Wild Card with Rachel Martin - Anne Lamott

Episode Date: May 7, 2026

Anne Lamott says she felt drawn to writing almost like it was a call to become a monk. She has also felt called to teach others how to write, to help them organize their thoughts on the page and to keep their priorities in check. “You’re not going to get self-respect from being published,” she tells Rachel. Her newest book, co-written with her husband Neal Allen, is called “Good Writing.”To listen sponsor-free and support the show, sign up for Wild Card+ at plus.npr.org/wildcard See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

What's something you thought about yourself that you had to unlearn? What I had to unlearn was that what other people thought of me was who I was or had anything to do with who I was. And I had to learn that I was this precious, hilarious girl and then woman who was kind and generous and kind of a mess like we all are. Like if there's not, if there's isn't something wrong with you, I'm not interested, you know? I'm Rachel Martin, and this is Wild Card, the game where cards control the conversation. Each week, my guest answers questions about their life, questions pulled from a deck of cards. They're allowed to skip one question and to flip one back on me. My guest this week is Anne Lamont.

I'm afraid all the time. I mean, fear comes with the territory of deciding to be fully human, you know, asking yourself, how alive am I willing to be each day? Anne Lamont's books are the kind that people dog ear, underlining passages and writing this exclamation point in the margins. And we her readers feel like we've got to pass on those books to friends. They are gifts to be given and received. Before this taping, I went looking for the copy of Anne Lamott's best-selling book,

Bird by Bird, that I've been carrying around for decades. And inside it, I found an inscription from my sister. Of course, it had been a gift. Anne Lamott's insights on life are like little treasures that transform us, and we can't help but share them. Her newest book is a collaboration with her husband, the writer Neil Allen. It's about a subject. They both know well. It's called Good Writing, 36 ways to improve your sentences.

And I am so very happy to welcome Anne Lamont to Wildcard. Hi. Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. Round one is memories. Here we go, Anne Lamont. One, two, or three. Two.

Two. What period of your life do you often daydream about? Oh, I love that question. I loved being a nine- and ten-year-old girl because things were still working at that point. It wasn't boy-girl stuff. You didn't know that you were not okay. And that a ten-year-old girl is just such a work of art. You know, you are still playing unicorn.

You are still playing, you're still jumping from rock to rock on the beach. worry about, you know, what you look like. You know, that's like 11 and 12. And then the nightmare starts, the long national nightmare of prepubescence and adolescence and teenage years. But I had a very best friend who I still walk with. She was my best friend when I was sick, Shelly Adams. And that was 56 years ago, you know, and we still walk three times a week.

But we were just bold and wild and unfettered. This is in the Bay Area. This is in Marin County, yeah. And I daydream about that. I daydream about jumping around on the rocks. It's interesting to me that you really, there was a dividing line. Like somewhere around 11, like closely thereafter, self-consciousness setting or something? 11 starts being boy-girl.

11, some of the girls are really maturing. Now, at 11, I weighed something like 60 pounds. And I'd also skipped a grade. So I was like even a slower developer, and I was just like emotionally not up there with the 11-year-old girls, they're starting to do boy-girl stuff. And it's starting to occur to me that this is not going to be my realm, you know, and anytime soon. Wait, why? Why was that not your realm? Because I looked so different.

I had this crazy hair, and I was so tiny, and I didn't have, I wasn't developing, and I was a year behind. It was only 10 when the other girls were 11. and dances were starting, and the girls had all that hormonal energy, and I didn't. I wanted to be back on the rocks, you know, jumping around and collecting crabs and stuff. We had this sort of radical silliness still at 10, and we played, and we were much, much more carefree, and by 11, less so. Yeah. I am so pleased for you that you still maintain that. relationship. That is amazing, you know, to have a long, long friendship like that of someone who's

been near your side that whole time. Okay, next question. One, two, or three? Two. I think I'm on a roll. When did you first find a group of peers who really understood you? You know, I always had great girlfriends, not just this one, Shelley Adams, but I think I knew by a very early age that girls were to be My Salvation, Girls and Women. Ninth grade, I went to this huge local public high school, and I was just overwhelmed. There were 2,000 kids, and I was always a bit odd and different and eccentric. And I ended up at this hippie high school in San Francisco called Drew for three years, and that was really the most incredible education.

