Spill It
In 2012, a dear friend and I drove to a church near Philly to hear Anne Lamott speak, and she signed the book I’d brought with me: Help,Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers. Her pen gave her considerable trouble, but on the title page she eventually managed to coax out enough ink to sign her name and also write, “last of the ink.” I knew then and there that phrase would have some enduring meaning for me, I just didn’t know what that was.
At the time, I was a writer who didn’t write much. I had a two-year-old, three teenagers, and a marriage that no longer functioned on nearly any level. I was so busy trying to hold it all together that writing was all but impossible. Fast forward a few years: My crumbling life fell completely to pieces and took with it every ounce of pretense that my marriage and family and life were in good working order. Every secret I had ever kept was done for. And somewhere within that mess, I realized that in the near future, my frustration as a writer who didn’t write very much would meet its end. I didn’t fully understand it at the time, but I do now: By swallowing my secrets, I had swallowed all my words. I hadn’t been able to write because I hadn’t been free to tell even my own self the truth.
Last week a dear friend became a grandmother, and at one point she said, “It’s so nice to be needed again.” I understood this immediately, because although I still have a teenage son at home, I am not often needed in the overwhelmingly demanding way that I was for so long. A year or two ago one of my older boys, who was no longer living with me, got sick and called me, miserable. He wanted to know what to do for his terrible sore throat and fever, and something kicked in for me —— the glorious sense of, oh! I know what to do! —— and I dispensed all the wisdom and then made homemade soup to drop off along with medicine, tea, and popsicles. Being needed by my grown son felt a little like standing on solid ground again. That’s what I remembered when my friend said it was nice to be needed.
Then I thought, why can’t we see our gifts, talents, dreams, and desire to make a difference in the world as legitimate needs tugging at us? Why do they so often take last place in our lives? I mean, I’m a single parent, I get it. We have to work and do laundry and feed our kids and attend to our relationships. I know, I know. But. What would we be giving to ourselves if we let those dreams or desires place their needy demands on us? Aren’t they begging for attention and feeding —— as needy as toddlers?
I’ve been lost in the sauce lately, letting work and life take over my early morning writing time. But the idea of being needed was like snapping a rubber band on my wrist. Don’t I want to let writing make demands on me like my four babies did?
When I was a new mom, I found myself drowning in breast milk and feelings about learning to mother a colicky baby who had trouble nursing. Enter Anne Lamott’s Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year, which saved my life. If she had not written about new motherhood so generously and transparently, I am not sure how I would have navigated my first year.That is why a few extra words scrawled —— the last of the ink —— when she signed my book were so meaningful to me.
I don’t regret a word I have ever written or the time I’ve spent writing them. Sometimes when I come across something I wrote years ago, it’s a little like opening a roadmap that helps me understand the journey I’ve been on. My point is who can say the value of anything we do? At times I’ve written words in the hope that others will read them and find them beautiful or useful or meaningful. I think my biggest hope is that my words help people to see what they haven’t seen. Relatively few people have read my words, but I have found comfort, meaning, and help in putting words on the page. Maybe I am my own audience. Maybe I spill the ink for me.
For years I defined myself as a mom. I lived to take care of the humans I was raising, and it was all-encompassing. I spilled the ink of my life on their behalf, and I’d gladly do it all again. (I wanted to tell a Moth story about that at the June StorySlam in Philly, but alas, my name didn’t get pulled from the bag. Story to come!)
Sure, it is wonderful to sleep through the night and not change diapers or dispense snacks all day long, but I want to live like life is asking me to expend my whole self. I want to write like my life depends on it. I want to be here, fully, because life is tugging at my sleeve, begging for my attention. I want to spill it all out. I want to write and live until I come to the last of the ink.
I hope you do too. I want to hear your song and see what you’re knitting. I want to hear what you think about, what scares you, and what you love irrationally. I want you to pour yourself into that side business you’ve always wanted to start or be surprised by the friends you make at the place you volunteer for. I want us all to make new connections and be moved by the stories others are living. I want us to sing along with the whole crowd at a concert and tell the truth about crying over some small, broken thing. Because AI and the algorithms want to swallow us whole, but being human and engaging with this weird and beautiful earth is vivid and tangible and wow, and we should meet it with our whole selves, spilling it all.
I’ll leave you with a poem I wrote recently: I wonder how bright the lights were that moment I emerged wet bloody squawking that initial ragged inhale No wonder we cry Homesick in mourning before we reach our mother’s arms
Tell me about something you love irrationally. Here are a few of mine: Cappuccino, when my youngest son wants to take a walk with me, the ridiculously loud voice of a wren.