Zen Life Kit

There’s a lot of talk about Zen these days, but not much understanding about what it is, or how to be Zen. This kit will introduce you to Zen and how you can awaken to it in your life. The kit contains:

• $50 gift card to East-West Bookstore in Mountain View, CA
• Two books, signed by author Karen Maezen Miller

  Karen Maezen Miller calls herself an errant wife, delinquent mother, reluctant dog walker, expert laundress and stationmaster of the full catastrophe. In real life, she is a Zen Buddhist priest at the Hazy Moon Zen Center in Los Angeles. She and her family live in Sierra Madre, California, with a century-old Japanese garden in their backyard.

  Momma Zen: Walking the Crooked Path of Motherhood
  

  Combining humor, honesty, and plainspoken advice, Momma Zen distills the doubts and frustrations of parenting into vignettes of Zen wisdom. Drawing on her experience as a first-time mother, and on her years of Zen meditation and study, Miller explores how the daily challenges of parenthood can become the most profound spiritual journey of our lives. This compelling and wise memoir follows the timeline of early motherhood from pregnancy through toddlerhood. Momma Zen takes readers on a transformative journey, charting a mother’s growth beyond naive expectations and disorientation to finding fulfillment in ordinary tasks, developing greater self-awareness and acceptance—to the gradual discovery of “maternal bliss,” a state of abiding happiness and ease that is available to us all. In her gentle and reassuring voice, Karen Miller convinces us that ancient and authentic spiritual lessons can be as familiar as a lullaby, as ordinary as pureed peas, and as frequent as a sleepless night. She offers encouragement for the hard days, consolation for the long haul, and the lightheartedness every new mom needs to face the crooked path of motherhood straight on.

  –Amazon description

  Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life
  

  It’s easy to think that meaning, fulfillment, and bliss are “out there,” somewhere outside of our daily routine. But in this playful yet profound reflection on awareness, the compelling voice of a contemporary woman reveals the happiness at the bottom of the laundry basket, the love in the kitchen sink, and the peace possible in one’s own backyard. Follow Karen Maezen Miller through youthful ambition and self-absorption, beyond a broken marriage, and into the steady calm of a so-called ordinary life. In her hands, household chores and caregiving tasks become opportunities for self-examination, lessons in relationship, and liberating moments of selflessness. With attention, it’s the little things — even the unexpected, unpleasant, and unwanted things — that count.

  –Amazon description

• A handmade bookmark
• A small statue of goddess Quan Yin, one of the most universally beloved of deities in the Buddhist tradition. She is the embodiment of compassionate loving kindness.
• A Jacob’s Musical Car Charms to soothe and relax as you navigate the busy highways of life. Chime maker Jacob Sokoloff hand tunes these car chimes to produce a musical sound guaranteed to make you smile.
• A box of Morningstar Incense

Donated by the Harper Family
Value $100

Yet I struggle. When I think back over my childhood and school experiences, I don’t wax nostalgic. The first memories that come to mind are not happy ones. In a perfect storm combining my personality, family milieu, and the outside world, I entered kindergarten absolutely not ready for school or the world.

I was a timid, docile child, perceptive and agonizingly sensitive. I had older sisters who were in school full-time when I was pre-school age, so I had no experience playing with peers and navigating the conflict that arises from this. My first day of kindergarten I was so scared I refused to eat snack and cried. Throughout elementary school I seemed to attract unkind treatment. By the time I entered middle school, my way of dealing with peers was to bury my nose in a book and remain detached. I didn’t socialize much with people in or out of school. My self-confidence measured near zero.

One evening I talked with Hub about a school memory that still causes tears (and if I get started, I recall others that do too). My husband asked, “What would you have wished for?” The six-year-old me had a ready answer: to feel safe.

I have since written in a private post at least 20 events at or near school through my youth that generated a lot of pain then and have the power to still. Now, I know that many people experienced bullying or hurtful incidents in school. My husband has even described memories. However, he (and others) don’t carry the pain as I do, and don’t project it all onto their child’s life. Re-reading my list, I have to remind myself that these incidents occurred over thousands of days of school. I’m certain that many of those days were at least neutral, and just as many were happy days, or contained happy moments. My life wasn’t a torment every single day. My list of injuries strikes me as banal.

So what the hell is the problem?