And I became a really literary person there. and I met my friend Pammy that I've written so much about that you might remember from bird by bird or operating instructions and we became best friends and her sister and I became best friends and I had another friend and we were friends with the teachers because it was this tiny hippie private school and then I just had like a Bonaget called a carass you know I had this little group that were the people

that I couldn't wait to see again every day I couldn't wait to get to school to get to see them all again and then I started being to find at least in my own mind as a literary person and going to plays and stuff and studying the playwrights to see how they did it. You felt an optimism about the future? Well, I'm not sure if I felt an optimism. It usually depended on who the president was, but I felt like that this education was giving

me this portal that I could enter in which I was becoming a real writer, and I knew that becoming a writer meant becoming a really serious reader. Like, that's really one of the big gifts that writing can give you is it teaches you to be a much better reader. And then also, my dad was a writer, so he was steering me to the Paris Review. The interviews called Writers at Work. And I just, you know, by 15, 16, 17, I'm reading all the great writers to see how they do it and to see how they live as writers, how they live with neglect or rejection or even success, you know, which can be its own thing you need to master. And it was like I had found my portal, is how I would say it. Yeah. You were building in your imagination what a life could look like

as a creative person, as a writer. Yeah. What I wanted to be and how I wanted to live. And I knew that My dad had been a writer, and we'd never had enough money, but he had his life and his days and his freedom. And his, he had a part-time job eventually because my other brother was also in this private school called Drew. But I saw the writing life. It was like a calling to be a monk, you know. It was like a spiritual calling to spend your life talking to other writers and giving them. your work and offering to read their work and mark it up for them and that it was like a, yeah, that's the best I can say was like a calling and it was calling me.

Okay, three more cards, one, two, or three? Two. Hmm. What's a routine from your childhood that you miss? You know, it's funny. I do all the same things that I did as a child. I don't play tennis because the court. is so big, but I play pickleball, and I walk almost every day. My dad was a walker. He was an ASES,

and he taught us that the outdoors was the spiritual realm. It's like the acronym is great outdoors, or good orderly direction. But so I still walk every day. It's how I get, and I'm, you know, I have a religious life, but I get, I get centered, I get hit the reset button, and I get awakened every day by getting outside. It's like getting spritz by a plant mister. What about you? Like, what do you still do from childhood? But that doesn't count as my question that I'm flipping on you.

No, you're just genuinely curious. I'm curious. No one's ever asked me this one, actually. What routine from my childhood do I miss? Oh, I didn't say one that I miss. I just said the ones that have carried over. Which ones do you miss? God, I don't know.

I know. It's a different question, isn't it? I mean, when I was four, I was an early reader, and I started reading chapter books, like, you know, Beezus and Ramona, and then Stuart Little, then you graduate to E.B. White and stuff. And I still live and have found salvation in chapter books. Still walk every day. I still play, and I still have a little circle of girlfriends who are the reason that I'm stable most of the time. You know, it's funny, I could probably write this if I sat down and thought about it. Yeah, memories or routines that you miss, I find mine settling on people, too.

Like, I really, my mom had a beautiful voice, and so I miss her singing to me before I went to bed. Like, that's a very particular routine, which she routinely did was part of our every single night. I wonder if you have the experience of hearing music, your mother loved. My mother loved Judy Collins and Mozart, and she loved, like, Salonius Funk. and I'll hear them and I'll stop. Oh, yeah. And I'll go, Mom, listen. Oh, I got a hand, yes.

And I'll stop and really listen with her. Yeah, and she's been dead for 20 plus years. Oh, yeah, for sure. That happens to me all the time. Don't you do that? Oh, yeah. She and my dad, their first date was to the movie, Dr. Javago. And so she would sing that song to me a night.

Oh, wow. That's somewhere, my love. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so that's where my mind settles when I think about routines I miss. And my imaginary friend Nancy. I had an imaginary friend Nancy who lived in the fire hydrant down the block.

And I used to visit her quite often. And she was cool. So that's great. Okay. So we're going to pull out from this game and we're going to talk about your book. Congratulations. Thank you. I mean, it never gets old, I imagine.

