Anne Lamott, DUSK, NIGHT, DAWN
[0:01]Hi, this is Vivi Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast,
[0:05]Momstone Have Time to Read Books.
[0:06]I'm also the host of Momstone Have Time to Lose Weight,
[0:09]and I'm the editor of The Anthology, which you should run out and buy,
[0:13]called Momstone Have Time to Accarantine Anthology.
[0:16]I'll proceed to that book, go to COVID-19 Vaccine Research.
[0:20]And I'm the editor-in-chief of Momstone Have Time to Write,
[0:23]a new publication on Medium, and we're accepting submissions,
[0:26]so please send your personal essays there.
[0:28]And if all that isn't enough, you can follow me on Instagram,
[0:31]at Zivi Owens, and my website is ziviowens.com.
[0:34]Okay, now back to this amazing podcast.
[0:37]Hey everybody, so last week as part of Zivi's virtual book club,
[0:41]we had An Lamont as a guest.
[0:43]And for those of you who are not members of Zivi's virtual book club,
[0:47]you should sign up. It's on book clubs with a Z.
[0:50]And you can access it through ziviowens.com and go to the Read tab,
[0:55]and then go to Zivi's virtual book club,
[0:57]or just search it on my website.
[0:59]Anyway, we meet every other Tuesday from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. Eastern Time.
[1:03]And for the first half an hour, we discussed the book that I've picked,
[1:07]and the second half an hour, the author always comes and joins.
[1:10]I've never turned one of those conversations with the author into a podcast before.
[1:15]But this one was so unique and amazing.
[1:17]And while I had interviewed An Lamont maybe two years ago,
[1:21]early in the podcast history, I hadn't revisited my relationship with her,
[1:26]or had any updates in a while.
[1:29]So I just thought, how can I keep this just a book club?
[1:32]So I'm releasing the Q&A from Book Club as a podcast.
[1:37]It's about 30 minutes long, and An Lamont, whose bio I will now read,
[1:41]is just such a legend and did not disappoint in any way.
[1:45]I hope you all enjoy this, and I hope that for those book lovers out there
[1:50]who want to meet authors every other week reliably
[1:53]and ask your questions and also discuss books with smart,
[1:57]like-minded friends, join my book club.
[2:00]It's fantastic.
[2:01]Okay, so here's An's bio for those of you who don't know.
[2:04]An Lamont uses honesty, empathy, and humor
[2:07]to write about our world in her beloved and best-selling books,
[2:10]like operating instructions and account of her son's first year,
[2:13]bird by bird, her classic book on writing,
[2:16]and help thanks wow, a celebration of prayer.
[2:19]Lamont delves into what makes us human.
[2:21]She explores the wide experience of life that unites us,
[2:25]birth and death, parenthood and family, faith and doubt, love and loss,
[2:28]forgiveness and hope.
[2:29]In each of her 19 books, which have sold millions of copies worldwide,
[2:33]Lamont brings her distinctive mix of bracing candor, clarifying insight
[2:37]and refreshing humor to convert serious subjects like addiction, motherhood,
[2:41]loss and faith into human truths we can all share.
[2:44]She's the author of several essay collections on faith,
[2:46]including traveling mercies, grace eventually, and plan B,
[2:49]as well as several novels, including imperfect birds, blue shoe and rosy.
[2:53]Lamont has been honored with a Guggenheim Fellowship, and has taught at UC Davis
[2:57]as well as at writing conferences across the country.
[3:01]Academy award-winning filmmaker Frieda Mock has made a documentary on Lamont,
[3:05]titled Bird by Bird with Annie, from 1999.
[3:08]She's also been inducted into the California Hall of Fame.
[3:11]She lives in Northern California with her husband and family.
[3:14]My original podcast with Ann was on her book notes on Hope,
[3:18]and this book club centered on her most recent book,
[3:21]which just came out called Dusk, Dawn Knight.
[3:24]I hope you enjoy it, and don't forget sign up for Zibi's virtual book club
[3:28]and enjoy this amazing conversation.
[3:31]Hi. Hi.
[3:32]Hi. Thanks so much for coming.
[3:34]You're welcome. Thanks for having me.
[3:36]How long will we be doing this for?
