WHEN BELOVED AUTHOR Anne Lamott was in town for the Santa Fe International Literary Festival, she filled the main hall at the Convention Center with more than a thousand fans, myself included. During her discussion, she repeatedly mentioned her good friend Lynn, and it dawned on me that she meant my co-worker Lynn Atkison, a long-time teacher in Santa Fe schools and an editor at Santa Fe Magazine since its founding. She’s pulling back this summer – this is her last issue.
When I found out that Lynn has a 50-year friendship with Anne Lamott, or as she calls her, Annie, I had a lot of questions, not the least of which was how do you stay connected for a half century? What makes a friendship last? We met up to talk about the two of them, Santa Fe in the 1970’s, and sleeping with the same man.
OK, how did you two meet?
Anne: I met Lynn’s partner in 1974 on the tennis courts of this little coastal town we lived in called Bolinas. We were both good players and we would end up meeting and playing a few sets. He invited me over to their house for a drink one evening, and there was Lynn. The man disappeared into the six o’clock news, which he had never missed in the course of his lifetime. Lynn and I had this drink together, and we just grogged each other, to use the old ‘60s term. We couldn’t wait to talk again. I’d often come by for drinks after tennis. Not too long after that, she moved to Santa Fe, and she sent me a ticket to come visit and we were off and running.
Lynn: I was thinking about mostly the very next day. I felt like Annie and I connected on such a deep level because we had so many similarities. We both had fathers whom we adored, bigger than life. My parents had just died, so I was reeling from that. We talked about what it was like to grow up in a house like that, and a father who really took over us and who we connected with. We both came from incredibly dysfunctional homes. There were a lot of secrets, a lot of pairings that weren’t that healthy.
Anne: A lot of alcohol.
Lynn: A lot of alcohol. My mother drank too much, so I had this very secretive life where I thought I would protect her. My friends wouldn’t know. Of course, now they tell me everybody knew, but I was always trying to protect her.
That first day, we spent the entire day driving around, drinking beer, singing. We both discovered singing was a big part of our connection. We both loved singing and songs and harmony. We knew all the same songs. We loved all the same people. And we loved beer. We would drive around Bolinas drinking beers, singing. That was the hook.
You instantly saw something in each other?
Anne:We were both seeking something bigger than our own minds and our own biographies. We were spiritual seekers. We had read all the same books, and we had the nomenclature of the spiritual seeker. We both loved Ram Dass, and Denise Levertov, the incredible poet. We were huge readers and feminists.
Any book that I had read that I foisted on all the women I knew, Lynn had read too. Sometimes we would have the blessing of getting to turn the other one onto a book that one of us had somehow missed. But it was the feminism and the thirst for spirituality that I think was the reason that first night, that first drink, we just got it. We were made for each other. That first day I remember so, well, it was probably one of my peak days in my life. It was very special.
Lynn: And lasting.
How do you support each other when there’s a challenge in the other’s life?
Anne: One of the blessings of the last 50 years is that I don’t need anything from Lynn, and I don’t think she needs anything from me. She just needs me, and I just need her and that’s very different. We don’t have a transactional friendship, we have a friendship based on how we feel together when we’re in that cell membrane together, usually in Santa Fe.
We feel whole and alive and excited to pick the other person’s brains and part of that is sharing closest things from the very deepest parts of our hearts and souls. We don’t do small talk. We both love gossip, I’ll say that, but we immediately do the deep dive into what’s really going into our lives. How many friends can you say that about?
Lynn: We’ve missed periods too because of our geographic separation and various other things going on. We have whole chunks that we missed in each other’s lives. It’s not like we have this constancy of knowing about everything that’s going on.
How do you reach out to each other after those gaps to make sure that things continue?
Anne: Well, I’ll tell you my side of the story in which I happen to look really good and Lynn looks bad. Lynn is a terrible reacher outer. I’m a good reacher outer and there were times where a couple years would pass and there would be no contact and I would feel this kind of bitterness, that it’s always me that reaches out and gets the train going again. But I didn’t care, because it would get us back together. Finally, I think about three or four years ago, I was in Santa Fe and I said, you’re just a terrible reacher outer and all these years it’s been me that’s chased you back down. Don’t forget me, don’t let me go. Things have been a lot better since then.
Lynn: I am famous for that, I think it’s part of my side that I struggle with which is depressive, which is that I shut down. Two women that I saw last year who I went to high school with, they said they really never knew who I was, even though we went to school together from kindergarten through senior year in my little town of Nevada. But I grew up being secretive and shutting down and my kids tell me I do that, the men in my life have told me, I just do that, so it was great that Annie could tell me that.
I’ll say also, from afar, I was reading Annie’s books. I knew book after book after book. She was getting big. I had in the back of my mind this idea that she was too big for me, that she’d moved on in her notoriety. We took a trip once driving the back road to Taos. We were in Truchas, for God’s sake. It’s some tiny little place where they were selling a few paintings, and people recognized Annie. This reinforced the idea she’d gotten too big for me. I think that was in my head for many years. Now that I’ve reconnected in a much stronger way, I know it doesn’t matter, we still have this friendship.
