Operating Instructions

Anne Lamott is the bestselling author of
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
, and
Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
, as well as six novels, including
Rosie
and
Crooked Little Heart
. Her column in
Salon
magazine was voted Best of the Web by
Newsweek
. A past recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Lamott lives in northern California.

NONFICTION

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
    
Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
    Plan B: Further Thought on Faith

FICTION

Hard Laughter
Rosie
Joe Jones
All New People
Crooked Little Hear
Blue Shoe

It’s hard to know where to begin. This book would not exist if my old agent, Abby Thomas, had not more or less insisted that I type up the journal I kept of my son’s first year. Come to think of it, the journal would not have existed if my friend John Manning had not insisted, while I was pregnant, that after Sam’s arrival I write down a few observations about him every single day. I am deeply grateful to these two people.

I want to thank my editor at Pantheon, Jack Shoemaker, for his faith and commitment and tireless efforts, and also my new agent, Chuck Verrill. John Curley, John Kaye, Don Carpenter, Donna Levin, Steve Barclay, Neshama Franklin, Cindy Ehrlich, Jane Vandenburgh, and especially Steve Lamott always offer immeasurable support and insight, even let me sometimes steal their lines.

Julie and John Woodbridge were there for me a thousand times that first year, as was my beloved reading group—Orville Schell, Deirdre English, Adam Hochschild, John Krich, Larry Friedlander, Lizzie Ehmann, Ethan Canin, and Sedge Thomson. It’s odd that Sue August’s name does not turn up frequently in
these pages, for she is always a devoted and insightful friend. Mary Turnbull and Alice Adams have been so loving and generous with both me and Sam for so long that I don’t think I can capture my feelings in words. And I would not still be here at all without the support and love of the people of Saint Andrew Presbyterian Church, Marin City, California.

Someone somewhere quoted a line from an old
New Yorker
story to the effect that we are not here to see through one another, but to see one another through. This is so much what the aforementioned people, and the main characters in this book, have done for me.

I
woke up with a start at 4:00 one morning and realized that I was very, very pregnant. Since I had conceived six months earlier, one might have thought that the news would have sunk in before then, and in many ways it had, but it was on that early morning in May that I first realized how severely pregnant I was. What tipped me off was that, lying on my side and needing to turn over, I found myself unable to move. My first thought was that I had had a stroke.

Nowadays I go around being aware that I am pregnant with the same constancy and lack of surprise with which I go around being aware that I have teeth. But a few times a day the information actually causes me to gasp—how on earth did I come to be in this condition? Well, I have a few suspicions. I mean, I am beginning to put two and two together. See, there was this guy. But the guy is no longer around, and my stomach is noticeably bigger every few days.

I could have had an abortion—the pressure to do so was extraordinary—and if need be, I would take to the streets,
armed, to defend the right of any woman for any reason to terminate a pregnancy, but I was totally unable to do so this time psychologically, psychically, emotionally. Just totally. So I am going to have a baby pretty soon, and this has raised some mind-boggling issues.