Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott

Author:Anne Lamott
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Religion, ST, Spirituality, CS, Christianity, Memoir
Published: 2013-06-28T04:16:37+00:00

A N N E L A M O T T

shorts. The smell of something baking, sweet and yeasty,

filled the house. But Sam couldn't find his knapsack, so I

got up to look around. The surfaces of her house were covered with fine and expensive things. "Please let me make you a cup of tea:' she said again, and I started to say no, but this thing inside me used my voice to say, "Well . . . OK." It

was awkward. In the living room, I silently dared her to

bring up school, math tests, or field trips; I dared her to

bring up exercise, or politics. As it was, we had very little to

talk about-! was having to work so hard making sure she

didn't bring up much of anything, because she was so goddamn competitive-and I sat there politely sipping my lemongrass tea. Everywhere you looked was more facade, more expensive stuff-show-offy !-have-more-moneythan-you stuff, plus-you're-out-of-shape stuff. Then our boys appeared, and I got up to go. Sam's shoes were on the mat by the front door, next to his friend's, and I went over

to help him put them on. And as I loosened the laces on

one shoe, without realizing what I was doing, I sneaked a

look into the other boy's sneaker-to see what size shoe he

wore. To see how my kid lined up in shoe size.

And I finally got it.

The veil dropped. I got that I am as mad as a hatter. I saw

that I was the one worried that my child wasn't doing well

enough in school. That I was the one who thought I was

out of shape. And that I was trying to get her to carry all

this for me because it hurt too much to carry it myself.

I wanted to kiss her on both cheeks, apologize for all

the self-contempt I'd been spewing out into the world, all

the bad juju I'd been putting on her by thinking she was the

Forgiveness

one doing harm. I felt like J. Edgar Hoover, peeking into the

shoes of his nephew's sevenyear-old friend to see how

the Hoover feet measured up, idly wondering how the kid's

parents would like to have a bug on their phone. This was

me. She was the one pouring me more tea, she was the one

who'd been taking care of my son. She was the one who

seemed to have already forgiven me for writing a book in

which I trashed her political beliefs; like God and certain

parents do, forgiven me almost before I'd even done anything that I needed to be forgiven for. It's like the faucets are already flowing before you even hold out your cup to be filled. Before, giveness.

I felt so happy there in her living room that I got drunk

on her tea. I read once in some magazine that in Czechoslovakia, they say an echo in the woods always returns your own call, and so I started speaking sweetly to everyone--to the mother, to the boys. And my sweet voice started getting

all over me, like sunlight, like the smell of the Danish baking

in the oven, two of which she put on a paper plate and covered with tin foil for me and Sam to take home.

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