[3:38]Six hours. Does that work?
[3:40]Uh-huh.
[3:42]Like mothers have time.
[3:44]30 minutes. We'll be done at three Eastern.
[3:47]12.
[3:48]That is so perfect.
[3:49]I am setting up.
[3:50]We've had power outages.
[3:52]And some none of the clocks work.
[3:55]And so I'm infinitely confused, which is not unusual.
[3:58]Yeah.
[3:59]But I am here at your service.
[4:00]Thank you.
[4:01]Well, thank you so much from everybody here at book club for coming.
[4:05]We're so thrilled.
[4:06]You have so many super fans here in this Zoom audience.
[4:09]So thank you so much for coming.
[4:11]Is this live or is it Memorex?
[4:14]It's live. We're all here.
[4:16]Oh, my God.
[4:18]Well, we have so many questions.
[4:20]But first, one is just how much this book we were actually just talking about
[4:24]how this book seems so hopeful despite the fact that your last book was called Notes on Hope.
[4:28]Or that was in some title.
[4:29]This book really felt so hopeful to all of us.
[4:32]And that there was this, yeah, the sense of optimism that pervaded this book
[4:36]that I don't feel like was there as much in the last book.
[4:38]Did you feel that way when you were writing it?
[4:40]Well, I started writing it because when I was on book tour for the book on Hope,
[4:46]everywhere I went around the country, people were just completely hopeless and defeated.
[4:51]And scared to death.
[4:53]You know, and it had been a couple of really troubling years politically, let's say.
[4:58]And you know, it's scary things were happening at people's dining tables.
[5:02]And the UN Climate Change reports had just come out.
[5:05]So I started writing a book on where we start.
[5:09]with so much bad news that was not so much about Hope but about restoration.
[5:16]And renewal.
[5:17]That's a subtitle renewal and courage.
[5:19]So I really wrote it with the intention of offering more Hope.
[5:25]Hope 2.0 to the people that had come to my events for the Hope book.
[5:32]By the way, I meant to say that like you, I have also taken my dog's medicine
[5:37]and lived to tell about it.
[5:39]You got it.
[5:40]The only one.
[5:41]Yeah, I have.
[5:42]And I was pregnant at the time.
[5:43]So I was.
[5:44]Oh my God.
[5:45]Looking at.
[5:46]Yeah.
[5:47]The medicine I took up my dog for my dog had been banned for human use by the FDA.
[5:52]And I'm sure yours had been too.
[5:54]Well, my OB who I called frantically told me to call her if I started barking.
[5:58]So.
[5:59]So I relaxed.
[6:00]It was nice to know I wasn't alone in that.
[6:02]One of the women here wants to know what your new husband Neil thinks about this book
[6:07]and how he feels about being being written about like this.
[6:10]Well, I run everything by everybody.
[6:12]So I run it by Sam and I run it by Neil.
[6:15]And he loves it.
[6:17]I mean, it's all like it's stuff that everybody can identify with.
[6:21]You know that.
[6:22]So you know, we were married two years and one of them was in quarantine.
[6:26]One of, you know, I took my vows almost two years ago.
[6:31]I'll be 67 next month.
[6:33]I mean, next.
[6:34]We can't know my God.
[6:36]So I'm still 66.
[6:38]And we got married April 13th.
[6:41]2019 and one of those years has been in lockdown,
[6:45]which I did not know was going to be part of the deal.
[6:49]So it was a little bit unusual, I think.
[6:52]And I should get credit for.
[6:54]But we've been talking about all of the stuff that we find annoying about each other since like the third date.
[6:59]So he's really okay with it.
[7:01]Do you really have to run stuff by the people you write about, though?
[7:05]And that's my agreement with everyone is that I would never,
[7:08]I'd never run anything by that.
[7:11]I mean, write anything that it was embarrassing or private.
[7:14]You have a saying with him about the cat, like it's the cat in the living room
[7:18]for when you're feeling, you know, very hopeless or stressed about something.
[7:21]And I was wondering if you have had any of those moments recently where you've needed to say that to each other.
[7:26]Yeah.