The pain is not something I nurture; I don’t ruminate anymore over my past injuries. It comes unbidden, rising and engulfing me like a rapid tide whenever I observe my child encountering difficulty (e.g., rejection — whether perceived by her or real). I am transported instantly to childhood and respond accordingly, but this is overlaid with the protectiveness of a mother, and so all my energy goes awry. I personalize Claire’s experiences as my own. It interferes with my ability to be present for her.

Part of this pain is just a parent’s burden. We worry about our children. We ache for them. We want to protect them. Yet I feel that somehow I respond internally in a way that many (most?) other parents don’t. I feel raw and unable to maintain composure. Claire detects and absorbs my anxiety.

Observing Claire deal with her hurt feelings brings a mixture of pain on her behalf, irritation that she’s not tougher, and fear for her well-being in the world. I cannot control what she encounters out there when she starts school full-time this fall. However, I can provide a loving, peaceful, supportive home environment; home can be safe haven. But only if I manage to separate my angst-ridden ego from its Herculean attachment to my past.

So here is my question (italicized below), arising from a Mary Oliver poem, “Wild Geese”:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Tell me your despair. Tell me your childhood school memories. Are they happy or harsh, or a mix? Tell me if they still rule you, and if not, how did you win freedom?

The child is made of one hundred.

The child has a hundred languages,
a hundred hands,
a hundred thoughts,
a hundred ways of thinking, of playing, of speaking.

A hundred, always a hundred,
ways of listening,
of marveling,
of loving,
a hundred joys for singing and understanding,
a hundred worlds to discover,
a hundred worlds to invent,
a hundred worlds to dream.
The child has a hundred languages (and a hundred hundred hundred more),
but they steal ninety nine.
The school and the culture separate the head from the body.
They tell the child:
to think without hands,
do without heads,
to listen and not to speak,
to understand without joy,
to love and to marvel… only at Easter and Christmas.
They tell the child:
to discover the world already there and of the hundred they steal ninety nine.
They tell the child:
that work and play,
reality and fantasy,
science and imagination,
sky and earth,
reason and dream,
are things that do not belong together.
And thus they tell the child that the hundred is not there.
The child says no way. The hundred is there.

–Loris Malaguzzi, Italian Early Childhood Education Specialist, 1994

Email is one of the few private spaces left in this hyper-sharing age. Sam Biddle at Gizmodo says, “This isn’t about having something to hide — it’s about keeping meaningful boundaries in an era when there are verrrrry few. We all need whatever scraps of privacy we have left, and your email is just that.”

Trust is an important bedrock for any relationship, but this isn’t trust. This is mutually assured trust destruction. Intimacy comes from sharing select private information with people, not giving them keys to your privacy kingdom.

When you share your password with someone, you open yourself up to the obvious downsides suggested by the Times. But you’re not just violating your own privacy, you’re violating that of everyone you correspond with. People send an email to your account assuming you’re the only one who will see it. They realize there’s a risk you might share the news with significant others, friends, family, or a random stranger on the bus, but there’s a reasonable assumption that you don’t have someone else reading your email.

–Kashmir Hill, Why Sharing Passwords With Your Girlfriend/Boyfriend Is A Spectacularly Bad Idea, Forbes

There are two different types of time. Chronos time is what we live in. It’s regular time, it’s one minute at a time, it’s staring down the clock till bedtime time, it’s ten excruciating minutes in the Target line time, it’s four screaming minutes in time out time, it’s two hours till daddy gets home time. Chronos is the hard, slow passing time we parents often live in.

Then there’s Kairos time. Kairos is God’s time. It’s time outside of time. It’s metaphysical time. It’s those magical moments in which time stands still. I have a few of those moments each day. And I cherish them.

Like when I actually stop what I’m doing and really look at Tish. I notice how perfectly smooth and brownish her skin is. I notice the perfect curves of her teeny elf mouth and her asianish brown eyes, and I breathe in her soft Tishy smell. In these moments, I see that her mouth is moving but I can’t hear her because all I can think is — This is the first time I’ve really seen Tish all day, and my God — she is so beautiful. Kairos.

Like when I’m stuck in chronos time in the grocery line and I’m haggard and annoyed and angry at the slow check-out clerk. And then I look at my cart and I’m transported out of chronos. And suddenly I notice the piles and piles of healthy food I’ll feed my children to grow their bodies and minds and I remember that most of the world’s mamas would kill for this opportunity. This chance to stand in a grocery line with enough money to pay. And I just stare at my cart. At the abundance. The bounty. Thank you, God. Kairos.