Or does it? Another book, another book tour. Oh, no. Well, this one's with this writing book is with my husband. And so it was my first collaboration. It's really special. It's so wonderful. So he's a writer. He's a former journalist and he's taught writing for many years and he's developed this list of 36 tips to make your sentences better. And the book is lovely because Neil is giving you the tips and the advice, which I have to say, as I write a lot for my job, they're very useful. But then you turn the page and it's like, Annie's take. And so then you kind of weigh in on.

said rule. And most of the time you agree and you talk about what a smart rule it is and here's how you apply it to your own writing. But every once in a while you're like, I don't know, Neil, like, you're big pedantic or like you're using fancy words and trying to sound smarter than you are. Was he cool with you like nudging him a little bit? No, he loved it. No, because I get to be cranky and I get to also have the last word. And also he's so brilliant. I mean, I think his material is really brilliant, but it's also very welcoming. It's like you can really do this. You can start to notice when you do, when you use a cliche or how often you use the word vary or actually take them out, take out the tiny words, you know. And the stuff about the most important, I think,

is about finding your own voice and believing both in your writing and in the world that your voice is strong enough and good enough. And we really only want to hear your stories in your voice. And so, but, you know, he's really overeducated. There is no getting around that. And I'm a dropout, you know. And so I would come in sometimes. And he's really like a gentle professor. And then I'm like the third grade, the mother who brings cupcakes for everybody's birthday, you know, and tells us all the kids, you can do it.

Why don't you tell me your story and I'll write it down? Because I can write faster than you. And so I'm in that role throughout the book. And he's more in the role of. helping you have the confidence to write harder stuff than, you know, you don't need to write flippant or ironic stuff that you think the New York critics are going to love. They're not. They're not going to love your work.

Mostly they love the work of about six people. And so you get to get over caring about that. It's funny, though, you say to aspiring writers or new writers, any writer, really, you have to let go of all the accolades because all the literary people, they only like six writers. So you got to get over it. But you and Lamont are like one of the six. No, I'm not. Oh, come on.

I'm not. I got the worst review of my life for somehow, which was a number one New York Times bestseller from the New York Times, a scathing and stupid review. Well, see, that's why. There was a stupid review. 3,000 miles away from Neil and Sam and everybody. So, no, I am not in the New York Literati, um, uh, pre-approval sales list at all by a long shot. But it doesn't matter. The thing I teach most of the writing people, the students I work with at a writing room is that what you're looking for

is not out there. It's not out there. You can't get the reviewed in the New York Times or the New York or you can't get to a certain place on a New York Times list and get what you think is out there. You're not going to get the self-respect. Believe me from being published. I always say you're going to be more mentally ill than you are right now because you're going to get into that desperation. You're going to get into trying to get people to like you that are never going to like you. It's so brutal. It's brutal. And so I want to teach people that the writing is where the action is.

The writing, collaborating, the writer life of reading, of studying, of sitting at the feet of the masters. of, you know, it's wonderful to get published too. I mean, but you could send something off to a quarterly and get published, and it will be thrilling, and it's going to be wonderful, but it's not what you're looking for. It's an inside job. Let me just tell you a quick story. I have a friend in recovery named Paul Williams, a great songwriter, right? And he told me about winning the Academy Award a hundred years ago.

It might have been for the way we were. I can't remember right the second because I've just... like. But he said, you know, I stood up at the podium receiving the statue the highest accolade that you can achieve in the music business. It was incredible. And he said it lasted me 24 hours. Yeah. It all. And then you need another fix. Yeah, it all flies away. You need another hit. Tell me about your favorite rule in the book. I've got a couple of mine, but tell me yours. Well, Neil, I want to say, you said he had these 36 rules, which he gave to me on our second date. and I started immediately passing them out to the students at a writing room because they're brilliant and they reflected well on me to know him.

But I added two. Mine was right, the hard stuff. Right about loss, right about death, right about coming through unsurvivable loss, right about childhood, right about how we come through dark, dark, cold times with our faculties intact, as Esme says, and the great. Salinger's short story. Write the hard stuff. That's what readers are starved for. And, you know, we'll pay extra if you can make it sort of funny. And my other rule was take out the boring stuff. Well, congratulations again. I whipped through that thing and have already found myself applying several of the rules.

Round two, Anne. Insights. One, two or three. Two. Two. How big of a role does? does fear have in your life? Oh, God.