[7:27]The pieces about this, you know, there was a cat caught a soul in our, our marriage,
[7:31]which was that when he asked me if I would marry him,
[7:34]I thought he was going to ask what color patio pebbles we wanted to get because he put in a little garden.
[7:40]And he said, we marry me.
[7:42]We've been living together for two years or so or something.
[7:45]And our cat had either run away or been stolen a few months earlier.
[7:49]And I said, can we get a new cat? And he said, yes.
[7:52]So I said, I would marry him.
[7:54]And then so we got a five month old kitten and of course she immediately disappeared into the wormhole that only cats can see.
[8:02]And of course, if you grew up around alcoholics, you'd learn to prepare yourself for the worse.
[8:09]It's one of the ways you have any control at all or around the mentally ill.
[8:13]And so I just instantly after about an hour of looking everywhere at literally everywhere.
[8:19]And I mean that literally, in my hands, we couldn't find her and I knew the kitten was dead.
[8:26]And we did what we did to try to stay centered and faithful and together in it.
[8:32]And then all of a sudden, a couple hours later, I felt this furry little whisper of presence that then began to nibble on my toes.
[8:42]And I realized the kitten is almost the cat.
[8:45]They're almost always in the living room.
[8:47]They're very, very rarely dead.
[8:49]So I wanted to get pins for everybody like me who worries more than the average bear.
[8:54]And the pins would say, the kitten is not dead.
[8:57]The kitten is in the living room.
[8:59]And I really live by that, you know, in lots of different circumstances.
[9:04]And we say it to our to each other.
[9:07]The kitten's not dead.
[9:08]Any meal, the kittens in the living room.
[9:12]I love that.
[9:14]One person wanted to know, who do you look to for inspiration?
[9:18]I love that question.
[9:19]And I'm in recovery.
[9:20]So I have a lot of 12 step people at my beck and call.
[9:24]So when I, but I never called them or my mentors horrible Bonnie, unless I'm completely boxed into a corner.
[9:32]And I've tried to self-will myself into, you know, figuring it out.
[9:38]And I want to say figure it out.
[9:39]It's not a good mantra.
[9:41]And then I call one of them and they'll say something like, oh, I'll call them say,
[9:46]I hate everyone and all of life.
[9:48]And they'll say, oh, I'm so glad you called.
[9:52]And they'll say, oh, I was there too.
[9:54]Let's go to Target, you know, or we've got leftover Easter candy.
[9:59]Why don't you.
[10:00]come over or I'll come over there and I'll make you a nice cup of tea and we'll eat all of my
[10:06]child Easter bunny up bunnies and spiritually I turn I have a lot of day at one day at a time
[10:13]meditation you know that come and they really break the trance of my own pinball machine toxic
[10:20]thinking and like Richard Roar you all know Richard Roar I bet ROHR he's so lovely I think he's a
[10:28]princess but I could be wrong he's from Santa Fe and he has a contemplative ministry
[10:33]and so if you google him you can get him you get a tweet or a email or text or something every
[10:40]single day that is about quieting you know the pinball mind and getting centered and back into life
[10:49]and into the understanding that life keeps supporting us partly because largely for me because we
[10:57]have such incredible we have two or three best friends the reason I have so much faith in life
[11:03]and guys because I have such incredible best friends so the Richard Roar is a great one and you
[11:09]know you can get daily things from people like Byron Katie and my son Sam has a website called
[11:17]hellohumans.co and he has interviewed people that help us bring hellohumans.com was taken
[11:26]so he's hellohumans.co and it's free I mean I think you might have to join for four dollars
[11:33]which is a cup of Starbucks but he does interviews with people like me and Jack Cornfield and
[11:38]Byron Katie and Paul Williams and somebody I love so much but I'm so sorry my mind is
[11:43]going to be like but just go there there are thousand you know there's a hundred interviews on
[11:48]people that will help you break the trance of misery and fearfulness and faithlessness and
[11:54]Paul Williams the great composer and who wrote the Julia Cameron the artist way because into
[12:00]her for an hour talking about how she writes how she gets fully human when she feels at her most
[12:06]freaked out I'll tell you this thing from like if you go to Paul Williams today he and Sam are
[12:11]both in recovery but he said something that I live by because most of my books are about how I've
[12:17]tried to seek peace or affirmation or respect outside of me from the New York Times or for
