TRANSCRIPTION OF UNDERLININGS: Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith. 1999, Anchor Books. 
  
WHY DID I SELECT THIS BOOK? It was selected and agreed to upon the request of a book club [our second meeting] member for something opposite Kevin Brockmeier’s book about the dead – something “Christian.” The subtitle, “Some Thoughts on Faith” and the cover photo of a church sign you’d see on every other block while driving through many towns and burgs. The sign was designed as for a church, but contained the title, subtitle, author and, in small letters at the bottom, “By the author of Bird by Bird.”
        The next time, son and I were at Hastings, he looked up the title on the public-use computer. One copy remained. Sure enough, he spotted it first – in the Christian section. $13. Sold. I owned two of Lamott’s books, the previously mentioned Bird by Bird, Operating Instructions:  My Son’s First Year, and Crooked Little Heart (which I own but have not read).
        Being the obedient, overachieving “child,” I began reading our book club assignment.. But two weeks before the meeting, I attended a lecture at the library, and sat by another member of the new book club. We chatted about this and that – she was my neighbor at one time, but I didn’t know her well. Only that we were Kerry Democrats. I mentioned that I was busy on the next selection. She looked concerned and told me that the librarian in charge couldn’t get Lamott’s book in time, so she (?) had chosen another one. Harrumph and tsk!
        The next day, I emailed said librarian, complaining that I didn’t come to the library every day like J. did, and no, I didn’t know about the change. I huffily said I did not have time for a group that made changes without notifying the members. So there.
  
(Date of transcribing underlinings and marginalia, March 19, 2008 – Billy’s 18th b.d.; dates of reading: from Nov. 19, 2007 – Feb. 14, 2008. A.L.’s quotes in New Times Roman; my commentary in Chaucer.)
  
p. 5: “My mother was not much of a dresser. Also, she was short, and did not believe in God…My mother majored in the classics in college. (What if Mom’s folks had $$ to send her anywhere to college?)
  
p.8: I lived for [my father]. He was my first god. (!!)
  
p.9: My dad was a writer, and my parents were intellectuals … Everyone read all the time… We were raised to believe in books and music and nature.
  
p.11: My parents’ marriage was not a very happy one …
  
p.14: My mother…was trying to earn the money for law school, which was her dream…  
  
(AL, as any good writer will, used many similes. I circled the “likes.” Alliteration on p. 15: “…Lee’s love like lizards…”)
  
p. 22: Good first lines for new pieces: “I realized for the first time in my life that I was capable of murder…to here. “My dad and I ended up getting drunk together for the first time…” another, and I gave my [tennis] racket to the Goodwill, and I never got another migraine again.” (!)
   
 p. 27: Then one day [in my sophomore year, college] I started a course with a tiny Czeck woman named Eva Gossman. [O]ne day she gave

 us Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, and my life changed forever.
   
p. 35: [My dad] often repeated the old saying that Nature bats last.
     
p.91: On Ash Wednesday, February 6, 2008, I read the following excerpt of the chapter, “Ashes” to the 8 women who play tone bars, which we call (generically) “bells,” as our centering “devo-tional” at the beginning of rehearsal.
        “Ash Wednesday came early this year. It is supposed to be about preparation, about consecration, about moving toward Easter, toward resurrection and renewal. It offers us a chance to break thru the distractions that keep us from living the basic Easter message of love, of living in wonder rather than doubt. For some people, it is about fasting, to symbolize both solidarity with the hungry and the hunger for God. (I, on the other hand, am not heavily into fasting; the tho’t of missing even a single meal sends me running in search of Ben and Jerry’s Mint Oreo.)…”
  
I read another one on p.92. The abbreviations below are mine. I ended with this paragraph: (p. 103): “It’s funny: I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox, full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then when I grew up I found that life handed you these rusty bent old tools – friendships, prayers, conscience, honesty – and said, Do the best you can with these, they will have to do And mostly, against all odds, they’re enough.”
  
p. 112: It…made me think of Eugene O’Neill’s line, “Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue.”   Super Bowl: Giants, 17 – Patriots, 14.
  
p. 148: To be nitpicky, Lamott has a misplaced antecedent; at least, we mid-landers have been taught that antecedents need to refer to the nearest name character. Here is Lamott’s beginning paragraph: Ella calls her little sister Livia; she stayed overnight with us the day Olivia was born…” Here I thought Livia stayed overnight with us, but no—Ella stayed the night. Tsk! Tsk!
  
p. 210: …I think I was annoyed that day because [my mother] acts so much older than she is. She is only seventy-three, but she staggers along in the sand like a toddler. (I’m seventy-one. Lord help me not to annoy my children like this. Perhaps in other ways, I do…
  
p. 216: There are many pictures of my mother where she has made herself as beautiful as she can be. She has gathered all her pride around her, and her pride is her family.
  
p.219: Finally, [my brother] S. …arrived. [He] is very gentle and easygoing, he always got along with both parents, but still, my mother’s total joy at seeing him fills me with resentment. (Like Mom was with [her youngest son] G. at the last. We girls who lived close were in and out every day, helping, taking her to the doctor, preparing her meals, cleaning her bedding and toilet—all with a disgusted glare from her. Several times, she would ask, “What do YOU want?” But when her son came only now and then and brought a pie or a cake, she brightened beyond belief. That was OK with us, except when we got together later out of earshot. Oh, we loved and were glad to see our brother, too; it was Mom we were temporarily annoyed with.)
  
[7.2 reading level]