I have a confession to make, one that may well lose me some good friends and loyal readers: I hated Anne Lamott’s Operating Instructions. Hated it.
Her memoir of the early months of her son’s life has been described as life-changing and even life-saving by other moms I know (including our “Shelf Life” columnist, Beth Hawkins). These women say the book cut through the freakish isolation they felt in the early days of motherhood, when it seemed like every other mother was surrounded by a joyful glow straight out of Mary Cassatt. Lamott was willing to say that motherhood — parenthood — is painfully hard and sometimes the love, the hallowed bond with your child, gets hidden under layers of sleep-deprivation, loneliness, and feelings of deep incompetence. She was willing not only to say it, but to write it down, publish it, legitimize it, and thereby legitimize the feelings of so many parents who couldn’t find reflections of themselves in the Babies-R-Us version of parenting.
At least, I guess that’s why they like it. Here was my reaction: Buck up already, lady. You have a baby, not terminal cancer. I read the book perhaps ten years ago, on the recommendation, I think, of my sister, before my husband and I had children, but while we were thinking hard about it. I read Lamott’s description of the parade of friends and relatives who showed up to lend a hand, all bearing casseroles and ready to take the baby off of her hands for a few hours. So many hours, it seemed to me, that she barely had to do anything herself besides lie in bed and perhaps type and invent ever more florid descriptions of her own loneliness and exhaustion.
Was my reaction a bit callous? Absolutely. Born out of ignorance? Well, okay, I concede that, too. And here’s one more thing I’ll concede: I’m glad that Operating Instructions is out there. I’ve even recommended it to some friends of mine (a recommendation heaped with caveats and the metaphorical equivalent of a gift receipt taped inside). Because, as Hawkins points out in her column this month, the recent proliferation of parenting memoirs has made sure that nearly every base is covered. Whether adoptive, gay, single, biracial, reluctant, pushing-50, just-turned-20, or whatever, parents are more likely to find a book telling a parenting story that looks a little more like their own, rather than like a Precious Moments figurine.
I’m curious sometimes whether, having been through the sleep-deprivation of “the fourth trimester” twice, I would look more kindly on Lamott’s memoir now. But, nah, now I’m in the market for a good book by a 30-something mother of two looking to find herself professionally and emotionally. Got any recommendations?
