Operating Instructions

Anne Lamott is a novelist and person in recovery from addiction living alone in a small apartment under the redwoods in Marin County, California. Operating Instructions is her memoir, structured as a journal she kept during her son Sam's first year of life, beginning with a preface written during her pregnancy and ending on Sam's first birthday in August 1990.

In the preface, Lamott describes waking at four in the morning, six months pregnant, and realizing the enormity of her situation. She is 35, single, and the baby's father was furiously opposed to the pregnancy before vanishing from her life entirely. She recounts the amniocentesis, a prenatal test that samples amniotic fluid to check on the fetus, which she underwent with her friend Manning, who has been the baby's father's best friend for 25 years. The ultrasound revealed the baby's beating heart, and she learned the child is a boy. She named him Samuel John Stephen Lamott, after her two brothers. She catalogs her fears: that she is too self-centered to raise a child alone, that she cannot support them financially, and that Sam will inevitably face the cruelties of adolescence. She reflects on decades spent using alcohol, drugs, food, and men to avoid feelings of aloneness, and during her pregnancy she is forced to sit with that aloneness, discovering that the fear of pain is worse than the pain itself.

The journal opened on September 7, 1989. Lamott's best friend Pammy, a musician and glass artist she had known for 25 years, served as her Lamaze partner. After a night of early labor and being turned away from Kaiser hospital in San Francisco, Lamott was finally admitted to Mount Zion Hospital. She received an epidural, and the resident doctor stayed past her shift because Lamott felt safe with her. After a long labor complicated by infection and fever, Sam was born with his fist balled up by his head. Pammy and Lamott's younger brother Steve held the baby while Lamott recovered. She nursed Sam for the first time and described him as "like moonlight" (19). Her friend Peg, one of Sam's godmothers and a person in recovery, helped bring them home.

The early weeks were defined by savage exhaustion and Sam's colic, which consumed hours every evening. Lamott confessed to violent fantasies she had never experienced before and acknowledged a deep rage seething beneath her identity as a kind, spiritual person. She introduced her church, Saint Andrew Presbyterian in Marin City, a small, predominantly Black congregation she had first wandered into before getting sober. She took Sam there at six days old, and the congregation claimed him as their own. Pammy visited nearly every day, functioning as Lamott's co-parent. A pivotal therapy session with her therapist, Rita, surfaced a childhood memory of never having enough Band-Aids because her family's budget was too tight. Lamott bought three economy-sized tins, wanting Sam to grow up believing there is enough.

She introduced Sam's wider support network: her mother and Aunt Pat, her mother's twin sister; her Uncle Millard, Pat's husband and one of Sam's godfathers; and Gertrud ("Dudu") and Rex, her family's oldest friends, whom she asked to serve as Sam's paternal grandparents. The colic worsened through October. One midnight, Lamott called Pregnancy to Parenthood, a crisis hotline, crying hard while Sam screamed. The clinical director recommended a wheat-free, dairy-free diet. Meanwhile, her novel was published to excellent reviews, but Lamott could barely process the news. Sam smiled for the first time around five weeks old. Lamott hired Megan, a young woman who had attended one of her writing workshops, as a baby-sitter, giving Lamott time to work. When the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake struck the Bay Area, Lamott was immobilized as books threatened to fall on Sam's bassinet. The dietary changes eliminated Sam's colic almost entirely, and life began to stabilize.

Through late October and November, Lamott confronted recurring desires for alcohol but knew that drinking would mean losing Sam. She was approaching three and a half years of sobriety. Sam's father filed court papers denying paternity, claiming they never had a sexual relationship. Lamott wanted him to sign a paternity stipulation, a legal document acknowledging him as Sam's parent, so that Sam could know his father's identity. Sam began sleeping through the night at nearly three months, a turning point that confirmed what everyone had told Lamott: The first three months are the hardest. She introduced Brian, who was married to her friend Diane and in recovery from an alcohol addiction, as Sam's formal Big Brother, visiting every Tuesday. Lamott detailed the larger circle of men in Sam's life, calling them his "psychic Secret Service," a tribe she hoped would compensate for the absence of a father.

In early December, Sam was baptized at Saint Andrew's in a ceremony Lamott described as one of the most powerful experiences of her life. The choir sang gospel music, and old left-wing atheist friends sang along. The party at Pammy's house brought together all the compartments of Lamott's life for the first time. Financial crisis intensified as they dropped to $800 in savings. Lamott wrote a note to God asking for directions, folded it, and put it in a box by her bed. Days later, a woman from Mademoiselle magazine called and offered Lamott the book column for $2,000 a month. The pressure eased, and she wished she could share the news with her late father.

Through the winter and spring, Sam developed rapidly: rolling over, holding a book, scooting across floors. Lamott battled depression, loneliness, and continued temptation to drink. During one low period, Rita reminded her of a story by the food writer M. F. K. Fisher about a wounded cat that lay in a mud puddle to heal itself rather than being taken to a vet. Lamott recognized that after her father's death, she had done the same, and the process eventually worked. When Pammy left for a month-long trip to Morocco, Lamott was distraught. Sam crawled for the first time on his seven-month birthday, moving with lumbering determination.

Then, in early April, everything shifted. Pammy found a lump in her breast shortly after returning from Morocco. A biopsy confirmed two malignant lumps, and surgery revealed cancer in six of her lymph nodes. The doctor told them the cancer was too aggressive to be cured but could be controlled. Lamott wept; Pammy remained composed. Pammy began chemotherapy and had severe nausea, but the friends maintained their gallows humor. Lamott told Pammy a story about children with autism who learned to walk by holding onto progressively thinner ropes until they could walk clutching just a piece of fishing line. The image became a shared metaphor for faith. Pammy began a tentative relationship with God, finding a picture of a big cat licking a little cat and using it as her image of God during treatments.

Through the summer, Sam pulled himself to standing, said his first words, and flung objects from every surface. Lamott took him to the park swings with Pammy and Peg, and Sam became their anchor against Pammy's illness. Sam walked for the first time just days before his first birthday, taking three or four steps. On August 29, Sam's first birthday, Lamott replayed the entire birth in her mind and prayed that he would outlive her. In the final entry, she described a conversation with her priest friend Bill Rankin about whether God is truly merciful. Bill paused and said quietly that he hoped so. Sam peered around from behind a closet door, grinning, and Lamott was left holding onto that hope.

A single-line postscript reports that Pamela Murray died at home in Mill Valley, California, on November 2, 1992, at the age of 37.