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>>KP: Well, I’m sitting here with Anne Lamott, author of Some Assembly Required, which
is the story of her son’s first son, as the subtitle puts it. So, I want to thank
you for talking with us today.
>>AL: You’re welcome. >>KP: So, first of all, how is Jax doing these
days? >>AL: Oh, he’s great, he’s three and a
half already, coming up on four, so . . . it just goes
by in about a week and a half, but he’s lovely. He’s a real joy.
>>KP: And how has his life changed since the end of the book? Because the book ends
sort of on a cliffhanger: he might be moving to Chicago. Did that happen?
>>AL: No, he and Sam—his mom is Amy, and Amy and Sam did split up, not too long
after the book ends, but they have worked out something kind of amazing, especially
because they’re so young, and they live in the same county and they’re raising Jax
individually, but co-parenting, and I’m kind of amazed.
>>KP: That’s fabulous. >>AL: Yeah.
>>KP: So do you still get to spend a lot of time with him?
>>AL: Yeah, a lot of time, yeah. >>KP: Oh, very cool. Does he call you Grandma,
or . . . ? >>AL: No, Nana. My grandma name is Nana.
>>KP: I see. >>AL: That was my mom’s grandma name, and
my son Sam—my mom was a real handful, but my son was so dear to her, and
with her. And I also wanted to honor her by taking on her grandma name.
>>KP: That’s great, that’s very sweet. Well, so how have things changed for Jax since
the book ended? >>AL: Oh, well, his parents aren’t together,
and he’s grown up, he’s become a big boy, and he was just starting to walk when the
book ended. I mean, everything that changes between 1 and 4—he’s extremely articulate,
and really into books, and really into—his dad has this gift that I don’t have, which
is this sort of spatial intelligence, in his hands.
Because I’m like so verbal, and everything’s like a ticker tape of ideas and thoughts and
images. And Sam has this kind of intelligence that you would associate with an
architect or something, and he’s a designer, and so—and Jax has that, he’s a killer
LEGO guy. I mean, he can make stuff that just leaves
your mouth open. So, everything about his life has changed and a lot of stuff has
stayed the same. He comes to church with me, comes to Sunday school, he sees a lot of both—you
know, his parents, he sees a lot of me, so, you know, everything changed and a
lot of things stayed the same. Just like real life.
>>KP: Sure. In your experience, having raised Sam and now being around Jax so much,
what do you think is the most interesting year of a child’s life, would you say?
>>AL: God, I’ll tell you, when Sam was 17 it got way too interesting. I couldn’t even
write about it, it was so interesting. But, it’s hard to say, I mean they’re all just
so different. There’s just nothing like an
infant. I just find them heartbreakingly adorable. And then when they start to put words together,
and they start putting that—making that connection between sounds and objects
or actions, that is really thrilling to me. And of course, all I want is for them to get
to the books. As soon as you get them to the books, they’re gonna be OK. So, I’ve been
telling kids on the road: If you read, if you’re
a reader, you’ll have a good life. It’s that simple. If you’re a person who falls
in love with books, you’re gonna have a good life.
>>KP: That’s certainly the message that I hope to pass on to my kids as well.
>>AL: Yeah. >>KP: So, what books did you read with Jax?
>>AL: Oh, god, you know—do you have kids yet?
>>KP: I have one. >>AL: Yeah. They only want the same book,
over and over and over, and I’m always crying out, “I can’t bear it!” So he’s
begun crying out now, “I can’t bear it, I won’t be
able to bear it if we don’t read Green Eggs and Ham. Nana, I won’t be able to bear it!”
He’s like 40 pounds. Definitely Green Eggs, and Cat in the Hat. He just loves—he loves
Curious George, because it’s so funny that—he’s such a good little monkey, but things
just always get away from him, because he’s so curious. And he loves Berenstain Bears,
and—I haven’t gone to some of the classics yet, I mean he loves Pooh Bear, Winnie the
Pooh. But, you know, I want to branch out a little, and start moving him to slightly
more—well, to new books. But they don’t want the new experience. I’ll say, “We’ll
go to the store, we’ll get a new Dr. Seuss book,”
“I won’t be able to bear it, Nana!” And I’ll
say, “We read Green Eggs and Ham for your nap, I can’t read it again, I just”—and
he says, “I just want it so badly.” We’re
doing Berenstain Bears ABCs, not the regular books. Because it’s so thrilling for them
to be putting the alphabet together. I mean, I
know these three books better than I know my own life. I know “The ants, the apricots,
the ape apartment, the angleworm with a little green hat, Aunt Alice’s airplane,” it’s
just hilarious, but he loves those books. >>KP: Were they the same books that Sam loved?
>>AL: No. Sam loved—well, eventually, what Sam got, was here for was the advent of
Harry Potter. >>KP: Oh yeah.
>>AL: So that was probably like 8, when he was 8 or so. He was born in ’89, so I’m
not sure. . . . But I think mid-‘90s, right?
