Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace by Anne Lamott Page B

fancier luck,somewhere else, to even notice her. Neshama painted the story with her hands, leaning into the crowd, and drawing back, hopeful or aghast at the unlucky man’s journey, smiling gleefully at the story’s close. And the place went nuts. She stole the show right out from under me, like a rock star, while I looked as prim and mainstream as Laura Bush. Here they had thought Neshama was going to teach them a lesson, and she had instead sung them a song. Their faces lit up with surprise. She was shining on them, and they felt her shining on them, and so they shone back on her.
    They asked her questions. Where do we find these stories? And Neshama told them: “They’re in you, like jewels in your hearts.” Why do they matter? “Because they’re treasures. These memories, these images, come forth from the ground of the same wisdom we all know, but that you alone can tell.”
    The prisoners stared at her, mesmerized. They looked like family, and neighbors, black and white and Asian and Hispanic, all in their blue denim clothes. Some looked pissed off, some bored, some attentive; the older ones all looked like God.
    When I at last got Neshama off the stage, I gave them a second round of my best writing tips.There was warm, respectful applause. Neshama got up and told another story. It was about her late husband, and a pool he would hike to, where there was a single old whiskery fish swimming around. Neshama stripped her story down to its essence, because only essence speaks to desperate people. And the men rose to give her a standing ovation. It was a stunning moment. All she had done was tell them, “I’m human, you’re human, let me greet your humanness. Let’s be people together for a while.”
    Neshama explained her storytelling guild to them, and one of the guards sat down to listen. We did a duet, the two of us answering questions, telling the men useful stories of our own work, and the writers we love, whom maybe they would love, too, who have filled our communal well from many years and different backgrounds.
    We had evoked the listening child in these men, with the only real story anyone has ever told, that the teller has been alive for a certain number of years and has learned a little in surprising ways, in the way the universe delivers truth. While I saw these men through the haze of our desire that things go well, I also saw beautiful rough glass, tumbled in the turbulent and unrelenting streamsof prison life. I saw that these men looked out for one another. I saw that they had nothing but the present, the insides of their minds, glimpses of natural beauty, library books, guilt, rage, growth, and one another. I saw that these lives were of value. I had a sudden desire to send them all my books, all of my father’s and friends’ books, as well. Also to donate my organs.
    Why did these men make me feel like being so generous? Maybe it was all the fresh air we’d brought in, the wind and the rain and ourselves. It was as if we’d come with an accordion, and as we talked and listened, the bellows filled and let breath, ours and theirs, in and out past the metal reeds.

Matches
    H eroes come in all circumstances and ages. The prophet tells us, “Your old will have visions; your young will dream dreams.” Elderly women in a retirement community in Mill Valley protested the war in Iraq on a busy thoroughfare with placards every Friday for years. A man I know of twenty-two, halfway to a medical degree, is pursuing ballet dreams in New York City. Some people my age—extreme middle age—train for marathons, or paddle down the Amazon, or skydive, or adopt. They publish for the first time.
    Me? I may have done the most heroic thing of all. I went on match.com for a year.
    The thing was, I had just done somethingbrave, which was to write a memoir with my son, tour the East Coast with him, and appear on stages before hundreds of people at a time. But one dream coming true doesn’t mean you give up on other