Ebook Amen, Amen, Amen: Memoir of a Girl Who Couldn't Stop Praying (Among Other Things), by Abby Sher
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Amen, Amen, Amen: Memoir of a Girl Who Couldn't Stop Praying (Among Other Things), by Abby Sher
Ebook Amen, Amen, Amen: Memoir of a Girl Who Couldn't Stop Praying (Among Other Things), by Abby Sher
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In this vibrant memoir, Abby Sher recounts her life with precision and humor as only a woman who is both a comedian and obsessive-compulsive can. The death of Abby’s father when she is eleven years old leaves a void that she fills with rituals: washing her hands, collecting litter, kissing her father’s photograph over and over. Then, with a child’s understanding of cause and effect, Abby begins to pray, certain that she can prevent further disaster. She carries the weight of this belief and the accompanying devotion to God through high school, college, and beyond, when it is joined by darker compulsions of anorexia and cutting.
Amen, Amen, Amen is an elegy to parents lost and to a youth consumed by grief and anxiety; it is a spiritual mystery about Abby’s search for answers and someone to guide her to them; and it is a romance about discovering the true nature of unconditional love. With remarkable candor and insight, Abby offers a brave and exquisitely written account of obsessive-compulsive disorder and the bounds and boundlessness of belief.
- Sales Rank: #2253277 in Books
- Published on: 2010-09-28
- Released on: 2010-09-28
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.87" h x .90" w x 5.75" l, .75 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 320 pages
Review
"Abby Sher has written a beautiful book. It's deeply personal and original, but deals with the big issues we all struggle with -- faith, family, food, and of course, Neil Diamond." -- A. J. JACOBS, author of The Guinea Pig Diaries and The Year of Living Biblically
"Amen, Amen, Amen is Abby Sher's brave, haunting, amazing memoir of her lifelong struggle with OCD. But it's more than this -- it's an inspiring tale of a woman overcoming adversity, learning to trust herself, allowing herself to fall in love, letting go of her parents' complex legacy. For memoir lovers, it is a prayer answered. Told in the author's fresh, wise, witty voice, the book, at times, is impossible to put down. This incredible book makes for obsessive, compulsive reading." -- JENNIFER FINNEY BOYLAN, author of She's Not There and I'm Looking Through You
"Even if you've never had one obsessive thought in your life, which I highly doubt, you will find yourself in Amen, Amen, Amen. Fine, maybe you don't count your kisses or speak Hebrew or create elaborate anorexic exercise mantras, but I'm fairly certain you know what it's like to feel out of control, small, and unseen. Abby Sher's humanity, humility, and hilarity will make you feel less alone and blessed to be alive in this fragile world." -- KIMBERLEE AUERBACH, author of The Devil, The Lovers, & Me: My Life in Tarot
"Amen, Amen, Amen offers a poignant, pitch-perfect look at love, loss, danger, and redemption through the eyes of a young woman struggling with OCD. Abby Sher illuminates her fascinating story with insight, wit, and compassion, making for a compelling and powerful read." -- RABBI DANYA RUTTENBERG, author of Surprised by God: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Religion
"Amen, Amen, Amen is a memoir of a girl's broken heart -- and all the absurd, funny, and oh-so-sacred pains Abby Sher endures to pick up the pieces and walk them silently home. Tender and lovely." -- BARBARA ROBINETTE MOSS, author of Change Me into Zeus's Daughter
About the Author
Abby Sher is a writer and performer whose work has appeared in Modern Love: 50 True and Extraordinary Tales of Desire, Deceit, and Devotion and Behind the Bedroom Door: Getting it, Giving it, Loving it, Missing it as well as in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Self, Jane, Elle, HeeB and Redbook. She is also the author of the young adult novel Kissing Snowflakes. Abby has written and performed for the Second City in Chicago and the Upright Citizen’s Brigade and Magnet Theater in New York. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
woody's children
Sunday night was usually the best night of the week in my house. Our neighbors, Estherann and Arthur, came over for vodka tonics and crackers and to talk politics. Estherann was always knitting fuzzy sweaters and scarves and she let me sit by her feet and dig through her canvas bag of yarns. Then Mom pulled out the Chinese take-out menu and we each got to choose a dish to order.
"You know what that means, kiddo," Dad would say with a wink my way. I was his special helper.
As soon as Dad and I climbed into the station wagon, he would turn on Woody's Children, Woody Guthrie's radio show where he sang folk songs with a team of banjos and little kids whom I imagined living on a prairie and frolicking through enchanted forests. Dad usually had one palm on the steering wheel and with the other he'd tap out Woody's rhythmic rhapsodies on my thigh. We'd sing "This Land Is Your Land" and "If I Had a Hammer" and scores of songs about love and dandelion wine, rolling into new melodies as effortlessly as the hills themselves. Sometimes Dad went extra slow and switched the headlights to bright so we could search for raccoons. There was never anybody out except for us. In the car, on the road, in the whole world.