Or when I curl up in my cozy bed with Theo asleep at my feet and Craig asleep by my side and I listen to them both breathing. And for a moment, I think- how did a girl like me get so lucky? To go to bed each night surrounded by this breath, this love, this peace, this warmth? Kairos.

These kairos moments leave as fast as they come- but I mark them. I say the word kairos in my head each time I leave chronos. And at the end of the day, I don’t remember exactly what my kairos moments were, but I remember I had them. And that makes the pain of the daily parenting climb worth it.

–Glennon Melton, Don’t Carpe Diem

For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

–James Baldwin

Happy new year, anyway.

We have more and more ways to communicate, as Thoreau noted, but less and less to say. Partly because we’re so busy communicating. And — as he might also have said — we’re rushing to meet so many deadlines that we hardly register that what we need most are lifelines.

So what to do? The central paradox of the machines that have made our lives so much brighter, quicker, longer and healthier is that they cannot teach us how to make the best use of them; the information revolution came without an instruction manual. All the data in the world cannot teach us how to sift through data; images don’t show us how to process images. The only way to do justice to our onscreen lives is by summoning exactly the emotional and moral clarity that can’t be found on any screen.

–Pico Iyer, The Joy of Quiet

]]> http://www.kathrynpetroharper.com/mindfullife/2012/01/02/a-new-year/feed/ 2 http://www.kathrynpetroharper.com/mindfullife/2011/09/20/a-haiku-3/ http://www.kathrynpetroharper.com/mindfullife/2011/09/20/a-haiku-3/#comments Tue, 20 Sep 2011 07:38:44 +0000 Kathryn http://www.kathrynpetroharper.com/mindfullife/?p=6831 An urban prison–
hopelessness creates the bars,
hardship is the guard.

“Los Angeles 35MM Shots” by Brian Utley c2003 / bingwalker

]]> http://www.kathrynpetroharper.com/mindfullife/2011/09/20/a-haiku-3/feed/ 0 http://www.kathrynpetroharper.com/mindfullife/2011/08/28/brief-notes/ http://www.kathrynpetroharper.com/mindfullife/2011/08/28/brief-notes/#comments Mon, 29 Aug 2011 04:40:45 +0000 Kathryn http://www.kathrynpetroharper.com/mindfullife/?p=6798 I just returned from my first sesshin at Hazy Moon Zen Center. It was fruitful. I’m tired and glad to be home. All that I experienced is settling, so I hesitate to write extensively about it. Here are some brief reflections. The first one is from my drive down, when I stopped at San Luis Reservoir for a break. The entire drive leads through two mountain ranges (the Diablo Mountains with the Pacheco Pass and the Tehachapi Mountains with the Tejon Pass) and the central valley; it’s beautiful country. It’s a six hour drive (one way) — which is just right.
—–

The lake — a bowl of glitter!
Winds whisper to water,
waves murmur replies.
A crow flies, snail snared
in its beak.
—–

Rooster crows, broom sweeps.
A car growls to life.
Helicopters thump the sky.
Pigeon wings slap air.
Sirens keen, dogs bark.
Zazen in L.A.
—–

My food – Advil.
My nectar – water.
My balm – sleep.
—–

Now the cushion
Now the breath
Now the work.
Samadhi does not
come in a box or book.
It cannot be imagined
or conjured.
Bells, incense, bows, chants
bring dignity and form
to the formless.
But above all,
it is about the work.
Breath.
Samadhi.
—–

Cresting the mountain,
valley a blanket spread low;
slices of miles served -
feast towards home.

]]> http://www.kathrynpetroharper.com/mindfullife/2011/08/28/brief-notes/feed/ 1 http://www.kathrynpetroharper.com/mindfullife/2011/08/23/and-now/ http://www.kathrynpetroharper.com/mindfullife/2011/08/23/and-now/#comments Tue, 23 Aug 2011 23:36:53 +0000 Kathryn http://www.kathrynpetroharper.com/mindfullife/?p=6781 Today Claire asked to make Simba, from the Lion King. She hasn’t seen the movies but is obsessed with the songs, especially The Lion Sleeps Tonight, Hakuna Matata, and He Lives In You. She wanted to also make his father and an elephant friend. Thank goodness for paper plates, construction paper, glue and paint! Claire painted the whole thing. She cut the noses of the lions and them and the eyes on. She glued the elephants nails and eyes on.

