Free Operating Instructions by Anne Lamott Page B

unusually deep. I said to God, I really need help tonight, I need you to pull a rabbit out of your hat. One minute later Bill and Emmy and Big Sam came walking along the road toward us. So we stopped to talk for a few minutes. Big Sam is such a brilliant and gentle little guy, so artistic and tender with the baby that it helped me to breathe again. I felt completely back in the saddle by the time we all said good-bye.
    Part of me loves and respects men so desperately, and part of me thinks they are so embarrassingly incompetent at life and in love. You have to teach them the very basics of emotional literacy. You have to teach them how to be there for you, and part of me feels tender toward them and gentle, and part of me is so afraid of them, afraid of any more violation. I want to clean out some of these wounds, though, with my therapist, so Sam doesn’t get poisoned by all my fear and anger.
    I nursed him for a long time tonight. He’s so beautiful it can make me teary. I told him I was sorry for thinking such sexist stuff about his people. He listened quietly and nursed and stared up into my face. I wanted to justify it, tell him about all the brilliant but truly crummy men out there, and let’s not even get
started
on the government, but then I began humming some songs for him until he fell asleep. Then it was perfectly quiet.

O CTOBER 25
    H e’s very brilliant, this much is clear. He’s learned to comfort himself without the pacifier by sucking on his hands and fists, like a lion with a bone. Iwish I could sit in public places slobbering away on my own fist. It looks very comforting. The colic is gone. I am still wheat-and-dairy-free. Also, mostly shit-free, bullshit-free. I am finally saying no when I mean no, which is a lot of the time, especially when people want me to come to their house for a party. People have been inviting me and Sam to their parties lately, for God knows what reason. Everyone knows I don’t do parties or dinners. Everyone knows I don’t do “do’s.” It’s just torture for me. “Why is that?” people have always asked, and all I can do is shrug. I think it’s either that I’m not remotely well enough for that sort of thing or because I’ve gotten
too
well. Who knows, but I would honestly rather spend an hour getting my teeth cleaned than an hour mingling. I am absolutely serious about this. I get so nervous that I actually skulk, and then I get into this weird shuffling-lurk mode. It’s very unattractive. I look like a horse who can count, pawing the ground with one hoof. I don’t know why people would even bother inviting me.
    But in the old days I used to get sucked in and say yes to everybody and be there for them, showing up at their parties, helping them move, or staying on the phone with them too long. I’d try to entertain or help or fix, nurse them back to health or set them straight. Now I do the counting-horse shuffle and shake my head and say I just can’t do it, can’t come to the party, can’t do the favor, can’t stay on the phone. I want Sam to understand when he grows up that “No” is a completesentence. It’s given me this tremendous sense of power. I’m a little bit drunk on it. I ended up saying no to a couple of things I really wanted to do with friends, then had to call them up and beg, “Take me back, take me back.”
    Also, it’s great to be so taken up by Sam that I don’t have to deal with men. It’s like that beautiful old movie by Vittorio de Sica,
A Brief Vacation
. I have had a lot of men do stuff to me over the years, and I sanctioned it, but I did not want it. I have listened so attentively to the most boring, narcissistic men so that they would like me or need me. I’d sit there with my head cocked sweetly like the puppy on the RCA logo. On the inside I would feel like that old poem by Philip Levine, about waiting until you can feel your skin wrinkling and your hair growing long and tangling in the winds. It was like these men held