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T A B L E++T A L K

Parents who are still in college discuss term papers and diapers in Table Talk's Mothers Who Think area.

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R E C E N T L Y

The good doctor
By Caroline Leavitt
Why I love my OB
(12/03/97)

Time for one thing
By Kate Moses
If you've been drinking my eggnog, you better not drive
(12/02/97)

Reading between the whines
By Inda Schaenen
The sevenfold path to coping with seven-step parenting manuals
(12/01/97)

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So. I hoped that the fire of truth would catch between Grace and me. The producer gave us a shot at this happening. It didn't.

Grace and I read our own works for a while, and then we sat down to have a nice intimate conversation with 2,000 people watching. And it was a weird, glumfy dance, as Sam said once; a private dance done publicly. We bombed. This is not actually the truth: I bombed. Grace was fine. Everyone agreed later that Grace was fine. She answered my questions on writing and activism with intelligence and style, and then listened respectfully when I then went on to the same questions I had just asked her. Apparently I went on a little long. Repeatedly. But I couldn't hear the music, I couldn't remember how to play my own little song, and it all came out frenetic and narcissistic. I felt like the minutes were coming at me much too quickly, like the chocolates on the conveyor belt in the famous "I Love Lucy" routine. I became Lucy when she's dutifully trying to place each chocolate in a little paper panty, but finally, just to keep up, has to shove chocolates down the front of her dress, fling others over her shoulders, stuff a whole bunch in her mouth.

It was all a little -- comment se dit -- glumfy. Grace shone through as she can't help but do; she was wise and forthcoming and inspiring. She was all the things she is. I was more panicky than usual, and so perhaps the tiniest bit -- well, chatty would be the nice word. Garrulous would be the meaner, but maybe more accurate. But I was me, just lost and wired but endlessly eager to please. So instead of something machine-extruded and satiny, the audience got something that was more like a nubbly, handmade shawl with lots of textures and lumps, a weaving of earth-colored yarns and moss and pebbles, with a few thin bright ribbons throughout. It was warm, but odd. The worst moment was toward the end, when I was handed a pile of index cards that contained the questions from the audience that were directed towards me. Unfortunately, I got one of Grace's cards by accident. It said, "What would you have talked about if Ms. Lamott had not gone off on all those narcissistic tirades?" The adrenaline of shame flushed through me. I didn't want to have to carry it all alone, later, in the hotel room, 1,000 miles and two nights away from home. So I shared it. It intuitively seemed the most therapeutic thing to do. I read it out loud to the audience. Then I turned to Grace and said, "I don't think we should answer this one. Because I think it sounds a little angry." Everyone laughed. Maybe it made a bunch of people uncomfortable; and maybe this is not a bad thing. On the other hand, maybe it modeled for one person in the audience how sometimes you can grab a spear that's headed at you, snap it in half in the air and get a laugh, instead of another wound.

The end of the evening was terrific: We both answered another question or two, and then read short things we had written, with which we wanted to close. Everyone loved what we read, but as soon as we came off the stage, I began to suspect that hardly anyone was entirely happy with how it had gone. Except, of course, for Grace.

Grace thought it was fine. "It was just what it was," she said.

My friend Paul O., who is in his 80s, says that he tries to enjoy life the way it is, because that's the way it's going to be anyway.

I am not there yet. I felt that the night had shown the world that I am a jerk, an egomaniac, a loser, but I did not tell anyone I felt that way. I just felt terribly depressed and lonely in my hotel room that night. Left with my own bad thoughts, most of them about myself, I felt stricken and lurky and dark, like a wallflower at the vampire's ball. I cried a little, then closed my eyes, bowed my head and whispered the best prayer I know, "Help."

Then out of nowhere I remembered something one of my priest friends said once, that grace is having a commitment to -- or at least an acceptance of -- being ineffective and foolish. That our best ideas and all of our bottled charm are the main roadblock to drinking that clear glass of grace, to feeling its cooling breeze. I remembered what Grace's stories were all about: self-forgiveness, and taking care of one another. And I also remembered what Jesus said to do: Feed the hungry, clothe the poor, help the cold people feel warm. Now, I'm not positive he meant that you should immediately order some overpriced room service food or wrap yourself up in the hotel's terry-cloth bathrobe or draw yourself a bubble bath. But maybe he did. The next thing I knew I was leaving messages on machines all over the Bay Area for friends to call me the moment they could, because I was lonely and cold and sad. I do not understand the mystery of grace, only that it can be received gladly or grudgingly, in big gulps or in tiny little tastes, like a deer at the salt. I gulped, I licked, and pretty soon, I wasn't lonely anymore. I got in the hot tub. I became funny again. I made myself laugh out loud.

Oh, the review the next day was awful -- there's no getting around that -- mostly because the critic beat up the producer for letting us take such a risk. I just felt awful about letting her down, and still do. But the gift of failure is that it breaks through all that held breath, all that isometric tension about needing to look good. One of the things of which I've been so afraid finally happened, with a whole lot of people watching, and it was a total nightmare. But I came through. Sitting with all that vulnerability, all that discomfort and even the shame, I discovered I could ride it. And every so often, one needs to be reminded that life is dangerous and beautiful all the time, in equal measure. So I felt shaky and ungainly, the way Marlon Brando looked on those ice skates, but I also felt back on my feet.

I hate it every time something happens that makes me let go of the illusion that life is seamless and that everything is going to be OK. Because the truth is, it's not going to be. We know it isn't. It's not even constructed to be OK -- kids' hearts get broken, and then they become teenagers and scare us, and themselves, and parents get old and feeble and die, and friends have sick babies, and people you love leave. That's pretty basic, pretty real. Like Vonnegut said, "Welcome to the monkey house." But the more we get grounded -- on ice, in loam and mud and moss and rocks and fields and unmown grass -- the higher we can lift.

I was in and out of depression and a vague sense of humiliation all the next day. I even cried a few more times, and that is almost always a good thing. I hadn't figured out anything specific by the time I arrived in Portland, but somewhere along the line I had gotten willing to give up the self-will. I think it had to do with all those tears and tender self-care. But in any case, I had a willingness to cooperate with grace, in the sense that Jesus' mother Mary cooperated with grace when the angels said, "Hey, girlie, want to get pregnant?" She did not say, "Are you nuts?" which is what I would have said. She did not need to contribute her own thoughts and theories on world peace. She just said, "OK." So when both Grace and the producer in the second city said they wanted to go back to Plan A, take the safer route and read prepared talks from the podium, I said OK. It was not at all what I wanted but it is what we did. We read talks that we had each given dozens of times before, we skated again to the medley of songs from "The Sound of Music;" and we soared.
Dec. 4, 1997

Do you like writers to take risks onstage, even if the price of failure is a glumfy evening? Join the Anne Lamott discussion in Table Talk.