Last week we made necklaces for each other, because on Thursday I head to Hazy Moon Zen Center to sit my first sesshin with my teacher, Maezen, and Nyogen Roshi. We used Shrinky Dinks, and I wrote her message to me and one to her (the handwriting is choppy because I wrote backward so it would read properly on the shiny side.) My favorite color is green and hers is yellow (though trending toward pink), so we’ll feel connected while I’m gone. I’m sure we’ll feel connected regardless, but this is a tangible connection for us both, a sort of talisman. It will be a fine time for Claire and her Daddy to go on special outings. I’ll be home Sunday evening from “Buddhist Summer Camp” (as Hub jokingly calls it) — one step (at least) closer to enlightenment.

Next up: thinking of something cool for dinner. It’s been mild this summer, but today it’s 95F! No complaints here. Hakuna Matata!

]]> http://www.kathrynpetroharper.com/mindfullife/2011/08/23/and-now/feed/ 0 http://www.kathrynpetroharper.com/mindfullife/2011/08/08/more-summer-fun/ http://www.kathrynpetroharper.com/mindfullife/2011/08/08/more-summer-fun/#comments Mon, 08 Aug 2011 16:08:58 +0000 Kathryn http://www.kathrynpetroharper.com/mindfullife/?p=6652 We’ve been busy climbing and splashing and creating! Claire had a total of three weeks of swimming lessons. She is still shy about getting her face in the water and going under water, but she had a blast with her teachers. She very specifically insisted on lady teachers “because they are more gentle.” (She had a man the first day and cried, and refused to even allow a man to put her into the pool.) She practiced floating on her back and kicking…

…and jumping into the instructor’s arms.

We’ve also been playing with our food:

One day Claire asked for a knife and began slicing up pepper slices I’d given her. Once she cut them all, she ate them. Never before had she asked to do this, and she demonstrated real dexterity at cutting. That brain of hers is always growing!

Yesterday we took a day trip to Mount Madonna County Park. It’s a gorgeous park, and they also have campgrounds, which we may reserve for later. Here’s the scenic view of the valley:

And up-close views of beautiful mosses and lichen:

We saw California banana slugs:

And a Santa Cruz Gartersnake basking in a spot of sun:

The redwoods are amazing:

These were the Twin Giants:

We had fun hiking the trails:

We visited the Henry Miller Summer Home ruins, and Claire hopped around:

A view from within the former house:

Claire had many questions about the former house and why no one took care of it anymore:

We walked and walked, and later she had a nap on the way home:

We’ve played with paint and paper plates:

And we’ve started collecting our spare change in a jar which we decorated. We’ll empty it periodically and use it to donate to the food bank, or the Family Giving Tree, or some other worthy organization.

And so our summer continues!

]]> http://www.kathrynpetroharper.com/mindfullife/2011/08/08/more-summer-fun/feed/ 1 http://www.kathrynpetroharper.com/mindfullife/2011/07/23/summer-days/ http://www.kathrynpetroharper.com/mindfullife/2011/07/23/summer-days/#comments Sun, 24 Jul 2011 03:32:48 +0000 Kathryn http://www.kathrynpetroharper.com/mindfullife/?p=6635 The lull of summer has me reading a lot but writing little. This blog has become a pictorial daybook with a few quotes tossed in for spice. Well, I blame the summer, but evidence shows that this is the trend my life has taken for the past year. Somewhere along the way I feel I’ve lost my mind. Not in a mental-illness sense, but more in a “I’m a thinking person who has thoughts about what’s happening in the world and am capable of articulating them.” Yet unfortunately, I feel increasingly removed from it all, and apathetic; I rarely read news or listen to NPR anymore. It didn’t help the other day when I read an article about Sheryl Sandberg in the New Yorker. I’m so utterly unaccomplished, my ego tells me. I’m just a mother. Just a housewife (and not an exceptionally good one at that). Just nothing.

But aren’t we all nothing? Everything changes. Human endeavor fades and is forgotten. Eventually we all end up the same place. And there is freedom in knowing and accepting this. Freedom to pay attention to what matters right now, and to enjoy this moment. That’s my bit of insight for today, because it’s late, and I’ve just finished sweeping, mopping, folding, washing, changing sheets, and pilling the cat. Meanwhile, take a peek at what’s been happening.