[12:26]promote pro or finding the right guy or finding this or achieving that or whatever Sam and Paul
[12:32]Williams were talking one day I mean not one day on hellohumans Paul told him the story of having
[12:39]gotten his deosker one night you know 30 years ago I think Paul is clean and sober 30 some years
[12:45]Sam is clean and sober nine and a half years the greatest miracle in my life and Paul said to
[12:51]Sam you know I stood there a hundred million people were watching me receive the greatest accolade
[12:57]you can receive and he said it bought me 24 hours you know of good self esteem and respect and
[13:07]you know self love and and it's not and so if I listen to these interviews I remember over and
[13:13]again it's not there it's not out there it's an inside job it's radical self care right now
[13:20]right now right here it's a it's a cup of tea it's a best friend you know I just went in and told
[13:29]my husband something so humiliating that happened this morning for me at Kaiser in the dermatology
[13:37]waiting room and then bathroom and I got to tell him and he didn't run screaming for his cute little
[13:43]life he's a year younger so he's a sit all honey that happened all that happens to all of us a
[13:49]couple times a year you know and I hope that you are taking radical self care of yourself right
[13:56]now because that is something universal after the age of 60 it will help don't cough don't sneeze
[14:05]without preparation so that's what brings me inspiration of selling the truth to people and sharing
[14:11]how embarrassing life can be and how life he life can be some days so that's a great question
[14:20]give for that answer it makes me think of when you say can you love me now the way that you always
[14:26]are just wondering if there's something you could do that could finally turn him away and
[14:31]the way can you hear me now can you love me now yeah well that's based on the fabulous
[14:37]TV commercial I'm not even sure if they still run it I think it was for AT&T but it could have been
[14:41]for Verizon or any of the phone companies where you'd have to walk all over the property or the
[14:49]street or the pavement or the house trying to get decent reception and say can you hear me now
[14:54]can you hear me now can you hear me now but what this artist this piece and dust night dawn is about
[15:01]telling each other stuff you know it's not the beautiful lovable stuff that is hard to tell
[15:06]your closest people but the stuff that you feel sort of ashamed of or you just can't believe
[15:12]everybody does it and and then you keep thinking can you love me now okay well what about now
[15:20]okay wait I haven't told you this one thing what about now can you love me now and of course
[15:26]a person just loves you more and more because they tell you the truth which is they've done it
[15:32]too thought it almost done it they did it this morning and then you get to laugh about it and as soon
[15:39]as you can laugh with somebody about it you're halfway home laughter is carbonated holiness
[15:45]there is a question here from Karen Phillips that I would love can I ask myself a question go ahead
[15:52]Zibi yeah take cover no you take over just I saw the question I love what would you say to
[15:57]caregivers who are trying to keep it together for two households struggling oh god what I would say
[16:04]to you is we are thanking you for your service I had my hardest years when my baby when I had
[16:11]a baby 31 years ago who 31 and a half years ago as a single mother with no money and no dad around
[16:19]and it is hard to capture the existential exhaustion of that and plus I had to make up try to
[16:27]make a living for us which I was not able to do and I had to do one of the hardest hardest things
[16:32]we do which was to ask for help to ask for the rent and so I did it and I was afraid a lot of
[16:38]the time so I did things afraid and I did things badly you know there's a chapter in my writing
[16:48]book bird by bird on shitty first drafts and on writing stuff really badly kind of doing it
[16:56]like the Nike commercial and doing it afraid and doing it badly and that's what I did and that's
[17:03]what I would say to you that when you're struggling you know there's another chapter in a bird
[17:08]by bird that perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor and it's the voice of the enemy and it
[17:14]will keep you cringy and small and bitter your whole life and so the secret if you have the
[17:20]perfectionism you're trying to do it beautifully and perfectly used to do it badly to do it you
[17:27]know I mean I wish you could all see my office I can't pick up my desktop and show you but it's
