Dusk, Night, Dawn by Anne Lamott

Author:Anne Lamott [Lamott, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2021-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

Six

LIGHT BREEZES

Praise songs were not a part of my childhood. We were too sophisticated for that. We didn’t believe in an invisible and loving companion. We believed in Dad, who did not love Mom, so life was scary. Dread was my governess growing up.

She kept me alive. I didn’t run out into the street, didn’t talk to strangers, didn’t sass, wiped front to back, minded my manners and teachers, stayed on my toes, did well in school. She would have made an excellent character in the Old Testament—“The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom”—although as my parents were atheist, she would have had to tone down the blood atonement. It was into her arms that I retreated from the emotional land mines and overwhelm of the world and the dining table, and from the secret if occasional experience that deep inside me was an infinite, untrammeled soul.

My parents did not hire her to keep me small and obedient, to keep me separate from all of you and all of life and most of me. I hired her. I was three or four. She was my most reliable companion, always there for me, like God in a bad mood.

She looked like a tall, thin Greek goddess you wouldn’t want to tangle with.

Dread taught me how to succeed and why it mattered, how to survive the caffeinated neglect of my home life, the bullying on the blacktop, the equally fraught states of isolation and intimacy. She kept me in line, helped me to be someone everyone would like. She got me to where I am today.

It has always been hard for her to let go of me and for me to let go of her, because I might die or disappoint my parents, now long dead. It does seem she has loosened her grip somewhat in the third third. She is still my default in fearful times like these, when I am stunned by the horrors of the powers that be, by the UN climate report and the pandemic, by dying friends who are younger than I, sometimes much younger. Even though I know from God, from precious community, and from various calming spiritual practices that heal and hold during catastrophic weirdness, she refuses to cede control. Even though I know the extreme hardships Dread and I have already come through—I know that somehow, against all odds, we somehow always seem to—she steps in to offer her cranky thoughts on just how utterly fucked and inadequate things are . . . beginning with me.

Dread is having a field day with my recent marriage. So many things could destroy it if I don’t play my cards exactly right, day by day. Neal may have a second family tucked away in the suburbs, or early pancreatic cancer. He may discover how pathetic I actually am, how damaged, how much I am faking. But even if any of these are true, the love of my community has always been and will always be enough to keep me afloat, and then it will transform me.

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