Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year

With unflinching honesty Anne LaMott loosely recounts the first year of her son's life. As a recovering alcoholic and single Mother, she vacillates between hair pulling frustration and utter awe as her son changes month by month, sometimes day by day. Surrounded by an incredible support staff of friends and family, and an unwavering faith in God she navigates the path of parenthood and life with a wicked sense of humor that leaves you laughing out loud one minute and then pricking your heart with moving eloquence.

I'm a Californian, I'm a writer (Baby Catcher, Scribner 2002), I'm a mother and midwife, and I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Anne Lamott fan - and Operating Instructions is one of Annie's very, very best. With wit, humor, and brutal honesty, she chronicles the pregnancy, birth, and 1st year of her son Sam's life. At the same time, she shares the illness, decline and death of her best friend, Pammy. Written with her usual inimitable and quirky take on Life and populated by her usual quirky cast of characters, Operating Instructions will stand the test of time.

You'll need to keep a box of Kleenex handy for this book because you'll either be laughing so hard tears stream down your face or you'll be sobbing over the tragically sad and tenderly touching passages. Anne Lamott writes about her first year of single motherhood and her magnificent yet extremely trying baby boy, Sam. She's brutally honest about the good and the bad. If you have fluffy powder blue and pastel pink images of parenthood, brace yourself for some shattered illusions. Her nutty family, endearingly loyal friends, eccentric church congregation, and Marin County community of slightly off center characters create a real pageturner. Anne Lamott takes us on a privileged journey into her very peculiar mind. Despite what she claims in one paragraph, it really is a fun place to visit. Also woven through the story is the sorrowful tale of the failing health of her best friend. Be prepared to gobble this book up in one sitting. _Operating Instructions_ is an uncompromising story from the true trenches of parenthood. There's no idealized "What to Expect..." nonsense here. Also, Anne is a Christian but is a radical, liberal, defiant one. For those of you who have somewhat narrow ideas about what it means to be a Christian, take a look at Annie...she'll twist your mind around like a pretzel. Some people may find Lamott's leftwing politics and theology offensive. Also, parents should be warned that this book contains very coarse language.I first read this book when I was still single and had no children. I was hooked! Years later when I was pregnant with my son, I pulled it back off the shelf and used it almost like a reference book...a glimpse of things to come! During my son's first year, my husband and I often referred to passages from this book in our struggling efforts to maintain a sense of humor in the midst of newborn madness. I have reread _Operating Instructions_ many times over the years and have also recommended it to others and given it as a gift. I now recommend it to you...

When I gave birth to a son in 1997 I, quite honestly, didn't know what hit me. I felt joy and wonder but I wasn't "blissed out" the way the people around me expected me to be. I was too frightened by my changing life to be able to live in the moment, laugh at the mishaps, and enjoy the "new guy." The "life-line" I found was literally this book. I read it over and over, as if it was some tonic that assuaged my fears about "doing everything right" and being a perfect mother. I can't tell you the number of times I quoted Lamott's writings to others. She helped me get through a difficult period and adjust. This book changed me. Read it. Lamott is a gifted writer who tells it like it (REALLY) is.

Anne Lamott is truly one of the most gifted writers of our time. She is funny, true blue, strong, and opinionated, poignant, and totally, disarmingly honest. In Operating Instructions, she chronicles the first year of her son, Sam's life. This is much, much more than a journal. It's the unfolding of real, true life.Three years after giving up her addictions to drugs and alcohol, Lamott found herself pregnant-and single-at 35. The struggles she encountered with her new baby are so real and honest. She describes her love for him one day as being a feeling larger than anything she can describe-then the next day, being overwhelmed with the urge to leave him on the porch all night where his colicky cries won't reach her ears. All the while, she struggles to keep on top of her addictions, struggles with her spirituality, with the fact that Sam has no father in his life, with the loss of her own father to brain cancer, with money, and with her strong and conflicting emotions about motherhood. Finally, her best friend of over 20 years falls gravely ill, something that nearly shatters Lamott's faith. But through it all, she stays true, beyond all else. She is an amazing writer and person.If you are a mother or want to be a mother, this is a must-read.