[17:32]just it's just bits of paper everywhere that I hope and pray and assume we'll turn into something
[17:39]and those are just two things that I can reach you here's something you'll love that is an index
[17:45]card on which I spilled seven out so all that so all the writing bled but you know what I can read it
[17:53]through the bleed and and that is really the best advice thank you Caroline Karen I'm so glad
[18:00]that you're doing it you know you do it badly that's the secret of all no one told me that
[18:05]when I was a child people told me that I you know I was in operating instructions I wrote that I
[18:12]was 35 had a baby before I realized that a B plus was a good grade you know no one told me I grew
[18:19]up to do perfectly in school and to be a perfect daughter and you know reader and conversationalist
[18:27]and no one said that a B plus is actually a fantastic grade what they said was how hard
[18:35]how much harder would it have been to get a name minus but the trick was if you got a name minus
[18:42]was there still time in the quarter to get an A and that's that's across I had to bear
[18:47]and I sort of lost my train of thought but the thing I know is shitty first drafts and small
[18:53]assignments with writing and with your morning and with your afternoon with your little ones and
[19:00]your job and your aging parents you can you know we do what's possible and that's awful news
[19:08]with my writing students I had them get one inch picture frames and only write as much as they could
[19:13]see through that one inch picture frame and then the bad mind that the critical voice says
[19:19]well where's that going to get you one passage one paragraph one one it's going to get you to the
[19:26]next one it's going to get you to feeling really really amazed that you've got some writing
[19:32]done this morning or you got your work done and the kids were entertained and you let them
[19:38]watch a little bit more TV or be online a little bit more so that you can do a little bit more
[19:44]and you can be there for your parents who are struggling who are older who are scared you know
[19:50]we do what's possible these questions are so great and there's a question about forgiveness
[19:55]that it's the hardest work you do the whole book is about forgiveness yes it says the hardest
[20:00]Thing is forgiveness.
[20:00]How do you continue to dig deep for that?
[20:02]That's from deafening.
[20:04]OK, I'm just so glad my son isn't here
[20:07]because he's just mortified by my lack of technological skills.
[20:12]He goes, oh my god, mom.
[20:14]But anyway, I also want to talk about somebody
[20:16]who wants to know about Sam's sobriety.
[20:18]So I'll do these two questions first.
[20:19]For a givenness, I mean, this is for giving a school here.
[20:22]And it's hard because it's hard.
[20:26]And people say, well, you can't forgive anyone
[20:28]till you can forgive yourself.
[20:29]And people just like to hand out
[20:31]nice Christian bumper stickers.
[20:32]And I don't find them all that helpful.
[20:35]And I do practice radical forgiveness.
[20:37]And I have learned at 60 in my 60s
[20:40]to do this with myself and to say, it's OK.
[20:44]If somebody did something really awful to me
[20:46]or even worse to my child, it's really hard.
[20:49]And so I try to figure out, through that one inch frame,
[20:55]if there is any aspect of it where I can do forgiveness
[21:00]or I call it forgiveness-ish.
[21:03]And I might call them.
[21:05]I sense someone a book.
[21:07]I'm not even sure if they're speaking to me,
[21:09]but I wrote a really sweet note.
[21:10]And I said, you know, there are a couple stories
[21:12]in this book that I thought you might really love.
[21:16]And I hope you're well.
[21:17]That's all.
[21:19]It's so subversive to do something nice with whom
[21:21]you have to someone to whom with whom
[21:24]you have a real conflict.
[21:26]There's a piece in here that won't
[21:28]record for you about forgiving our parents,
[21:30]even though they've been dead forever.
[21:32]The self forgiveness is, you know, it's a action.
[21:36]Figure out is a bad slogan.
[21:38]Let's see action you can do.
[21:40]You know what?
[21:41]I've got a pair of pants that I saw on Amazon.
[21:45]No, I saw my people magazine with a link to Amazon.
[21:49]And Katie, who was married to Tom Cruise, Holmes,
[21:53]was wearing them.
[21:54]And they look so cute on her.
[21:55]Well, I'm 25 years older and probably 30 pounds heavier.
[21:58]But I went in order to them because I do believe it's out there.
[22:01]And that if I can buy it, achieve it, date it, lease it.
[22:06]And I got them in a medium, which I'm a medium.
[22:08]I'm 5'6", I'm 140, I'm a medium.
[22:11]And the buttons were five or six inches apart.
[22:15]They weren't even close.