You know, there's one spiritual school, it says you can't have faith in fear at the same time. And I find that just infuriating and so wrong because I'm a Sunday school teacher. I'm a believer and I'm afraid all the time. I mean, I have an angel coin in my pocket now so that I wouldn't be afraid doing this with you. And yet at the same time, I mean, fear comes with the territory of. of deciding to be fully human, you know, asking yourself, how alive am I willing to be each day? Well, I want to be really alive.

I want to be awake. I want to stop hitting the snooze button, but I'm kind of afraid. Well, that's okay. You can do it afraid, you know? And so in recovery, they use the acronyms of false evidence appearing real, which is about making up stories that you think are probably catastrophic. If you grow up around alcoholism or mental illness within the marriage, you prepare yourself for catastrophe because then you did.

Yeah, then you're not, it's not shocking when it happens. It's like, well, whatever. And to some degree. And when you're still drinking or using the false evidence appearing real might mean that you're imagining that ice or the drug and alcohol people are out on your lawn at 4 in the morning when the cocaine is run out, you know, and you can see them, and that's the false evidence appearing real. But then you get sober, and the false evidence is that, you know, that you are not an okay

person without drinking. I mean, drinking really, I got sober when I was 32. Drinking really helped me feel that I was okay. It made me the life of the party. It made me way prettier instantly, like one drink in. And so, but it was fault. That's all just BS. I probably can't say that.

But there are so many. There are so many acronyms for fear, though, and the one I love most is the frantic effort to appear recovered. And that's where my main fear comes. That's a good one. Yeah, right? It's the desperation to appear to be just fine. And I don't think you can be paying attention in the modern era and not be really terrified. There's a story I love, love, love.

We always told my Sunday school kids of a great war horse coming upon a sparrow who's lying in the middle. the street with its legs straight up in the air. And the war horse just laughs. What are you doing on your back? And the sparrow says, I'm trying to help hold back the darkness. And the horse just laughs and laughs and says, what do you weigh like three ounces? And there's a pause and the sparrow says, one does what one can. And so with anything that comes up, we can't do great things.

We don't have magic wands. But we can do what we can. We show up. We don't run screaming for our cute little. lives just because the climate situation is literally catastrophic. We donate to people who are doing the work of climate justice. We donate. We have garage sales to raise money to send to Greenpeace or to the other activist organizations who are doing the work. I'm a dropout. I can't contribute my best thinking, but I am a great fundraiser. I have this weird gift of getting people to give me

money. I'm not making this up. And so I get people to give me money and then I send it off to the people who can do the work of protecting our immigrants, of getting children fed, of just the very basic, basic causes. And that helps abate the fear. And that helps abate the fear. When I don't know what to do in the face of it all, I go around my neighborhood. I wave to all my neighbors. If you want to have loving feelings, you do a bunch of loving things, and you pick up litter. And then I feel like totally happy again. That sounds about right. Next set of three, one, two, or three. Oh, I don't know. I might just go crazy this time. One. What emotion do you understand better than all the others? Fear. I think I understand fear. I really understand a lot about

where it sprang from as a teenager and grown-up was from having had parents who weren't doing very well with each other. My dad drank, my mother was very heavy, and had eating disorder. And when you're a child, you really need to think if your parents are unhappy that you're the problem, because otherwise you have no control, right? If you're the problem, because I was hypersensitive, or you say hypersensitive, I was just sensitive. I'd see the cover of the National Geographic and the little kids on it. it with flies on their faces, and I'd cry. And my mom, who was from England, from Liverpool, go, oh, Annie, for God's sake, now what? You know, the appropriate response was to do what I was doing,

but I was shamed into having feelings. And so I took all my parents' problems so that I could have a sense of all I had to do then was to be better, need less, and not have the feelings I was feeling. And then I'd fix them. And that would fix them. There'd be Reaganomic trickle- You know? My husband's last book was called, oh my God, better days, because he has all these clients and he teaches them about the inner critic, which Freud called the superego. And it's that little voice you start hearing at five and six and seven that says, don't try that, don't do that. You'll get in trouble. Now, the thing is that your inner critic kept you alive, right? It kept you from running out into the street. It kept you from swimming out too far. And Neil's

