An appeal from the author Why you should become a Salon member. By Anne Lamott

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

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If I can muster the love and patience it takes to deal with my mother, does it still count if my hands are trembling with rage?
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BY ANNE LAMOTT | Our pastor once told us about a T-shirt she'd seen that said, "Jesus is coming: Look busy." So I try. I do anonymous good deeds and in general also do pretty well by sick friends, street people and victims of disaster. But things fall apart when it comes to my mother. I often remember the words of Teresa of Avila, who said, "The Lord doesn't so much look at the greatness of our works, as at the love with which they are done," and this sounds fine -- except, again, when it comes to my mother. I call her every morning and tryto see her every week, and bring a lot of love and patience to those tasks. But there's also all this other stuff marbled in: Someone once said that we have everything inside of us that Jesus has; only, He doesn't have all this other stuff, too. So I ask myself, if you do the great love part when you're with your mother, does it still count if there are also a few extras? Like hands trembling with rage? I think it does. I hope so.

For instance, one recent morning I had dropped Sam off at a friend's for a few hours, promising that I'd be back by noon, as they had to leave for the city. Then it occurred to me that Mom would probably love to go shopping spur of the moment. It only takes me half an hour to get to her house, so I figured we'd have close to two hours to do errands and then maybe even something fun. I called her, and she was very excited, because she needed to go to the used furniture store at the far end of her town and buy a little wooden dresser.

I drove to her house literally filled with joy at getting to be there for her. She is in her mid-70s now, but seems older, as she has profound problems with memory and balance. This is not a problem when I am spiritually fit, because I feel a lot of gratitude for all she did for my brothers and me when we were young, for the liberal values she instilled in us, the hundreds of songs she taught us. So when I take her small warm hand and she clutches it so tightly that it hurts, sometimes it hurts good, because it connects me to her.

I picked her up the other morning, and I showed my love by not getting her to hurry up. I let her putter and find her own pace. She wanted to show me things in her apartment that she is proud of, even though I've seen them a thousand times: the view of Mount Tamalpais out her living-room window; her huge, evil, long-haired cat. I was watching her attentively, through the moo-goo gai-pan eyes of love: There is something oddly birdlike about her, for such a solid little person. She is Britishly plump, and she often has an airof radiance about her, the radiance of silvery hair. I also think that because she can't rely on her memory, she projects outward everything else she has, and so she burns brightly. She has big round eyes, brown and wet. Sometimes when she is not as connected as usual, you feel that her mind is popping to the surface like a seal, goggle-eyed, "Here I am!" And then it disappears back into the waves: "Oops, goodbye."

She was very connected that morning, and I was both happy to be with her and rather pleased with my patient helpful self, when all of a sudden, I saw this look in her eyes, this craftiness that I used to see in Sam's face when his toddler gremlins had risen to the surface. It's the look of somebody lying in wait, ready to pounce. She said, "Honey?" in this way she has. There are certain ways she can say "Honey?" without my hearing jungle drums begin to beat, without my feeling that I want to cup my hands protectively over my soft turtle parts. But she said it in the other way. In the bad way. "Yes?" I asked rather squeakily.

"One of my friends on this floor is turning 90 soon. And I wanted to give her a copy of one of the two really good books you wrote."

"What?" I asked nicely, thinking I had misunderstood.

"You know, the two good books you wrote." And I instantly became Curly in "The Three Stooges" -- all grimaces, spasming neck, gnashing teeth: "Nyut nyut nyut."

"Mom!" I said. "How do you think it feels for you to say that only two ofmy books are good?"

"Oh, honey," she said with some annoyance, "you know what I mean."

I stormed to the bathroom to get away from her, so jealous of my friends whose mothers live on the East Coast. I sat on the toilet and growled, fumed, prayed. I finally remembered that sometimes God seems to use her as the Coyote Trickster in my life: Like Coyote she lives on the margins, makes do with very little, sneaks playfully past my comfort zones and wreaks havoc with my act and my need to control. So in her bathroom, I did Lamaze for a minute, like the child either giving birth to the mother or trying to crawl back inside, and I eventually calmed down. I left the bathroom determined to work things out.

N E X T_ P A G E: With 25 minutes to burn, how wrong can things go?