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R E C E N T L Y

Time For One Thing: Acupuncture
By Lisa Moskowitz
My muscles relax. My eyes close. There is no real pain, just the apprehension of pain
(10/14/98)

Wild Things: Strange brew
By Polly Shulman
Love and art are the twin redeemers for the hipster heroes and heroines of Francesca Lia Block's young adult novels
(10/13/98)

School girl
By Thylias Moss
I thought all girls -- regardless of color -- were heading toward vast opportunities. Then I learned the truth. An excerpt from "Tales of a Sky-blue Dress"
(10/12/98)

The gracefully aging boys of summer
By Joan Walsh
Is it merely a coincidence that the playing years of the major leaguer correspond to the period of peak fecundity of the American woman?
(10/08/98)

To spank or not to spank
By Albert Mobilio
A husband from the working class squares off with his gently bred wife
(10/07/98)

BROWSE THE WORD BY WORD ARCHIVES

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

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Salon Columnists

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TURTLE TIME | PAGE 1, 2
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Somehow I made peace with this. Then I started running into the people who'd claimed to have gained weight. But they looked exactly the same. Only I was definitely bigger. It was like the episode of "Leave It to Beaver," where all the boys in Beaver's class arrange to make goofy faces for the class photo, and then only Beaver does.

So I'd be standing there in my big girl underwear and panel pants; and next these lying traitor friends would have the gall to ask what I was going to work on next. And for the first time in my life, I could not answer. I have known for more than 40 years what I was going to do. It turns out it's unpatriotic not to know. It's bad for the country. I'm going to be investigated by Kenneth Starr.

It's so nuts. Six months ago, on a Friday, I completely finished up a book I'd been working on for years. Then the following Monday, I set out on a promotional tour to flog the paperback edition of the last book I wrote, crisscrossed the country crying out to small crowds, "Buy my book, buy my book! It will hurt my family if you don't." But the day after I arrived home from that tour, people starting asking, "What will you do next?"

I think I must have signed some form when I was very small where I promised I would always know what I was going to do next, and get to work on that as soon as possible. Because it seemed very upsetting to everyone that I didn't know what I was going to do. I felt like some grown-up was going to sneak up behind me and ask, "Don't you have something to do? Is your homework done? Is your room clean?"

I have always known. It's that simple. I've been busy ever since I was a little kid. I've filled most available emptiness with projects, activities, props. I've dragged in furniture and friends, put up metaphoric curtains. But after I finished promoting my seventh book, and fine-tuning my eighth, I began to believe that it was of no cosmic importance that I write any more books. "Of course it is," people said loyally. But the only reason I could think to do that was for the money. It didn't seem a good enough reason.

Now, I can write a column like this, and they give me money -- more money than you can even imagine -- so it wasn't absolutely imperative that I write any more books. Also, next February, when the new book comes out, it will be my fourth book in six years. Now, there's something wrong with that. I think we can agree on this. That's just too many books. It was probably too many several books ago, but because I'm the sole breadwinner in this family, we could overlook it then. We no longer have that luxury. Too many books becomes gross after a while, show-offy, unseemly, like too many marriages or face lifts. I don't like it in other people.

So here's what I've come up with: Rather than make perfectly good writers crank out new books every few years because they need income and are otherwise unemployable, what if we gave them subsidies NOT to write any more books, like they give to tobacco growers? We'd let the agents thrash out how much each of us will get for not writing.

This would not apply to all writers -- Katha Pollitt would continue to be given writing contracts, as would Taylor Branch, John Kaye, Sharon Olds, a few others. Booksellers would sell the -- shall we say -- shitload of books that already exist. There are plenty of books for everyone from Cynthia Ozick to Dan Quayle to read for at least 15 years. October 2013, we'll all meet back here and reconnoiter. Maybe -- if we're in one of our expansive moods -- issue a few more writing licenses.

After I came up with this plan, my life lurched to a halt. I mean, there's housework, a child, an aging mother who lives down the road, my friends, pets and so on. But I spent more time puttering, looking at things, resting.

It was like limbo as an act of treason.

I put a note in my God-box. I said, "Dude! What do You want me to do?" And as usual, I didn't get an instructional tape from God like in "Mission Impossible." I didn't even get an interesting horoscope or fortune cookie. But someone did drop off a copy of "Turtle Time."

"Turtle Time" is a book for kids by Sandal Stoddard, about a little girl who finds a turtle egg outside and brings it home. In time, a baby turtle hatches. She makes it a house out of a shoe box, and then starts making all sorts of things for the turtle to do, furnishing its house, making it little costumes. But at the end, the kindly turtle tells her, in effect, "I don't need you to make me things, I don't need things to do. I'm on Turtle time."

Then there's a little song the turtle and the girl sing, that you sing to your child as the book comes to an end -- "Turtle time, turtle time ..."

And I thought, What a radical concept, and what a scary way to live. But I started practicing here and there, practiced attention, not leaping up to do something for the sake of having something to do. Maybe I was romanticizing sloth -- I would certainly not put this past me. But I heard a man say once that when he got sober, he had to learn how to do God's work, and to stop trying to do His or Her job. So I let this be my only directive: The sky had fallen 50 years ago, people just needed company, solace, care, a little peace and quiet.

Within a month, I had gained my first five pounds. Also, I became gravely ineffective. For instance, I usually see my mom once a week. We've mostly done errands before, bought groceries, dropped things off that needed to be fixed, the two of us functioning like a well-oiled machine with a poor memory. But when I moved into Turtle time, we started wasting time together. We watched early Wimbledon matches all day. We went to used bookstores and browsed all those perfectly good books we discussed earlier. We ate ice cream. Also, these little English biscuits she likes.

My mother has always been a little fat, and now I am getting fat too. But the trade-off is that I am finding all these crumbs she has to offer. It isn't the feast I have been starved for all my life, the feast I have fantasized about and lusted after, of having a mother who was a queen and a minister and a feminist comic all rolled into one. It turns out that for me and my mother, there's still no big hambone of psychological direction, no petit fours of mirth and encouragement. But there are these delicious crumbs, and when I stop looking around for the banquet table, and instead notice and savor these crumbs, they fill me up. They're the first gifts of Turtle time.

So: I will keep you posted. Meet me back here in two weeks. And as I always said to my hosts when I was a child, and would like to say now to my mother, Salon and to you: Thanks for having me.
SALON | Oct. 15, 1998

Welcome Anne Lamott back to Salon in Table Talk.