Free Operating Instructions by Anne Lamott Page A

things get with an infant around. He said that even with a mate, it’s like having a clock radio in your room that goes off erratically every few hours, always tuned to heavy metal.
    Sam sleeps for four hours at a stretch now, which is one of the main reasons I’ve decided to keep him. Also, he lies by himself on the bed staring and kicking and cooing for fifteen to twenty minutes at a time. I had these fears late at night when I was pregnant that I wouldn’t be able to really love him, that there’s something missing in me, that half the time I’d feel about him like he was a Pet Rock and half the time I’d be wishing I never had him. So there must have been some kind of a miracle.
    I never ever wish I hadn’t had him.
    But I do sometimes wish I had a husband and a full-time nanny. And that I could still have a few drinks now and then. I am coming up on three and a half years clean and sober. The memories are still very clear of how lost and debauched and secretly sad my twenties and early thirties were, how sick and anxious I felt every morning. I thought at the time that I was having a lot of fun, except that the mornings were really pretty terrible. But there are still times when these movies start to play in my head, where I see myself putting the baby down to sleep and then sitting and sipping one big, delicious Scotch on the rocks. Just sipping, just sipping one fucking drink. Is thatso goddamn much to ask? I just want that kind of relief, that smoothing of the sharp edges. The only fly in the ointment is that if I went to a liquor store and put some money on the counter for a bottle of good whiskey, I might as well put Sam on the counter, too, because I know I will lose him if I start drinking again. I know I would lose every single thing in my life that is of any real value. I couldn’t take decent care of
cats
when I was drinking. They’d run off or get hit by cars or get stolen, because I’d forget to leave windows open for them or wouldn’t come home for a couple of nights in a row. So I don’t know, I guess I won’t have a drink today. Maybe tomorrow,
probably
tomorrow, but not today.
    Sam has this great roar now, like maybe he’s about to cry, but then it turns out that he just feels like roaring because that’s the kind of guy he is—he’s a roaring kind of guy—and because he’s coming into his own, like “I am baby, hear me roar, in numbers too big to ignore.…” Then he burns his diaper.
    Half the time I’m completely winging this motherhood business. I get so afraid because we are running out of money. We have enough to live on for maybe two more months. Also, I just had no idea I had so much rage trapped inside me. I’ve never had a temper before. I’ve always been able to be mellow or make jokes. But we went through a difficult patch thisevening when Sam was being hard to please, whiny and imperious and obviously feeling very sorry for himself, and at first I could kind of roll with it, shaking my head and thinking, It’s because he’s a
male
, he’s having an
episode
, this is very familiar stuff to me, he’s already got testosterone poisoning. But I couldn’t get him to stop, and it wore me down. It was one of those times when I desperately needed to be able to hand him over to someone, like, say hypothetically, a mate, and there wasn’t anyone. So suddenly all this bile and old fear of men and abandonment stuff were activated in my head. All these furious thoughts about Sam’s father. Sam was so exasperating that I could feel fury coursing through my system, up my arms into my hands, like charged blood. I made myself leave the room, just left him crying in his bassinet in the living room, which is what Bill Rankin said to do once before. I went to the tiny bedroom in the back, and breathed, and prayed for major help. The next thing I knew, I had decided to take him for a walk in the stroller in the dark.
    It was warm and the stars were just coming out; the sky seemed