>>KP: I think that’s right. >>AL: And, yeah, he read all the same Dr.
Seuss books. He loved construction books, more than Jax does. And he loved Winnie the
Pooh, and . . . There were a few books that I thought would become world-famous,
they were books people thrust at us at bookstores—bookstore owners, you know how
they can be!—and they would thrust a book at us and it would become our family
book. We still have them, and Jax loves them, but they’re different—they didn’t
become world-famous books that the whole world knew. There was one about a parrot who
knows all of his colored flashcards, and he lives with a very very very rich little
boy whose family has a limousine, and he’s really the boy’s best friend, and one horrible
day the wind blows the colored flashcards out, but luckily the father lets the butler,
the chauffeur, drive the little boy around looking for his parrot. So it’s all about
color. And it’s just so brilliant—I haven’t written
anything that can touch it. So that’s one of our books. But . . . Sam had a little trouble
with the dark, and so we read a lot of books about, “Go away, big green monster!” and
we read a lot of those books where you see that you have control over the monsters,
you just have to say “Get out of here” and they can’t stick around if a boy fiercely
tells them to get out.
PA SYSTEM: May I have your attention please. The library closes in 20 minutes. If you
have any books or other materials that need to be checked out, or if you need to register
for a library card, please make your way to the returns desk on the first floor. Thank
you. >>AL: Real life.
>>KP: Yeah. >>AL: Interferes.
>>KP: Exactly. Well, I just have a couple more questions for you, I don’t want to
keep you a long time, but . . . What would you
say is the most surprising thing about being a
grandmother? PA SYSTEM: Would everyone that’s here for
the Salon 615 event with Anne Lamott please be in the conference center by 5:45.
Thank you. >>AL: The most surprising thing about being
a grandmother is how little the parents are interested in your thoughts and opinions
on how to raise a child properly. So I thought because I was 55 at the time, and
I’d raised a child who’s lovely, most of the
time, that everybody would want to know what I thought about this or that, toilet
training or Sunday school or preschool, and they just really want to do it themselves.
So of course, that was very hurtful, and . . . I
was surprised by how crazily you fall in love, because I felt like I’d had the experience
of my son, and . . . you’re just pathetic, pathetic
in the presence of grandchildren. And it’s a blessing to get to live near them, and to
see him so much. I was surprised—you know, it’s
always surprising to find out how nuts you are, and how controlling, and how little
you trust in life just sorting itself out naturally, because I just want to get in there
and get things to happen the way I think would be best. That constantly surprises me
but it’s nothing new. >>KP: Yeah. Well, you sound like a wonderful
grandmother, and I’m sure he’s very happy to have you in his life.
PA SYSTEM: [microphone check] >>AL: He’s, um—this is what we call life
on life’s terms. But, yeah, I don’t think of the
book as what we call a grandma book, so much as—
PA SYSTEM: Check one. Check two. >>AL: Is it all hopeless? Can you edit it
at all? >>KP: I’m not sure.
JH: I think people will find it endearing. >>AL: Okay, well, we’re having a real life
sort of moment here. >>KP: Exactly.
>>AL: You know, I love having recorded so many moments of Jax’s first year, but it’s
really more of a parenting book. It’s about having a grown child, a 19-year-old
grandkid, a young grown child who has a baby himself, and it’s about the same old
things that Operating Instructions is about. It’s about how you’re ultimately not in
charge of much. How you have to keep practicing trust
and surrender. But it ends at the water’s edge of being a mother. You don’t
feel like a lot—you don’t want to do trust and surrender, you just want them to be okay
all the time, and happy. So it’s really, it’s
really about . . . Sam and I—Sam really growing up, having to grow up very quickly.
And it’s about having to come to some challenges—huge, ten years before I thought we
would. And it’s about, it’s about the nature of being a parent, where you’re desperately
on their side, you’re afraid, you’re proud, you’re very very curious. And how ultimately
you can’t walk on their hero’s journey with them. They get to pick their life, they
get to pick their spiritual life, they get to pick
their intellectual life, and you can’t run alongside them on their hero’s journey with
a snack box, you know? And water and sunscreen. They don’t want you and it hurts
them. It’s injurious to do that. And that for
me has been the hardest lesson of being a parent that I’ve had to learn, and I’m
still learning it. I mean, I want to bring—I want
to make sure he has Chapstick, Burt’s Bees, you know, because it’s going to be warm,
and it’s like, Annie, thank you for sharing. There’s a great acronym in Some Assembly
Required, called WAIT: “Why Am I Talking?” W A I T, and I have to say that to myself
all the time with Sam. Zip it, you know? Zip it,
zip it, because he gets to make his own mistakes. Which I hate.
>>KP: Yeah, that’s the truth. Well, Anne Lamott, thank you so much for talking with
>>KP: It’s really been a pleasure. >>AL: Thank you.
>>KP: Thank you.