Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair by Lamott Anne

Author:Lamott, Anne [Lamott, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-10-28T18:30:00+00:00

A few years after Tom and I went to Mexico, he took me to Southeast Asia. It was mind-blowing: bright, neon, loud. Some of it seemed brilliant and perennially primitive, some of it was racing to catch up to the modern world in flashes of steel and plastic. It was pagodas, temples and ancient tuk-tuk drivers peddling tourists around in carts to Internet cafés.

In Laos, we walked along the muddy brown Mekong River, such a grievous place when I was a teenager, existentially sickening to remember even now. More bombs were dropped on Laos by Americans during the Vietnam War than on all of Europe during World War II, yet dense green bamboo and jungle have grown over most of the scars. The city of Luang Prabang, between two rivers and below mountains, is hazy, hot, eerie, soft, golden. Everywhere we walked, there were scraggly tattered dogs and cats, and banyan trees and tamarinds, houses built on pilings, frangipanis exuding their perfume to attract the moths, French manor houses from colonial times, ornate temples with their gold-leafed Buddhas, mosaic snakes and dragons, hill tribe people alongside ordinary Laotians and monks and hippies. It was antiquity and Apocalypse Now all rolled together. Finally we came to the Nam Khan, a soft green ethereal river surrounded by jungle shrubs and palms and tropical flowers, a place out of time.

And on its banks we found a Swedish hotel, a European hotel run by a Swede. I kid you not. Tom’s people are Swedes. I thought it might be a mirage, and we checked in so quickly that I got whiplash.

When I was finally able to leave the hotel’s air-conditioning, we reveled in the sleepiness of the village, gorged on noodly food and wandered through the night market.

The following morning, after breakfast, we took a trip on a longboat with skimpy oilcloth awnings to keep the driving downpour off us as we glided past limestone cliffs. The boat leaked, and I imagined drowning while dreaded river snakes attacked. I took a deep breath, though, and realized I was happy in this great beauty. I was brave woman warrior, or at least brave woman traveler.

The next day was my twenty-second sober birthday. Tom, who had been sober for thirty-four years, said, “It’s a start.” He’s so supportive. The hotel owner stopped by our table on the porch at breakfast, and it turned out he was from the same village in Sweden as Tom’s mother. Life is much trippier than first imagined.

Late that afternoon, we hung out at an Internet café. Then Tom mentioned that a friend used to work here until a krait, a venomous snake without any redeeming qualities, slithered past his boot. I made Tom leave with me. It started to rain again. The rain on the Mekong was exquisite, dusky, foggy. The Lao think the foggy mists are ghosts, and I do, too.

I went back to the hotel, and then the strangest thing happened: I went crazy. I’d been fine, maybe a little overwhelmed by the events of the day, until I checked my cell phone for messages.

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