Have there been points in your relationship where you fell out?
Anne: The worst night of our 50 years was in 1978. I was visiting – my dad had been sick with metastasized brain cancer, and he was back in California and Lynn was teaching at Santa Fe Prep. During the day I got a call from my father that I had sold my novel, Hard Laughter. I was 24 and it was a dream come true. Lynn was stuck at school and her kids had a play that night and she couldn’t get out of it. So, I did what anyone would do. I drank myself into a stupor. Then she got home, and I was so sad, grief struck that this dream come true had turned into such an isolated deep… it was the most isolated I can describe to you. Lynn felt just like hell. But we woke up in the morning and dealt with it and celebrated.
Santa Fe has played an important role in your friendship.
Anne: We used to go to, in the ‘70s, one of our destinations was Tesuque, because it was still Tesuque. It wasn’t wealthy yet. It was funky and there were still hippies around and it was very dusty and modest and authentic New Mexico. We went to just walk and talk for a couple hours in a row. This is before our feet gave out, but we would go to Canyon Road, and it was a dirt road in my memory, there were maybe 10 or 15 art galleries. Is that right, Lynn?
Lynn: Yeah. It was so different.
Anne: It was so different. Of course it was a tourist destination, but you weren’t bumping into them. There was a Woolworths in the Plaza. The Plaza was just dorky. It was kind of plain and happening. The stores were not the extremely elite stores that there are now. There were just stores with appropriately priced Santa Fe stuff you might buy.
The first cappuccino I ever had was with Lynn at La Fonda, and they were making those designs in the foam. We’d go to Tesuque and Chimayo, you could go to Canyon Road and just feel old New Mexico, dirt roads and wilderness and the very, very, very old West. It still is, and I still love that about it, but boy, it’s about 180 degrees away from 1978 Santa Fe.
Lynn: I lived on Camino Cerrito, which is off Canyon Road, and one of my favorite memories is she came to visit and brought some acid with her. We took it and we went up to the Cristo Rey church and those were the days when you could just go into churches and sit there and nobody was there, they didn’t keep their doors locked. Canyon Road in those days was so incredible.
Do you have any rituals that you do when you get together?
Anne: We always go to Chimayo.
Lynn: We always get the dirt.
Anne: When we were first going to Chimayo in the ‘70s and ‘80s, it was a sacred place and the dirt was there and the holiness was there and the church was there, but it was so different. Now it’s a little bit more like Disneyland. It still moves me so deeply every time I go.
Lynn: We would go, and we’d pull the car right up to the front door, park and go in. Nobody was there. We could sit by that little dirt hole for hours if we wanted. We could read all the things people had written. To have been a part of those beautiful places early on was wonderful.
Anne, you’ve written about your history with alcohol. It’s common when you go through recovery to lose friends. How did you two negotiate that?
Anne: Lynn?
Lynn: I don’t think it has impacted me a lot. Once I got married and got pregnant, my consumption of beer and other things pretty much stopped. I didn’t need to cruise around drinking beer all day with her anymore. Neither one of us was doing that. I was very proud of her. It really didn’t change how I felt about being with her at all.
Anne: I was still out there and drinking and using, and Lynn had a child to raise. But the thing was that was so constant were these letters. If you were close to someone, you wrote to them, and you waited for the reply. I could write a novel, but I’m not going to, about a friendship of 50 years that would track the course of the changes in Santa Fe. I could track the changes by the changes in us, By both of us getting a lot more serious about our lives.
We were wild. But we were also both students of literature and spirituality. This thing that would run through the novel if I wrote it, were letters. Letters and always a photograph enclosed.
What fills you with the most pride for each other?
Anne: We have come through so, so much. We are both aware of how blessed we’ve been, and by how incredibly beautiful life has been in so many ways. We had catastrophic losses of our fathers, the end of the world in both cases. Tragic not just deaths but tragic deaths. Lynn has had a lot of depression. I don’t have depression, I have very severe anxiety disorder. We both had a lot of stuff around eating and so there’s a common thread that we’re both aware of what the other has been through, what it has taken to not give up.
Lynn’s daughters are just magic. They couldn’t be more different from each other. They’re all facets of her and they’re just stunning young women. And now the next generation – I can see the influence that Lynn has had in her little grandchild, creating safety for that girl and being a rock and being this steadying influence, walking beside her and listening.
The way that a grandparent listens is just so different, because a parent has so much to do. With Lynn, she just is so focused and bent down so that she can hear better and so affirming. I love these children she graced us with. I’m so proud that she never gave up on our ideals of feminism and spirituality, that no matter how busy or overwhelmed, we never gave up on these two core values.
When we’re listening to something or somebody, we sit together and we’re both hearing it through the same ears. We share the same pair of ears because of our shared values. I know that our inside soul perks up at the exact same things. It might just be a phrase, an insight. We look at each other, we just get it.