It was two months after Aunt Simone died and the cicadas had finally gone; the first snow of the season had just fallen, but it was too clumpy and uneven to warrant a school closing the next day. The grass poked through in little hairy patches and the air was the sharpest kind of cold in my nostrils. The station wagon took a long time to warm up and the vents could muster only small splutters of lukewarm mist that smelled burnt. There was no time to look for raccoons on the way to the restaurant. The food'll get cold, Dad explained. He also didn't sing along with Woody, so I decided I shouldn't either.
When we got to the China Lion parking lot, Dad gave me a fold of money that I squeezed in my fist. I walked past the two stone lions guarding the tall wooden doors, my back stiff and straight, and told the lady at the desk who looked like a China doll our last name. She knew me because this was my job every week. She put the greasy brown paper bag in my hands and made me promise to walk carefully to the car so nothing tipped.
"That's some hot chopsticks. You okay?" Dad said when I got back to the car.
"No prob, slob," I said, nodding proudly.
We were quiet as snow again the whole way home. I held the bag on my lap and opened just one corner so I could sniff the moo goo gai pan dripping into the vegetable lo mein and then into the General Tso's, seeping into a salty puddle on the bottom. My thighs got red and tight from the heat, but I didn't budge an inch. Not even when we got home and Dad turned off the engine and we just sat there in the driveway. The Japanese maple tree that Dad had planted was sighing and swaying above us and the car was ticking and farting out leftover exhaust and I wasn't sure why we were still in the car while Mom and Betsy were inside waiting for the food. I snuck a peek over at Dad but he was looking out at the snow so I looked there too.
Then he said, "Hey kiddo, you know what? You go on ahead. I'll meet you inside."
"Huh?"
"Food's getting cold. I'll be right there."
I didn't want to go, but it felt as though he was waiting for me to leave, setting his face toward the windshield so I couldn't even guess what his eyes were saying. By the time I slid out and walked to his side of the car, he was standing next to it with the door open, letting out a long, heavy breath.
"I'll wait for you if..."
"Just go!" he said, and there was something coarse and ragged in his voice that I'd never heard before, icier even than the night sky.
I started up the walk, hugging the bag close. I could hear the wax paper from the egg rolls crinkling and my corduroys rubbing together. I could hear everything. Especially something rumbling behind me. A horrible noise somewhere between a groan and a growl. When I turned around my father was crouched on the lawn. I ducked among the hedges so he couldn't see me and through the tangle of frozen branches I watched his body roll forward, the muscles in the back of his neck clenched together. He vomited into the snow. It made a small, steaming hole in the ground. He stayed there on his hands and knees, staring into it, this place where his insides had gone. I stayed staring too. At the moon falling on his head just where his crown of hair curled up at the ends. At his shoulders rising up like looming hilltops under his jacket and his jaw drooping open like a dog's. At how small he was all of a sudden.
Then he leaned back on his heels, took a scoop of fresh snow, and covered the hole so it looked like this moment had never happened.
I crept into the house through the side door and delivered my leaky parcel to Mom, then went to wash my hands. When I got to the dinner table, Dad was already there, licking his lips.
"Mmm, I'm hungry," he said, and gave me a quick smile. I didn't look at him for the rest of the meal.
After I'd helped with the dishes, when I was supposed to be getting ready for bed, I slinked into my parents' room. It was completely dark except for the light from the street, and the blue spotted wallpaper looked like a sky turned inside out. I went to the window to find the hole my father had covered up. It was under the snow somewhere, I knew it, and I had to find it and see if it had grown bigger or deeper. I needed to know where it led. I had this queasy feeling it could be tunneling down all the way through the ground like sour molten lava. Only, when I got to the window, I couldn't see anything on the ground except white. In school they had made us cut out paper snowflakes and then write about how each one was unique and delicate. That was a lie. This snow was not delicate at all. It was monotonous and hard and it made the entire universe slowly sink into its unyielding hush. And I knew something ugly and sinister was lurking just below it.
"What are you doing?" Betsy was standing in the doorway in only her underwear and bra. She had a line of cream bleach on her upper lip.
"Nothing. What are you doing?"
"Nothing. You shouldn't be in Mom and Dad's room, you know."
"You shouldn't either." I wanted to sound tough, but my voice came out thin and whiny.
"I'm just getting the nail scissors. What are you doing?"
"I'm just...looking."
"At what?" said Betsy, putting her hand on her hip.