clients end every session with thanking their inner critic for keeping them alive. But I happen to have excellent traffic safety protocols, you know, built in at this point. And I will still hear the inner critics say, don't write that. That's not going to go over well. Or it'll say, oh, Annie, talk about beating a dead horse or a boy has the well run dry. And what he does with his clients and his wife is to identify it and to say, oh, it's you. It's my intercritical. It's, kept me alive. It's not the truth. It's not the reality of who I am as a woman or a writer. It's my inner critic. It's a very misguided effort to keep me from embarrassing myself publicly and therefore embarrassing the family. And so I learned to start saying, oh, it's you when the fear

comes up because I'm really safe in the world. You know, I'm loved and I grew up to be a woman who is very, very, who has a very strong core, a very strong sense, a lot of the time of my own value, a lot of the time of my own beingness, and that I'm, you know, I'm good to go. And it's just one day at a time. And then I'll hear this voice. You know, when I leave here, I'm going to think, oh, you were so you meant to say this or that. And why did you say that other thing? And then I'll say, oh, it's you.

It's my inner critic. It's not our reality. Like, you and I could talk for several hours, right? And it would just be really natural, and I would turn the cards on you and stuff like that. And you would, I realistically mean we could talk for a couple hours, and it would be fine. But when I leave here, the inner critic is going to want to talk about how it went. But it's a beautiful thing to be able to say, I see you, and I recognize that you're here. and your purpose in my life, and now I will just send you on your way.

Right. Last one in this round. One, two, or three. Three. What's something you thought about yourself that you had to unlearn? I had to unlearn. I mean, my parents taught me great values. They were civil rights activists.

We were marching against Vietnam early on and marching for just all the great good causes. and they taught me to read. I was reading very early. They gave me the value of literature and libraries, you know, the greatest American institution besides a constitution. But I had to learn everything, almost everything they taught me, because it was a 50s, and they taught me that girls look a certain way. Well, I was never going to look like the other girls.

I had this really crazy, wiry hair, and they grew up and sideways. It didn't grow down. And I got bullied. and the bullying gave me my sense of humor because I discovered that if a boy with other boys had a drive-by insult on a bike and I thought as something to throw at him, the other boys would laugh at him.

And I would be a little bit better. But so what I had to unlearn was that what other people thought of me was who I was or had anything to do with who I was. And I had to learn just from the bottom up that I was not what men thought of me or East Coast literary men and or I was not with the really cool teenage boys or girl thought of me that I was just precious, hilarious, wise girl and then woman who was kind and generous and kind of a mess like we all are.

Like if there's nothing, if there isn't something wrong with you, I'm not interested, you know? If there isn't something wrong with you, we're seriously going to have almost nothing to talk about at dinner. So maybe sit somewhere else. So, and I had to learn that that was what it meant to be human, was to be real and to be vulnerable and to be who you actually were instead of who you always agreed to be because you got good grades. For sure. I love that old Anaeus Nin quote, and I'll probably get it wrong. wrong, but something about how one day the grief of staying in bud was just too big, and she just took the chance of what it would be like to bloom.

Oh, my gosh. Oh, God. Sorry, now I need to find it because I don't want to read it out loud. Okay, let's read it. It's like there came a day. I don't know. Okay, I found it. Okay, good.

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. Yeah. It's lovely. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there's a point at which, you know, in recovery, we always say the willingness comes from the pain, the willingness to stop drinking, obviously, or using or shopping or whatever comes from the pain that you're creating, the mental pain.

And you get to that point where you just go, this has just got to stop. I don't know that what my future will look like. I don't know who I will be without this, but this has got to stop. And at some point, you realize you're about to step into a way. a shape that has been waiting for you all along. And it's kind of scary because you don't have an owner's manual that goes with it, you know? You've got the owner's manual as a child that when you do this, it really pleases the

adults and the teachers and your classmates and the whole world. And you're going, well, that was me then, but this is going to be now. This is going to be me now and it's going to be a little different, but it's still me. Yes. Still me. It's finally me. Last round. Beliefs. One, two, or three?

Three. What's an answer you've stopped searching for? Oh, what does it all mean? What's it all about, Alfie? You know, it's about, it's about, I know what it's all about, you know, it's somehow all about the present moment. The address of the meaning is in the present moment. The address of the meaning is in the heart and, you know, the heart cave and not in my head. I've learned to figure it out as not a good slogan.