[22:16]They weren't where you could take them to the seamstress
[22:19]at the dry cleaners.
[22:20]And I just felt sick.
[22:21]And I felt so mad on myself because I really do eat a lot more
[22:25]in COVID.
[22:27]I'm bored.
[22:27]It was Easter and the whole thing.
[22:29]I have so many excuses.
[22:30]And I'm just going to stick to them.
[22:32]But so I had to send them back.
[22:34]And you know what I did?
[22:37]I set out loud, fucking.
[22:40]Who cares?
[22:42]Who cares?
[22:44]I'm here in forgiveness school.
[22:46]My best friend, Sun died three months ago.
[22:48]My grandchild, who lives here, has been at,
[22:51]he's in sixth grade.
[22:52]He's been at, he's missed his friends for over a year.
[22:57]We have a friend here today, and there's six feet
[22:58]apart in masks, and that'll be fun.
[23:01]But it's not the same as rough housing and grab-assing
[23:05]and shoving and pushing and sitting together
[23:08]and being silly right.
[23:09]But we do what's possible.
[23:10]So I thought almost anything I can think of
[23:14]is more important than whether I can fit into pants,
[23:17]the Katie Holmes looks cute in, right?
[23:20]So I got myself back.
[23:22]And once I myself back, I mean this whole book
[23:24]is about finding your center, you know,
[23:27]that the center does hold with a couple good friends.
[23:31]Someone can't see what her name is.
[23:33]Ellie is touching her center right now.
[23:36]She's going around.
[23:38]If you can touch right here, I mean collectively right now
[23:41]with Ellie as our leader touching our center,
[23:45]breathing into that center.
[23:47]You're way more than halfway home.
[23:49]You breathe into it.
[23:49]Wrong dust calls it the heart cave.
[23:52]You know, where you, if you have a higher power,
[23:54]you definitely had a little girl,
[23:56]a little child who might be scared and lonely
[23:59]and worried that she's not enough
[24:03]or not doing well enough or not a good enough mother
[24:07]or daughter or spouse or whatever.
[24:11]And just touch that solar plexus and breathe right into it.
[24:17]Breathe into that heart cave and then you know, believe me.
[24:20]Oh my God, I got those pants back by that,
[24:23]that afternoon I had those pants returned
[24:26]and I got the welcoming pants.
[24:28]You know, the world has enough opinions about it
[24:31]as it is without your pants getting in on it too.
[24:34]So somebody wanted to ask about my son's sobriety
[24:37]and the miracle of that.
[24:39]The miracle of that was that I'm in a 12 step program
[24:41]for people with tiny tiny control issues
[24:44]and people who are trying to get their teenagers
[24:47]and their young adults to do what the parents thinks
[24:52]would be a very excellent idea for the child.
[24:54]I, you my child, that was a mess head
[24:56]and an alcoholic, he had a baby at 19, you know,
[25:00]and it was very, very hard.
[25:02]It was not what I had in mind, I don't know.
[25:06]And he'd been to rehab and he was dealing now.
[25:09]Everything's gotten worse.
[25:11]And I finally set a boundary, he's baby
[25:14]mom over living with me and Sam was showing up drunk
[25:16]and stoned.
[25:17]And I finally said, you know what,
[25:19]it doesn't make any sense for you to show up
[25:21]at our property for your baby to see, to your old,
[25:25]to see you.
[25:26]But come back again when you have a little time
[25:29]under your belt and it was awful.
[25:31]It was the worst day, literally of my life.
[25:34]I held a sharpened pencil to his throat
[25:36]and I said, you can't be here on this property
[25:38]you're too crazy.
[25:40]Go get help, I love you, I love you the same
[25:43]but get off of this property.
[25:45]10 days later, because I got my sticky fingers off
[25:48]to spaceship and released him to the care of his own
[25:51]higher power and at the catastrophe of his own behavior,
[25:55]which is the only two things in the in human history
[25:59]that ever got anybody clean and sober.
[26:03]I did that work in my 12 step group, a valent on
[26:07]and I released him and 10 days later he called and he said,
[26:09]I've got a week, these guys in Marin County
[26:12]in that San Francisco County have shown up
[26:15]and taken me under their belt
[26:17]and I haven't had drinking seven days, can I come back?