Claire earned her princess bike because she graduated to being a big girl and uses the potty. Pedaling and steering take concentration!

She also had her first session of swim lessons and loved it, especially her teacher. She’ll have one more week, and then we’ll see.

I did a lot of cutting, gluing, and tying, but Claire decorated with glitter glue and stickers. It moves beautifully in the slightest breeze.

We did this craft awhile back, right after 4th of July!

Claire had me draw the rainbow and face, and she colored the rainbow and decided to use beads for flowers.

]]> http://www.kathrynpetroharper.com/mindfullife/2011/07/23/summer-days/feed/ 2 http://www.kathrynpetroharper.com/mindfullife/2011/07/18/neighborliness-and-continuity/ http://www.kathrynpetroharper.com/mindfullife/2011/07/18/neighborliness-and-continuity/#comments Tue, 19 Jul 2011 01:13:27 +0000 Kathryn http://www.kathrynpetroharper.com/mindfullife/?p=6606

While the spirit of neighborliness was important on the frontier because neighbors were so few, it is even more important now because our neighbors are so many.

-Lady Bird Johnson

One generation plants the trees; another gets the shade.

–Chinese proverb

I am standing upon the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white
sails to the morning breeze and starts
for the blue ocean.

She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her until at length
she hangs like a speck of white cloud
just where the sea and sky come
to mingle with each other.

Then, someone at my side says;
“There, she is gone!”

“Gone where?”
Gone from my sight. That is all.
She is just as large in mast and hull
and spar as she was when she left my side
and she is just as able to bear her
load of living freight to her destined port.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her.

And just at the moment when someone
at my side says, “There, she is gone!”
There are other eyes watching her coming,
and other voices ready to take up the glad shout;
“Here she comes!”
And that is dying.

–Henry Van Dyke

Lift your arm. Let it fall onto your leg. Simple?

Is existence simple?

Consider that there are two massive objects: the earth — the whole big round rock of it — and your relaxed arm. The reality of the earth’s gravitational pull can be experienced in the heavy fall of your arm. Drop your arm again, cosmically this time.

OK, here is a less obvious thought: the mass of your arm is attracting the mass of the earth. Earth-arm force is just as reciprocal as earth-moon force, or in twin stars, star-star force. The earth is falling toward your arm as your arm is falling toward the earth. The attraction is mutual. It’s love.

There’s a binding force in nature, and gravity is its large-scale expression. Every time you drop your hand, or take a step, or hoe the garden, it is the experience of eternal love. Our bones and the earth are lovers; they embrace when we sleep, they mate when we die.

–W. A. Mathieu, The Listening Book: Discovering Your Own Music

At preschool, Claire had a tendency to hurtle into tears if a small thing didn’t go her way, or if she perceived some other child’s behavior as a slight. My response typically had been to croon, hug, and comfort. For instance, one day she brought a stuffed animal with her. In circle time we sing hello to everybody. When we sang hello to her and went on to the next child, she wanted us to sing hello to her animal. When we didn’t, she was more than crestfallen; she was crushed. She burst into sobs, got up, and came running to me.

Claire worried a lot about the other kids not liking her. She thought they might laugh at or make fun of her. (At this age, the kids are only just starting to play together, and she was worried about that?) She was moody. She wanted to control and direct the story of all the pretend play with other kids (and Mommy and Daddy). On the days I was working at the school, she wanted all of my attention. Especially when it came time for me to be in parent discussion.

I began to feel less like a mother and more like her pawn. The neediness in her was insatiable, and her behavior more like a tyrant. I talked with her teacher about it, and she suggested I back off a little. As an example, she talked about the day we didn’t sing hello to her animal. The teacher said, “Your response was to cuddle and reinforce the sadness. But another way to respond is to say, ‘That’s just not what we do here! We sing hello to the students, not all their toys!’ And to help her to lighten up and see it isn’t a big deal.”

And that’s when I realized something. I was teetering on the brink of overcompensating for my own childhood. Not every occasion of disappointment requires deep empathy. Part of my duty as a mother is to prepare Claire to ride with changes, to be flexible. I also had not realized how frightening it must be for Claire to have as much power over me as she did. When she was a baby, she needed all of me, and I gave it. What she needs now, as she moves into the world, is to need less of me. So I began to set more boundaries on what she could have of me. One day she forgot a toy in the car that she wanted for show and tell; it had been her task to remember. When I would not take her back to the car to retrieve it — since we’d gotten to class — Claire gave a world-class demonstration of temper. But I held firm, and she survived and learned a lesson about responsibility.

