Letters to the Editor
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borinquena, please reread your own quote
Acc to your first post Sam is consulted about whether an item can be published, so can we not assume he would have had veto power over this latest essay?
Lamott has written about Sam's family life, but it is not about Sam's own personal issues such as girlfriends or his own decisions or confidences. It's about Anne's struggle with losing her temper and making mistakes, and minding that her relationship with her son is difficult at this time.
Actually the teens I have known seem to be rather public about stresses with the parental units. Because it is, after all, quite ordinary.
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The stranger that you made
Think about this: some of us out here had more than one child. Some of us went through this social chemotherapy TWICE, or MORE. They are awful, awful, awful. One of my tearful afternoons was spent in a movie theatre where a hysterically funny French comedy was playing, and I was sitting by myself in the back row trying to sob silently. I went through an entire packet of Kleenex quickly and had to do with toilet paper from the theatre bathroom. That was ten years ago. Now he's a father himself and dealing with a toddler and a wife and a full time job and no summers off. Now he treats me with respect and never yells at me. But I will never forget that afternoon, and the other nights and afternoons and mornings, when I was hated and disrespected and disdained. You won't forget them either. If we can stick together after those encounters, we're so solid it's absolutely frightening.
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Boys do grow up, you know
Two things really struck me about LaMott's piece. First, the way she constantly sentimentalizes the time when her son was a "good boy", doing exactly what she wanted when she wanted it. In these passages one can see how she has sentimentalized her own control over her son, and how much she longs for him to return to such an infantilized state, where all he can do is be she she needs him to be.
The second thing that struck me as very strange was her surprise at the fact that her son would reach a point in life when he didn't want to be mama's boy anymore. Has Lamott never read a book? Watched a movie? Or even a television show? All boys go through this phase where they need to break Mama's hold on them so that they can become adults. The very closeness that precedes adolescence becomes the very thing that must be overthrown in any boy's mind. This is just adolescence 101.
I can't help thinking that LaMott's sentimentalization of her son's dependence, added to her sense of affront and injustice that he has dared to start growing up, has only added to the difficulty of separation that is the inevitable result of the parent/child relationship.
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It does get better.
Ms. Lamott, the things you are feeling and experiencing are as normal as loosing baby teeth. I remember being 15 and thinking I had the world by the balls. Those years are a, "Sell the encyclopedias, Mother, I already know everything," period in everyone's life. I also recall, with a smile on my face today at the age of 57, how I made the mistake of getting smart-mouthed with my mother. She was a small woman, 5 feet tall at best, but fiesty as hell. It was my misfortune to be talking when I should have been listening as the old girl was wiping out the vegetable drawer of the Hotpoint fridge. Back then, these things weren't made of plastic. I can still hear the sound in my ears when the good woman smacked me upside the head with the drawer, knocking me out the screen door where I landed on my smart ass. I learned two valuable lessons that day. 1.Show some respect to the woman who gave me life. 2. If I couldn't seem to stop lipping off, stay the hell out of her reach while doing so. I raised two daughters alone. We had many a go round, and there where times when I knew I was the world's worst father. My girls are grown now, and somehow they have both arrived unscathed, by my mistakes, into adulthood. They are fine young women, healthy in mind, body, and spirit. Trust me, someday you and your son will have many a laugh over this incident. And if he is any kind of man, he'll be the first to tell you he had it coming.
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Please note Anne says she clears with Sam--
this is the quote from Anne Lamott borinquena supplied. I think it might clear some of the fog in many replies here.
"Every story I write about Sam I clear with Sam, since he's been 10 or so. I ask myself, will people be really, really glad that I commemorated this event or this year? And I absolutely know within my heart everything I've written about the church, everything I've written about Sam is stuff that they'll look back and go, "God, I'm so glad she got that down on paper."
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week925/interview.html
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bleh
Ugh, sucky-ass Anne Lamont. We were forced to read your book on writing in grad school, and I threw it to the ground in dispair/horror at it's crapitude. Wow. So you slapped your son (because he did a bad job of washing a car) and you only let him smoke on weekends? Um. Super-awesome. Jesus is with you, baby! Oh, wait... no, he's not. Let's not even bother with the lame and unfair Anne Lamont vs. Jesus comparsions. How about just trying to be a normal human being who has perspective and who doesn't cry all the time like a 15-year-old. Wow, gosh, jeez, a surly teenager? I was way surlier than your son and yet my mom still didn't slap me, still didn't cry all the time, and still didn't get paid to write lame-ass articles about it, even though she, and I, are both better writers than you are.
--Oliver
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And Borinquena says again
That I didn't post that quote to let Lamott off the hook. A 10-year-old boy doesn't have a meaningful veto over his mother's decision to publish. Neither does a 15-year-old. She has all the power in the relationship. It's a bullshit rationalization.