[26:20]Of course you can come back.
[26:22]We miss you more than we can capture in words.
[26:25]Can you come for dinner?
[26:26]So that's the story and these guys,
[26:29]I mean, I'll tell you my favorite riddle
[26:31]is what's the difference between me and God?
[26:34]Anybody know the answer?
[26:36]God never thinks he's me.
[26:38]And once I realized I was not God in my child's life
[26:41]I'm not my child's higher power.
[26:43]I'm not even my own, I'm a retired higher power
[26:47]then all sorts of miracles happen.
[26:49]And the miracle that my family got was that my son
[26:52]hasn't picked up a drink since September of 2011
[26:57]I guess it would be yeah, 2011.
[27:00]So we have time for a couple of quick more questions.
[27:03]You're in charge of all things.
[27:05]Okay, yes, we are in charge.
[27:07]We are, let's see if there are any other questions here.
[27:11]Here's a question I love, I love from Carolyn.
[27:14]Platt, I love your exchange with the Texan,
[27:16]with the Buffant hairdo.
[27:18]And when you said to her, I can't ever repay your kindness
[27:22]and she said in a sick Texas accent,
[27:25]can't never could.
[27:27]That line, those two words.
[27:28]So this is a story in the book when I'm in Miami.
[27:33]I'm one year sober, I'm a mess.
[27:35]I'm very, very high up like on the 20th floor
[27:37]and I'm thinking of jumping because I'm exhausted.
[27:40]I'm exhausted by my condition.
[27:42]I'm exhausted by saying sober.
[27:44]There are like 40 little tiny bottles of booze
[27:47]in my refrigerator and I did the hardest thing I do.
[27:51]I picked up the 200 pound phone and I called a hotline.
[27:56]It was almost midnight.
[27:57]And I said, I'm a sober alcoholic from California.
[28:00]I'm scared, I'm alone.
[28:02]And I don't know what to do.
[28:03]And this young man said, oh, well,
[28:05]we'll send you someone.
[28:07]Don't worry, just stay there.
[28:08]Don't do anything until she'll be there
[28:10]in 20 minutes.
[28:11]So I said, what?
[28:12]You're sending someone to my hotel room
[28:14]and 20 minutes, yeah, yeah.
[28:16]And this elderly woman, much too much older than I was
[28:18]who had like 30 years clean and sober shows up.
[28:21]It turns out she's in a pink Cadillac.
[28:23]So I believe I've seen the car of God.
[28:27]And she comes up to my hotel room
[28:29]and we have a cup of seven out for something
[28:32]from the mini bar.
[28:33]She calls the front desk and asks them to please take away
[28:36]all the booze and we share our experience,
[28:38]drinking hope and in our terrible stories
[28:40]of early sobriety, she makes me laugh.
[28:43]And the line that with the bouffant is that it really was
[28:48]like up to here.
[28:49]And she said what Ann Richards always said
[28:51]was the higher the hair, the closer to God.
[28:54]And that's when I said, I can't ever repay you.
[28:56]You know, it's late and she was old.
[28:59]And she said, can't never could.
[29:01]So I rarely say can't anymore.
[29:03]Do you have one more question at your end?
[29:05]Or do you have a way that you want to close up?
[29:08]Maybe I could just, I would love to unmute everybody
[29:10]because I know we have, or everybody can unmute themselves
[29:14]and maybe just say a quick hello to you
[29:16]because everybody was so excited to meet you.
[29:18]And I seem to have monopolized this.
[29:20]Yeah, say hello to everybody unmute.
[29:23]And just go, I bless you, go, bless you, go, bless you.
[29:27]Thank you, everybody.
[29:28]I love being here.
[29:29]Thank you for coming.
[29:30]Okay, I bless you.
[29:32]Thank you.
[29:33]Bye bye.
[29:35]Thanks for listening to this episode of Mom's Don't Have Time
[29:37]to Read Books.
[29:38]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebiowans
[29:42]and at moms don't have time to read books.
[29:44]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowans.com
[29:46]and sign up for my virtual book club
[29:48]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[29:50]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan.
[29:52]In fact, texture sound for the sound editing.
[29:54]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[29:56]for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.