I continued to heed the teacher’s words that “what you pay attention to grows” and gave more attention to joy than sorrow. Remarkably, within a couple of weeks I, the teacher, and other parents noticed a significant change. Claire began to play with the kids more and less by herself. She participated more in circle time, singing and dancing. She didn’t intrude on me during discussion and instead after snack said, “Bye Mom!” and went outside to play for the last hour. She didn’t attempt to check on me, to get my attention or tell me “something important.”

To sleep, perchance…

When Claire turned three she attempted to stop napping. Her doctor expressed concern about this, because, she said, three-year-olds still really do need a nap. It was true. Claire only slept 9-10 hours at night, and I could see she benefitted from her naps. After a week of refusing to nap, Claire was falling over with exhaustion and emotionally explosive. She also got really sick with a high fever the day before we took a big trip.

Doctor suggested I offer incentives, e.g., “If you nap, you can watch a show after.” (Or whatever special treat might work for Claire.) The bribe of extra t.v. worked until it didn’t — about one week. I tried quiet time, during which she wouldn’t fall asleep but would rock and listen to music for an hour, but this still didn’t provide her the rest she needed. So I returned to the way we handled naps for the first seven months of her life. I rocked her, sang to her, and held her for the duration of the nap, dozing with her.

This worked well. We had preschool two afternoons a week and it was clear those took a toll, but over the school year her stamina increased. And with the steady increase of stamina came the resistance to nap again. I was able to override her refusal most of the time, sometimes by cajoling, other times by threatening (I’ll leave the room and close the door).

When I went away for my getaway weekend, Claire didn’t nap, of course. And when I returned, I allowed this to remain. She is adjusting. She is slightly more tired during the day than she used to be, but it seems a steady state. Her night sleep has increased somewhat, and the quiet hour rejuvenates us both. Best of all, a new world is opening up, the one where we can be unconcerned about “getting home in time” for the nap window. And rather than a two-hour semi-nap sitting up with a crick in my neck, I get one blessed hour to meditate and read while she rocks and listens to music.

So skinny she hula hoops with a cheerio

In April we took our cat to the vet for a blood test, and Claire happened to step on the huge dog scale for fun. The scale read her weight as 28 pounds. I was shocked. It couldn’t be right! She weighed 29 pounds at her annual visit last September!

I’d always fretted about Claire’s nutrition and eating habits. Except for bologna and hot dogs, she eschewed meat. She refuses all forms of milk: cow, soy, almond, flavored, regular, etc. She doesn’t eat much yogurt or cheese. She eats veggies, but only mostly raw. She eats fruit, but only a certain few. Meals involved me asking her what she wanted to eat and trying to please her. Dinners meant cooking something I knew she’d eat, but her whims changed. For awhile I even fed her separately.

Yet here she was weighing less. So we went to her doctor. I learned she had grown taller — 2.5 inches since last September, and since she hadn’t been gaining her growth curve was a little skewed. Her BMI is 13 (what I wouldn’t give for that). Overall, the doctor wasn’t worried because growth occurred. She suggested I take the PAMF Feeding Your Preschooler class for ideas I might use. I came away with a huge list of food Claire does eat and saw that for the most part she is eating well. I learned that my concept of portion sizes for kids was distorted. I learned that we’d be better served if I quit offering her snacks (even salad veggies) to eat while she watched PBS before dinner.

So I relaxed. We have all meals and snacks at table now. I established a firmer schedule and held to it; if she doesn’t eat snack when it’s snack time and decides she’s hungry before lunch/dinner, she just has to wait. I decide what to offer and she either eats or not. I sit with her for all meals (it’s no fun to eat by yourself). I’ve cooked more foods I like despite knowing she won’t probably eat them. Every meal now has bread on the table along with salad, so she’ll get something in her. And guess what has happened? Claire is trying more foods! She has decided she likes pepperoni pizza (previously only cheese would do), cherries, and breakfast sausage.