You know, I mean, I'm a five-year-old child with a slide ruler, you know, and I got a lot of attention for that. And that was not what the meaning of life was. The meaning of life was hiking with my dad. The meaning of life was my dad's love and my brothers and my mom and our uncles and aunts, and we all lived in the same county. and the meaning of life is each breath, you know, each precious breath that we wake up and we're still alive. I mean, it's actually kind of a miracle. And the meaning of life is love.

I mean, I wrote a whole book about it. It's about being people with warm hearts and vulnerable hearts and gentle hearts. You know that when you go from being clenched and clutching and clinging, and scared to death about what it's going to happen next. And the plates of the earth shift somehow. Maybe somebody does something really sweet for you, or the checker at the marketplace calls you sweetie pie or something like that, and you start to laugh.

Oh, my God. I've said this so many times, but laughter really is carbonated holiness. And you get that little sprits and your heart opens. And you start smiling on the street again, and you end up really happy. So I don't know what the meta meaning of life is, but I know the meaning of life is tied up with love and it's tied up with breath. It's tied up with the present moment and it's tied up with you and it's tied up with me. Yeah. The end.

The end. Okay. This one, I just noticed I wrote upside down. So that's on me. Maybe we should, maybe that's a sign. Maybe it's a sign. Okay. One, two, or three.

I want the one that was upside down. Come on, you knew that. Okay, good. I'm secretly glad, because I don't think this has ever come up with anyone. Is there... Okay, I'm going to do it. No, that's silly. I'm just going to read it upside down.

Is there a religious practice or ritual that you're envious of? You know, I used to be so envious of... I'm a nice Protestant girl, but I used to be so jealous because Rose Kennedy went to Mass every single morning of her life. And no matter what had gone on, no matter whatever tragedy she and her family were facing, she went to Mass and she grieved and wept with people and she rejoiced with people.

She resurrected with people and she loved people. She brought all of her best self and her best love to other people that were suffering. And so she made her individual suffering and their individual suffering so much bigger, you know, just hooking onto this huge, big and oceanic energy of love and creation that surrounds us and indwells us and is beneath our feet. And I was always really jealous of that. You know, I mean, when anybody has a really devout

spiritual program, you know, there's one mountain of awakening and becoming a person of love. And there are many, many paths. And when I know somebody who's really on a path, the Buddhist, my Buddhist friends, who practice, wake up and do 30 minutes of meditation before coffee. You like the discipline. I love that. I get up and I have coffee and eventually I do 15 minutes of meditation. That's pretty good. Yeah, I mean, all spiritual, so many spiritual, anything that isn't fundamentalism appeals to me.

Fundamentalism is the reason that we are in this situation we are, both in this country and in the world right now. But don't you just love people that have a practice? Yeah, I do. And they don't try to voice it on you. They don't try to get you. I do, too. Last one. One, two or three?

Two. Have you made peace with mortality? Oh, yeah. You're on good terms. Oh, yeah. I mean, that's so much of what I write about is. Yeah. Like when Neil and I met 10 years ago, he said, oh, you're a death dula because I always

have someone in my life who's dying. And it's like not, I don't go looking for him, but somebody will know that I've gotten so comfortable with death because my dad was dying and I took care of him for so long. And then my best friend, Pammy, died. I got sick when I was 36 and died when we were both 37. And I just learned how to be with people that are dying. Her doctor said to me, Annie, watch how she's living right now because she's teaching how to live and watch her while she's dying because she's teaching how to live. And I told this story before, but she, we went shopping two weeks before she died. She had this wig on and she was in a wheelchair and I had this boyfriend at the time who had this tight, who liked girls and tight dresses. And I basically dressed like John Goodman.

But so I was buying a dress to go out and see, go to a concert that night. I wanted him to like me more. and I came out of the dressing room in a tight dress, and Pammy was in her wheelchair, and I said, does this make my thighs look big? And she looked to me, she said, Annie, you don't have that kind of time. And that was when mortality moved in very close and said, make peace with this, you know, it's true. We're all on borrowed time, and it's good to be reminded of that every so often.

And after Pammy died, just I was naturally there for people. My mom was alive. Our parents' friends were still alive. And growing up, I was really close to my parents' friends. They were all aunts and uncles. And I saw them through death. And my husband, at the time, my new hostage that I found at our time, which is matched for older people, he was a volunteer for hospice.

