Ok, I'm finally here. I've been avoiding the keyboard for a few days, but here I am, and to quote myself, "better late than never". I finally know what I want to be when I grow up. I want to be Anne Lamott. Of course that job is currently filled so I'll have to be some variation of it; perhaps I'll be Elaine Lubin. Thing is I know who Anne Lamott is already, but Elaine Lubin I'm not so sure about. Anne's a writer who does write. Elaine's a writer who doesn't, or at least she wasn't for a long time. How long? Just about all her life. She's dabbling now and it's looking better and better but there's a ways to go. Actually, it's a short distance from anywhere in her life to the keyboard, but sometimes she just doesn't get there. I wonder how old Grandma Moses was when she started painting?
I went to see Anne do a book reading last week. I love her books and she seems to be just like all the characters in them. Stumbling through life, but with a profound love of God, a God who's a part of her every waking moment, trusting in him and knowing He's there. And she's so funny. She said several times, "I'm a mess." There were a couple of hundred adoring people there, and maybe it was her way to stay down to earth or at least tell us there was hope for all of us too.
I've had a feeling all my life that I was going to be famous one day. I used to see myself sitting on Johnny Carson's couch shooting the breeze with him. I never thought I'd be famous for anything other than being me though. I never saw myself talking about a movie I'd made, or an invention I'd invented, I was just there to chat about being me. This didn't fit in with the way I usually saw my life. I never wanted to be the star, I was the behind the scene's person. Not the lead actress, just an extra in a crowd scene. I thought the really "with it" people would find me in the crowd scene and realize what a talent I was. I didn't have to strive to be anything, just wait for someone to find me. A few years ago though I started to think about being in the spotlight. I wanted to be seen, but how? Then I went to a reading and I thought "This could be it." It was Alan Gurganis who read a bit of his book and then most of questions afterwards weren't about the book, but about him. I was so inspired I came home and wrote a little piece about a woman who has the same revelation, that the book tour should be her life's work, then sets out to plan her wardrobe, a good suit with inter changeable separates, a good easy care haircut, comfortable shoes. At the end she realizes that the one thing she doesn't have and hasn't planned out, is her book. Alan had spent 8 years writing the four or five hundred pages of "Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All", a minor detail I'd overlooked. Well, so here I am writing. I've missed the Johnny Carson era, but I'm here at the keyboard at last, and this is where I'm the real me, getting notice for being the real me. Maybe not famous, but in the spotlight of my own life. So it turns out that Anne Lamott and I have a lot in common. We both write, we believe in God, He's in our bone marrow, and we can proudly proclaim "I'm a mess", because life is messy, but you just get on with it. I did take note that instead of a stylish suit, she went with jeans and a sweater.
Anne told us it hurt her hand too much to personalize each book that she signed, but she said, "you can write any kind of personal greeting to yourself from me and I'll sign it. So I wrote, "To my new friend, Elaine. I'm so glad that you're finally writing. I can't wait to read some of it. God Loves you and me." She signed Anne Lamott under that with a little heart, but best of all she read it and smiled at me. We're practically best friends now.