Bird by bird

I finally started reading Bird by Bird. Obviously, I should have read it about five years ago. Possibly more. I’m a writer, after all, and Bird by Bird is THE book about being a writer. Anne Lamott unites writers everywhere through her self-deprecating, reassuring descriptions of us as a mentally unstable, tormented, and chronically insecure bunch. We have a lot in common. We believe that publication will save us. We worship the false god of perfectionism until we are driven to insanity. We imagine that other, published, writers get everything right on the first try. We pay close attention to our lives and to the lives around us. We have a special relationship with the sprawling, unfocused world. We bring it into focus, little by little. Bird by bird.

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It’s all very flattering, to imagine myself in the company of Anne Lamott as I freak out about my latest assignment and wonder how it was that at some point I was able to delude myself into imagining that I could write. The last sentence, for instance! All of the words should be rearranged! And this from someone who JUST wrote a piece about learning how to write. It’s disgusting.

Anne Lamott is soothing. Sure, she got her first book published by Viking at twenty-six (TWENTY-SIX!), but it’s OK, she and I are really completely alike.

She tells her class, and her readers, to start small. To think back to the things that we all have in common. To write first about kindergarten, then about elementary school. To work up through the grades. This is where we should all begin.

When her students are completely overwhelmed, she tells them to describe their school lunch rooms. To start with school lunches. Paragraphs about the sandwiches they ate– how they were wrapped and who wrapped them. The politics of who was sitting where. The complicatedness of such a seemingly simple scene. A scene we can all identify with, because we were all there.

Except for me. I wasn’t there.

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I wonder if Anne Lamott and I are alike after all.

Reading Bird by Bird last night, I sat in bed thinking about commonality. About the places we all begin from. In the adult world, it’s easy sometimes to forget that everyone except for me went to school. For the most part, people aren’t talking about it all the time. It’s an unspoken assumption, but we’re dealing with other, much more relevant things.

And then I’m reminded. This is the thing everyone has in common. They all begin here. And I begin somewhere else entirely.

But I can’t bring myself to feel left out. It’s strange. I should feel left out.

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I can’t feel nostalgic for something that never sounded very good to begin with. The things they remember about school are never things I want to remember. Anne Lamott describes being teased ceaselessly for her awkward looks. Having to get funny because she would never be appropriately pretty. You can tell that it’s the getting funny part that she likes. She’s proud of herself for adapting. But I am only thankful that those weren’t my two options: funny or pretty. I felt like I was both. I felt like I got funny because I felt comfortable being funny, and because it was better. And I felt pretty because no one told me I wasn’t.

Anne Lamott describes the kid who is against the fence, by himself, in the school yard. No one will talk to him. He is scared of everyone else, because of what they can do to him. It’s maybe third grade. He will probably become a writer, she jokes.

We all laugh.

I laugh, too. But I am still unwilling to part with my childhood happiness.

Maybe it’s naive, but I tend to think that we end up in many of the same places, no matter what. Being tortured in school might contribute to one person becoming a writer. Being popular in school might give someone the confidence to submit their writing for publication. Being unschooled might give someone else endless inspiration to write. We don’t really begin with school. We begin at a million different points and places. With our parents, our siblings, our friends. The first time we remember being terrified, or thrilled, or aware of ourselves. Our personal tragedies. Our intimate, incredible successes. Our pets. Our favorite and least favorite foods. Our grandparents and the music they listen to obsessively. Our lives are full of the details of experiences we can all relate to, and experiences that are also fascinatingly unique.

So school may be the common reference point, but Anne Lamott and I still have a lot in common.  We have better things in common.

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