"Never mind," I snarled as I stomped past her. I wasn't about to tell her that I was looking for a pile of hidden puke.
"Freak," I heard her grumble as she closed her bedroom door.
I checked every night from different windows in the house. The snow turned gray and splotchy and then it broke into warped continents across the lawn, but there was still no sign of the hole. Not even a speck. I tried to measure where the car was parked and where Dad's knees could've sunk in the ground, but any mark he had made was gone. I didn't even know what I was looking for after a while; I just knew I had to look for it. It was as if the dirty snow had swallowed this fermenting secret and every time I stepped over it, or worse, on top of it, I was driving it farther into the earth's core. I hated that I was the only one who knew it was there and that I had become its sentinel, watching to see where it would surface. One night when Mom was tucking me into bed, I tried to tell her that I had seen something that maybe I shouldn't have. Just in case Dad hadn't told her; I didn't want him to get in trouble.
"I think I might've seen Dad maybe get sick."
"What do you mean, sick?"
"I think maybe throw-up sick. Maybe."
"I don't think so, sweetie. But even if he did, you know sometimes his gas gets bad. Don't worry. I'll make sure he eats more Tums."
Then it snowed again and this time it fell in thick, imposing flakes. I knew I'd never find the hole after that, no matter how hard I looked, but I couldn't stop. I also decided that for the rest of the winter I would enter the house only through the side door and I would step on the stone wall to get there. I didn't trust the frozen front lawn at all.
Inside our house wasn't much better. The radio was still on continually, but it had subsided to a muted chatter and I knew without asking that we were not to raise our voices above it. Dad began staying home from work a lot and going to doctors' appointments. Mom said that something was going on with his kidneys, a genetic disease. The doctors were working on it, but in the meantime, we had to leave all the cranberry juice for him and not make too much noise.
Often when I came home from school, Dad was already in his drippy dungarees and cream-colored fisherman's sweater, shuffling around the living room in his moccasin slippers with his hands in his back pockets as if he was holding his kidneys into his sagging frame. Sometimes he was asleep in the big armchair, his head listing backward, the skin of his neck collecting limply like a plucked chicken's.
I'd clear my throat and he would jolt forward to declare groggily, "Well, hello there, madam!" scrambling to rearrange his face into a genteel grin as if he hadn't been asleep and I was a Southern belle sidling up for lemonade.
"Hi, Dad. What are you doing here?" I'd ask. I didn't intend to sound mean, but I didn't like it when he was home before me. I'd think about all those other dads coming up the hill from the train with their blue suits and briefcases and get impatient with him for being so droopy and pale.
"Oh, you know," he'd say.
I didn't know. I didn't know anything. I never learned the whole story. I didn't know how that hole had dragged us all down into its evil silence. I didn't know why Dad's sweater had grown so long and loose that he was lost in it and I was too scared to ask where he had gone. I didn't know when the diagnosis had changed because first Mom would say it was a fever and then Dad would say it's nothing and then Betsy and I were in th...
Most helpful customer reviews
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
Wonderful book
By book lover
Amen, Amen Amen is a brilliant, creative, genuine, and heart-wrenching account of Abby Sher's experience with life, love, and loss. Rarely do we as readers see so clearly how a child's mind works to make sense of the complex world around her. It is a must read for anyone who has struggled to understand the ways of the world - meaning it is a must read for just about everyone.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Beautiful
By Annie
Sher's frank portrait of growing up with obsessive compulsive disorder is well-written and moving. OCD is often seen as a humorous disorder that causes people to be neat freaks or do quirky things like turn the lights on and off fifteen times so the oceans don't dry up. Amen, Amen, Amen rips the comedic veil off OCD and exposes it for what it is: a disorder that can ravage a person's life. It begins slowly, with repeating prayers a certain number of times daily, and ultimately leads to an eating disorder as well as other major life problems.
Amen, Amen, Amen is beautiful and heatbreaking, a painful snapshot of what it's like to experience loss and to be mentally ill, but it never bogs down into hopelessness.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
Honest and funny memoir
By Zora O'Neill
Wow. Such skilled writing! What I found most compelling about this book is the subtle way Sher's voice grows up as the book progresses. She recaptures the confusion of her 10-year-old self trying to fit huge, adult issues into her kid worldview, then shifts just as easily into teen angst, and again into more self-aware adulthood.
And throughout it all, even though the various OCD rituals, bad relationships and anorexia crisis, she maintains a stellar sense of humor. AND she avoids painting anyone in her life as cruel or evil. AND it doesn't have a magical completely happy ending.
So this is no maudlin "My Struggle with [X]" memoir--it's a smart, thoughtful book about a woman who just happens to deal with some big psychological issues. And it made me look at my own little compulsive habits and how they affect my relationships.
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