Grace (Eventually)

I've been reading Anne Lamott's new book, Grace (Eventually) every night before bed. I read the first essay at a cafe next to the bookstore and gasped out loud, hit my knees laughing, wiped away tears, and belted out a hoot. This is why I love this woman. She says it all.

Saturday I stood amidst a pile of boxes, my house looking like a tornado hit, with a toddler who wouldn't nap, and a husband who decided to go hiking the day before the moving truck was due to arrive (whatever dude!). I shouted to myself: Go!
River finally dozed as we hit the bridge, and I started thinking about not going back home mid-way across the bay. An hour north, seriously deliberating altering the course of our lives for a week (or more), I hit the treshhold - an indiscriminate point where I knew I had to turn around or not look back. I turned around.

Late afternoon I met Steve at the park, handed off my child, and kept walking, the movement in me not nearly done. I had twenty minutes to myself. I paid $5 to log on and read Jerri's blog about seeing Anne Lammot. I found the publisher's website and scrolled to her appearance dates. She was reading that night at 7pm across the bay, forty minutes away. It was already 5:20pm.

I raced home, changed my shirt, ran out. No tending to details. No dinner prepared for the little one, no jammies laid out. I sped across the bridge again, called a good friend and coerced her to abandon her family, too, and meet me.

Full house, Anne comes out in jeans and a head cold. And - in a minute, in less than a minute, I am laughing. My back against the chair, finally support, and I feel all the fluid return to my eyes. Sisterns refill for right seeing.

God, how I love the way this woman opens herself for full revelation. Full-out vulnerable humanity. Funny. So funny and so endearing. She reads about jealousy and humiliation paired with hilarious attempts at hiding it, and finally the weave back where grace happens, self-compassion returns.

One thing the therapist said to me the other day. After an hour of telling my story, which was, really, so strange because I am not attached to it anymore, yet I am old enough now to see with some perspective. She furiously took notes, saying, Oh my god! Oh my god! every few minutes. At the end she said, "You know what this is, don't you?" I knew. She said, "You have to write it." I know, I have to write it.

So today, too tired to write at the cafe, I come home and take out a few sheets of paper. Pen in hand, I start with my childhood home and mind map it. Page after page, the anatomy of a neighborhood, where veins of storylines appear on the pavement.