On Operating Instructions & my Wicked, Wicked Competitive Streak
So, I finally picked up Anne Lamott’s Operating Instructions.
Really, I should clarify that statement. I didn’t just pick the book up. I’d done that many times before– sometimes pressing the cover to my forehead hoping to ingest some of its unknown wisdom.
No, this time I actually picked up the book and read it.
Maybe it wasn’t my favorite book of all time. Maybe I didn’t drool all over myself with love for it. But, it was heart-wrenching and it was funny. There were times I was so struck with laughter that my son would lean back, startled and maybe a little frightened, and give me a bug-eyed look that unquestionably said: “Ma! You craaaaazy!”
I’d been told that for many the beauty in the memoir is held in the fact that it provokes in a new mom an overwhelming sense of relief. Relief in the fact that you are not, thank God, Anne Lamott.
“You know that no matter how bad you’ve got it, you don’t got it that bad,” a friend told me when speaking about the journal.
I admit, I have to agree.
However, I was struck less by my reaction to Lamott’s hardship (although I could empathize with her need to evacuate the room in which her son was crying) or to her humor (I, too, sat sucking on a pacifier one low and lonely afternoon), than I was by my inability to stop comparing Silas to Lamott’s son, Sam.
Soccer Moms, Move Over!
I’d be holding Silas and reading and breathing and before I knew it I’d find myself remarking aloud:
So, listen to this Sweetpea, Sam didn’t start babbling and laughing until he was– and here’s where I would look back to the beginning of the book and honest-to-God count the weeks since Sam was born to determine his age– oh, five months old! (Note: In case anyone has done the same, this date is only an example and is not accurate…) Isn’t that interesting, Sweetie?!?
Then I’d have to pinch myself when I realized what I was doing.
Four pinch bruises later. No matter. I couldn’t stop.
Babbling, laughing, eating, teething, rolling over, grabbing toys, crawling, sleeping, walking, talking… the list of possible skills that would allow me to unhealthily supersize my son were endless.
(Haven’t I mentioned before my status as future psycho-in-law?!?)
The beauty of reading and competing (as opposed to competing face-to-face) was that no one had to know. I could wildly exaggerate Silas’s abilities while simultaneously belittling Sam’s because, even though Sam is a real boy, it’s like he isn’t. He’s an intangible. A poetic character. A being created by the ink on a page. Mere words in a book. And, of course, he couldn’t prove me wrong. It was, oh-so-brilliantly, safe.
Still, I recognized in myself the potential for danger. I recognized my own perfectionist tendencies and my often failing self-esteem. Lamott, herself, suffered from the same. She hit the mark when she described herself as “a classic egomaniac with an inferiority complex.” Yeah, I get that one.So, as I flipped from page to page counting Sam’s age out on my fingers and chuckling to myself, was I starting to pass this wicked torch of unrest on to my son?
It’s possible. And I know I need to quit it, but…
did you realize that Sam didn’t start getting teeth until he was like 10 months old?!?
(Note: Ten months is a completely acceptable and beautiful time to start getting teeth.)