This combination of releasing the worry and desire to control and establishing parent-driven meal times and menus has freed us. I do my job: offer healthy foods at appropriate times. She does her job deciding whether and what to eat. Talk at mealtimes now focuses on topics other than food, and “encouragement” to eat more. I don’t think she’s gained weight so far, but I see now that I can relax and accept my little petite “Eclaire” and enjoy her. We enjoy each other and our meals more now.

The last step of toddlerhood

I want to keep potty-training stories to a minimum in consideration of Claire’s privacy. Suffice it to say that she’s been ready and resistant for some time, but in part her resistance reflected my own. There have been attempts to use the potty since she was two, but I didn’t push because I feared a power struggle. But last week Claire declared she wanted to wear panties (for the second month in a row, the first being April but she quit after a weekend). And I said okay, and that it meant the changing pad, diaper pail, and all Pull-ups were going away forever. (She hugged her changing pad good-bye.)

The first few days were rocky, and I despaired. But we have persisted, and I’ve devised a way to encourage and reward her daily for her effort and increasing competence. She knows she will be enrolled in swimming lessons now, and that after our trip east she’ll get a “princess bike” she yearns for. For shorter-term rewards, she’s getting smaller things. She wanted pink “tap shoes” (Mary Janes), and so this was her gift for completing one week of using the potty. She also lately pines for “princess bubble bath” and, of all things, an American flag, so her gift for the end of the second week will likely be those. They are small, tangible reinforcements of her success. Not too far in the future I see the sticker chart, small candies, and weekly prizes will fade as this function just becomes a routine in her life.

Momma is all grown up! At least for now, for this age and stage and minute. And Claire? Well, she jumps for joy!

In 2006, out of nowhere (and everywhere) a woman contacted me after reading my blog. She had read about my attempts to get pregnant, the miscarriages, the misgivings. She had recently published a book and asked if I would be interested in a complimentary copy. I said yes, although I couldn’t bring myself to read it for quite awhile. Once I was pregnant with Claire, I did read it, devoured it with gratitude and gusto, and I repeatedly returned to that book for comfort and wisdom.

That woman’s name is Karen Maezen Miller. She is a Zen Buddhist priest, a wife, and a mother. I credit her with helping me remain sane and growing into motherhood. After Claire was born and began to exhibit colic, I was panicked and beside myself with agony. Claire wasn’t sleeping. Hub was doing his best but he wasn’t sleeping either. I was terrified I’d do something wrong. Many emails sailed between us — me writing laments, she responding with love. And even though we’d never met, Maezen offered a gift: to come up one weekend and help out with Claire so Hub and I could rest. We talked on the phone to discuss it, and it turned out that this was enough at the time; just knowing the offer was sincere and standing and hearing her voice in the wilderness helped.

I’d seen Maezen subsequently three times; in 2008 she and her daughter visited me and Claire briefly just before Claire’s first birthday; in 2009 at the Mother’s Symposium and 2010 at a one-day retreat. I read her second book. I pondered her thoughts about the importance of having a teacher. And finally, last weekend, I had my first weekend ever away from home and Claire. I drove to Sierra Madre to spend the weekend with Maezen and her family; I also attended a beginner’s meditation class and a dharma talk at Hazy Moon Zen Center. And there it dawned on me that I already have a teacher — Maezen! — and that without realizing it I’d become a student.

It is time to commit. It is time to practice. So I’d like to introduce my new best friend, the “cushion of kindness,” as Maezen calls it. The technical name is zafu. And when I sit on my zafu, this is called zazen. This is where the revolution takes place. Facing a blank wall, alone, silent, counting my breaths, and being awake.

I am not yet in a position of making a formal commitment. That will come when it comes. It is not lost on me that one of my favorite quotes, which I encountered in 1998, is by Hui-Neng, a Zen monastic from the 7th/8th century. “The secret is within your self.” It’s been there all along, waiting for me to look, and see.

The other watershed quote that inspired me to move from Syracuse to Austin in the early 90s was by Sir Edmund Hilary, organizer of a Mount Everest Expedition, and it too rings familiarly as I observe what is changing. The snippet that motivated me I have italicized, but the entire quote is priceless.

“Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his/her way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: What ever you can do, or dream you can; begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”

My next trip to Sierra Madre will probably be later in the summer or fall, when they offer a three-day retreat at the center. So, hello world! My name is Kathryn and I am, at last, “abuddha” (awake).

I’m so grateful.

I assembled these soup and cookie mixes to donate to our preschool raffle, and to give to friends in gratitude for their practical care during my recent events.