So that was something in our Venn diagram that we both knew that if you could spend time with people who were dying, It was this incredible gift because you saw that there was going to be so much grace and beauty in the process. It was not going to be hard, that you were only called to sit there and deal with your own fear and give whatever the person needed, which was usually a listening ear. And people, 100% of the time, the people I've been with, which is many, many of people who were dying, they're not thinking about their achievements. They're not thinking about their sales rank at Amazon. They're thinking about the love memories. They're thinking about questions that would be on your cards, you know, on your wild cards. They're thinking about all the beauty that they saw both in Switzerland and down the street at the little memorial park for the founder of the town or whatever.

They're thinking about how deeply they're loved. And I can tell you that they feel safe because of that love. And so I just assume, Neil's different. And he says, when I'm towards the end or when I'm terminal, I want to experience it every step of the way. I want to experience the pain. And I said, oh, no, no. You don't want that. I want the morphine at the first bad headache.

And I do. I'm not even kidding. But I also know that if I got a bad diagnosis, I know that it will be scary. It'll be two minutes and one. I don't want it. I really love my life. I love my family. I love the cat. I'm practically more than anything. I love Jesus and the cat about the same. But again, love and fear. Love and fear.

Love and fear. But I know I'll be safe. I know it will be gentle. And I know that it was always part of the deal. You know, Shakespeare said every man owes death, owes God a death. And so, no, are you very afraid of your own mortality? You're so much younger. Yeah. I have young kids. So it's less that I'm... Oh, they ruin everything. Don't they, though. Oh, God. Before you have kids, you kind of think, oh, hit me with your best shot. You know, I've lived fully, whatever. Then you have a kid and you're like, please, please, please, help me, help. Please, just just one thing. I know, and they're young and I was older when I had them. And so they always do like mom math, which is always depressing. They're like, okay, if mom's going to have a grandchild, then I need to procreate by the time I'm whatever. 32. And that bums me out when they do that. And so, you know, but it is just the way it is. It is the way it is. So, yeah, I get preemptively sad thinking about them being sad.

But that's back to the acronym for fear of false evidence appearing real. Yeah. Like you're imagining, like the evidence is, oh my God, if I die, my kids' lives will be ruined. They'll never get over it. If they die when they're in 20, they aren't fully formed. They're prefrontal courts. It's all false evidence appearing real. What's true and real is how you love them right now, how desperately they love you. And they'll be fine, and I know they'll be fine because my mom died and I was very sad and then I was okay. Right. It goes on.

It goes on. It goes on. It's a song that never ends. Yeah. Yeah. Anne Lamont, we end our show the same way every time with a trip in our memory time machine. In the time machine, you revisit one day. moment from your past. It's not a moment you want to change anything about. It's just a moment you'd

like to linger in a little longer. What moment do you choose? Well, the moment I delivered my child, Sam, almost 37 years ago, with a very difficult delivery and at the umbilical cord wrapped around his head and much too old to be having a baby. And I saw his face. It was like, like seeing, it was like seeing my outside heart. And I understood that my life had just begun, and I understood that I was doomed. And I wrote about it a lot in operating instructions, but it was really literally like seeing the moon for the first time.

You know, it was beyond words, and I had given up on it as maybe you did too. I was getting up there. I didn't have a partner. I didn't have any money in the world, and I got to have this baby. And then this baby grew up and had a baby when he was 19. And when I first laid eyes on my grandson, Jacks, I thought I would faint. And I thought I would faint.

Yeah. Anne Lamont, her latest book is a collaboration with her husband, the writer Neil Allen. It is called Good Writing. I can't tell you what a pleasure this was. Thank you so much for doing it. Same for me. Thank you so much. If you like this episode, go back and check out my conversation with the actor and author Rob Delaney.

Anne Lamont and Rob both have this quality that is heartbreakingly honest and hilarious at the very same time. Check it out. This episode was produced by Alicia Zhang and Lee Hale. It was edited by Dave Blanchard and mastered by Becky Brown. Wildcard's executive producer is Y'all. Landa Sanweni, and our theme music is by Ramteen, our Blue. You can reach out to us at Wildcard at npr.org. We are going to shuffle the deck and be back with more next week. Talk to you then.