radiance

of each bright galaxy.

And eyes beholding radiance.

And the gnats flickering dance.

And the seas expanse.

And death, and chance.

Time makes room

for going and coming home

and in times womb

begins all ending.

Time is being and being

time, it is all one thing,

the shining, the seeing,

the dark abounding.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Here we are, older, scared, numb on some days, enraged on others, with even less trust than we had a year ago. The devastating pandemic, and the federal governments confused and deadly response, was simply the final straw to a few years of crushing developments. A UN report on climate catastrophe was published months before my wedding in 2019, the report of the extinction of one million species three weeks after. Major buzzkill. Our poor country has been torn asunder. I await the rain of frogs. And Ive gotten so much less young. I got Medicare three days before I got hitched, which sounds like something an old person might do, which does not describe adorably ageless me. I mostly love being in the third third of my life, as it is the easiest that life has ever been, except for, well, the bodily aspects, and the dither and fogginess, and I wouldnt go back a yearwell, maybe back one year, before the two UN reports, which have changed everything.

At our wedding were all the people we love most in the world, gathered in a redwood grove to celebrate the miracle that Neal and I had found each otherneedles in haystacks; wrinkly, mulish needlesand fallen in love, and toughed out some conflicts. We celebrated and overate, while outside the sacred circle our nation and the world seemed to have reached the point of no return.

So we danced.

That was glorious and I hate to be a downer but now what? Where on earth do we start to get our world and joy and hope and our faith in life itself back? Where can we again find belief in redemption and confidence that our new grandchildren will have breathable air and dry land on which to thrive and raise their own families? Will our great-grandchildren need gas masks? And is anyone in charge here anymore? If so, wed like to know how to rise up, how to help restore all that the locusts have stolenthe earth, the oceans, democracyeven with our sore feet, hearing loss, stiff fingers, poor digestion, stunned minds, broken hearts. We are ill with shock and awe. I am frequently reminded of Garca Mrquezs masterpiece Love in the Time of Cholera and of Yeatss cry in 1919 that the center cannot hold. Yes, these are times of great illness and distress. Yet the center may just hold.

I can simply tell you where my own rising up began. It was at the San Diego airport, not that long ago.

I had left my house fairly early that morning for the San Francisco airport, feeling distant from my nice new husband, although Im not sure he was aware of this, which is doubly annoying. We had had a stressful talk a few nights before, and lets say it had not been beautifully resolved. He stubbornly resisted my thoughts on some adjustments he might make to his life. The gall! In my defense, I had had these same thoughts for the two and a half years we had been together, but now we were married. We were stuck with each other. At such a time, a girls thoughts naturally turn to annulment, but we are not Catholic and are thus deprived of this option.

The morning sky was pearly, with a broad ribbon of white below, so you thought it was going to be cold, but it was warm. You knew the sun was in there somewhere, inside all that murk that was going on, and every so often it pecked a hole from inside the eggshell and appeared.

All the way from the airport in San Diego to my hotel, and all the way to a huge white tent holding a thousand women, I waited for my husband to text the exact right words, although I was not sure what those would be. Darling, you are the world to me, and Im chagrined that I have resisted your excellent suggestions on how I might best live; from now on I will do whatever I can to accommodate your tiny control issues and alleviate your extreme anxiety and self-loathing.