In Her New Book, Anne Lamott Explores the Complexities of Love and How to Find It Anywhere
Please enjoy this exclusive excerpt from Anne Lamott’s new book, Somehow: Thoughts on Love. Then grab your copy and read along with us for a Special Book Club Edition of Conversations Above the Noise with Maria and Anne Lamott! Don’t forget to RSVP today!
Twenty years ago I first came across the Indian writer Arundhati Roy’s beautiful statement “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” I scribbled it down and taped it to my computer. I have taped it to every computer I have had since, to remind me that if I stop to listen, I will hear hope. I hear it in nature, in singing, in stories of goodness, in the saddest places, in celebration, but maybe most often in gently absurd stories of love.
On a weekend not long ago when family and political messes had me down, a friend happened to call. He told me about a friend of his named Paul who took in a family of Ukrainian refugees. Paul and his wife had a small guesthouse in their back‑ yard with two little bedrooms. Their grown son had come to them and said, “The refugee organization in town is looking for people to take in a family. We should do this.” Paul and his wife said to each other, “He’s right. It’s a good thing that our son wants this, and we should respond to his generosity. We should live up to who he thinks we are.” The wife is an expert in eastern European music and had once directed a choir that sang sacred songs from Ukraine, Georgia, and Russia. With a little imagination, it seemed a good fit.
One night a translator arrived with a shell‑ shocked family of four—husband, wife, teenager, and eight‑year‑old. None of them spoke English. Paul and his family pantomimed welcome and gladness. The first night, because of a plumbing problem in theguesthouse, they had to stay inside Paul’s house, the parents in the guest room and the two boys in the bedrooms of their sons.
The next day, Paul took the family out to the guesthouse. He showed them how all the various systems worked, and they listened attentively, but when he went to leave, they followed him back to the main house like ducklings.
They were tired, sad, and hurting, and they didn’t want to be alone, so Paul let them stay in the main house the first week.
The couple was in the guest room next door to Paul and his wife’s, and through the walls he heard them whispering urgently in Ukrainian late into the night. Paul would ask the translator to come by and explain that the guesthouse was all theirs, so both families could have privacy. But the translator responded apologetically that the Ukrainian couple was too afraid to stay in the little house with their sad lonely feelings and devastating memories of war. The translator told them, “They don’t want to be alone. They want to be with you.”
Paul hadn’t bargained for or agreed to this much love and mercy, and as the days passed, he was both irritated and deeply moved by this family’s honest need. And so he let them stay in the (not very big) main house for a while longer.
One day Paul emailed my friend and said: “I want to move out. I’m like, take my house. I’ll take the guesthouse.” But he also told my friend that the two families cooked together, that the eight‑year‑ old was enrolled in school and was picking up English quickly, and that the two families now shared a life together. The children went to school while the parents largely kept to themselves in the guest room until it was time to help with dinner.
My friend wrote back that resistance was futile, that love makes you soft if you are not careful, and that he was sorry but it was clearly too late for Paul.
There were six Ukrainian families in Paul’s town, and the refugee organization brought over another family that spoke English so they could translate for the other. And it turned out that the family had understood all along what Paul was trying to tell them, about moving to their own house, but they didn’t want to do that. They said, “Ask if it would be okay if we stayed with them a little bit longer. We’ll go out there if they want us to, but we really like staying with them.”
Paul felt their need, their vulnerability, how deeply traumatized these strong Ukrainian people were, so of course they could stay in the house with Paul and his wife.
Paul had had sons, so he knew some of the things boys love, and so he started wrestling with the little boy. They built a sweet bond, but still Paul dreaded coming home some nights. He said the days were both racing by and moving like syrup. Then one morning Paul’s wife sang a Ukrainian song from her old eastern European choir days while making breakfast, and the other woman joined in. It turned out that she knew the songs the wife could sing in Ukrainian. Together the sound was quite beautiful. Still, Paul prayed directly to them: “Please move into the guesthouse. We will not abandon you. We’ll eat lots of meals together. I’m such a good guy for bringing you here to live with us. And I’ll bring you some nice food in the morning. That’s a lot!” He would wake up just wanting to have coffee and read the paper in peace and quiet, but the little boy would want to practice his English with Paul and the Ukrainian father would have peevish rapid‑fire conversations with his teenage son, and it would all seem hopeless. And then the wives would begin to sing.
Love is how hope takes flight, in swamps and barren fields, arising in different frequencies, blending the way sound vibrations of different pitches organize to make music. With my failing hearing in our failing world, I try to listen for this song underneath the river of incoming data and my pinball machine mind and I find that it is always playing.