I’m proud that over the years she has made such tough decisions. She has found within herself this courage to do things that might not make sense to anybody else – that other people would be urging her not to do! We say in the Christian tradition that courage is fear that has said its prayers. I have seen this incredibly courageous life lived.
Lynn: Because I grew up in a family where I think my depression came from my mother’s drinking, I am so proud of Annie for having nurtured and helped and coached and mentored hundreds of thousands of people who have gone through substance abuse and drinking, because it’s the most painful thing in the world to children, to families, to friends, to associates, to people trying to cross the street.
I know someone who has been such an incredible gift to America and to the world. She’s read worldwide. I have attended too many rehabilitation centers because of people in my own family, and her books are everywhere. These people take them from the library and they walk to their rooms where they’re staying and it gets them through the afternoon and through the night.
How many times do you get the opportunity to know someone like that, to stand with, to be a part of, to witness, to learn from. She’s been a gift and that doesn’t even include her own family, her beautiful son who has done so well and her grandson who I see following in their footsteps.
Enough of the tearjerker stuff. When did you laugh the hardest?
Anne: What I loved so much about the ‘70s and early ‘80s was just singing together. I could play a rudimentary guitar and sing the melodies. We knew every word of Gordon Lightfoot and Ian and Sylvia and the Farinas and we knew all of Bob Dylan and Lynn could do this incredible harmony. We’d laugh and laugh and laugh mostly about the foibles of who we are. One of us will say something and it might come out really serious, then we’ll start these riffs that we’ve been doing now for decades. We’ll end up laughing about what a silly species we are.
Lynn: A time I remember goes back to our origin story. Once I went to visit Annie and she was living in her little cabin in Bolinas, she was writing her first book. She had a piece of paper on her front door, and it read before you knock, be sure you are wanted. I remember laughing and I wasn’t sure I should knock even though she was expecting me.
We were in her cabin. It was late at night, and she shared with me for the first time, this is quite a few years later, that she had been intimate with the man that I had been living with when we met. Rather than being mad, we both laughed so hard I practically fell off the rocking chair.
Anne: We actually screamed.
Lynn: She had not told me that for so long, but I think it was just one of those nights. Because I loved her and the relationship was over anyway, it didn’t matter. I just remember laughing really hard. We’ve had a lot of the title of her first book, Hard Laughter. We’ve had a lot of hard laughter together.
Anne: We’re real people, we have streaks of sarcasm and snark. There were always people in our lives that were just so ludicrous – they were heroes in their own minds and were very lofty people, and sometimes we would drive around and we’d see one of them on the street and we would watch them like it was a movie and we would howl with laughter. Maybe not our most loveliest selves.
Humor is a strong basis for friendship.
Lynn: Often without a word being spoken.
Anne: Humor and shared loves like our love of literature and of churches and of spirituality and our love of nature and walking. Lynn and I have walked a million miles, both together and alone. We’re both walkers. The laughter and the willingness, who knows where it comes from, to tell the truth with each other. To just decide that you’re going to be people who tell the truth with each other.
Do you think you have complimentary skills?
Anne: Oh, that’s an interesting question. I think we’re both good at the same things. We’re good readers. We both have the gift of being good listeners. We really take things in. And, this was not a blessing our whole lives, we’re both deeply sensitive women and we were deeply sensitive girls. It’s a hard way to be, but it’s a beautiful way to be. We both have very open hearts.
I have strange skills; I have a great backhand. I’m a fabulous parallel parker. I can park in spaces that are almost smaller than the car. I’m a good Sunday school teacher. I’m good at stuff that wouldn’t impact Lynn’s life at all.
Lynn: I’m a good teacher. Anne’s a good teacher. She’s been teaching writing for forty years. She’s been teaching in Sunday school for almost that long. I love to write, but I don’t have the discipline that Anne has. I’m also not as gifted as Anne is. But I do love to write. I’m hoping that when I get some free time soon that I’ll write something for my kids and my history.
What do you look forward to? What do you want to do next?
Anne: I think we’re both in good health because I’m a walker and Lynn does yoga. I play pickleball. Our minds are very, very sharp. We’re both much more forgetful, of course, that’s age appropriate. But, if Lynn becomes older and sicker before I do, I look forward to being able to enter into that with her. I know that if I’m the one who gets sick or facing death before her, that she will enter into it fully, that she will be there the next day as I would be. I have loved watching us both heal of the perfectionism, of the judgment, of the bad self-talk, of doing so much for other people and not enough for ourselves, and we’ve both gotten so much better at all four of those things.
I love we’re going to be great really old ladies, but the reality is that because we’re so much older at some point one of us will die first and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt the other one will be there the next day and every step of the way and that will make it infinitely less scary and lonely.
Lynn: Right. Just go with that.
SUBSCRIBE TO SANTA FE MAGAZINE HERE!
Photo SFM
