Coffee With the Buddha

I grew up in a suburb some distance from Minneapolis, far enough out that kids made a special trip to go there but most people didn't go that often, close enough that a few of our parents worked there. And when I was in high school--newly minted driver's license and the freedom that came with it, grunge and coffee culture on the rise--I suddenly discovered this entire city that had been just out of my reach. It had multiple universities filled with the most interesting people, it had one-way streets which I was constantly trying to go the wrong way on, and it had all these coffee shops.

There was this one coffee shop in particular. It sat (sits, though I only ever drive past it nowadays on the way to the pediatrician) right on the edge of the U of M campus, where the university meets the bars, which meet the vegetarian restaurants, which meet the low-income housing. It's an amazing conflux of places, and in those days, it was an amazing conflux of people. Students reading, professors grading, homeless people staying warm, young punked-up parents with their green-haired toddlers--they all roamed around together and somehow seemed to all enjoy one another.

I had recently started smoking (don't worry, I've quit since), and every possible evening was spent with my friends in that coffee shop, smoking, playing cards, and drinking--as often as not, Jolt. (Remember Jolt? Man, I could totally go for "twice the caffeine" these days.) And we always made friends. One night, a very intelligent, though incredibly superior, man taught me to play Go. He spent hours explaining the history and significance of every aspect of the game. I can explain to you the many ways in which Go reflects the culture from which it originates; I cannot tell you how to play it. Another night, we met a man who wanted to play cards with us. In hindsight, and with greater sympathy, I realize he was almost certainly quite ill. At the time, he seemed simply entertaining. He didn't follow the rules of rummy and kept slapping down cards at unpredictable times, and he repeatedly tapped his cigarette over his head, even after we offered him an ash tray. Another man just stared at the fish tank all night, every night. One evening, my friend was waiting for us in line and started talking with the fish tank guy. He was a little confused, hard to follow, but really kind and easy to talk to. Turned out, most people were.

One night I was there alone--maybe I'd just been dying to get out of the house, maybe I was waiting for my friends, I don't remember. But I got to talking with the guy at the next table. He was probably in his 20s, graduated from the university not too many years before, just hanging out and reading the paper. And while we were talking about whatever it was, we hit on the topic of teaching and learning. And he told me a story about an introductory philosophy course he had taken. It was taught, he said, by a very well-respected man who was in every way the stereotypical professor--glasses, crazy graying hair, etc. (I always think of him as looking like Richard Dreyfuss, possibly because my dad is also a college professor and he looks a little like a cross between Richard Dreyfuss and Geraldo Rivera, but that's neither here nor there.) They were discussing Buddhism and the professor was explaining its basic tenets and the life story of the Buddha that had given rise to Buddhism. In the back of the class was a kid who was sort of the classic dumb college kid--got in by the skin of his teeth, athletic scholarship, taking this class and hoping it would be easy. And when the professor asked for comments or questions, this student burst out with, "Buddha was a cool fuckin' dude!" The class, of course, all laughed, especially my companion and his friends. When the class was over, the professor asked them to stay behind, and he asked why they had laughed. They said it was just such a strange thing to say about Buddha. And the professor thoughtfully replied, "Buddha was a cool fuckin' dude. And it just goes to show how unenlightened you are that you would laugh at another man's enlightenment."

My new friend didn't say much after that, at least not much that stayed with me. He left or went back to his paper. My friends showed up, or I went home. I don't remember. But I have always remembered that story. This morning, I overheard a person I didn't know saying that someone else I didn't know was "a cool dude." And for the millionth time since that night, I thought of that story. Moments of true enlightenment are rare and usually arrive unnoticed until later. But that was one for me. Like everyone else, I struggle with the daily battles, internal and external, that make up my life as I try to make sense of my world. And like the student in that philosophy class, I hope that I will always be able to see the truths that plainly, that I will always be able to speak them so clearly, and that I will always be brave enough to announce my own enlightenment. And that I will always be enlightened enough never to laugh at another man's.

Flying Rodents and Nudity

When I was junior in college, I did a 6-month study abroad program and got back in June, at the end of the school year. What this meant was that while all my friends were sorting out their housing arrangements for the coming (and presumably final) school year, I was off trying not to get malaria and getting a lovely staph infection instead. So largely via email--which, in 1993, was not the fun and user-friendly experience it is now--I tried to set up living arrangements long distance.

Thus it was that I arrived, the following August, at the house I had agreed to share with four other girls. One of them, I knew; she had shared an apartment with another friend of mine, so I'd seen her pretty often. One, I had never met and knew only as the quiet and kind of scary friend of the other girls. One, I had known for a while and she was a pretty good friend of mine. (Of course, just to show that I'm not always great at picking friends, what I didn't know was that over the next few months, she would have many screaming tantrums, repeatly get engaged to a friend of ours and then break it off, and finally she would move out, leaving all her things and a big hole in the rent check for several months until we got a new roommate.) And the last girl was someone I'd gone to high school with but hadn't really known until college. Between shared friends and a shared hometown, Stacy and I had grown pretty close, and she was mostly the one that I was looking forward to living with.

The house had been split at one point, and there were still two doors--one upstairs, one downstairs--that could be dead bolted shut to split the house into two apartments. There were two bathrooms, five bedrooms, and two kitchens. It was an odd setup but it worked well for us. What didn't work well, from the moment I arrived in the house, was the bedroom that had been assigned to me while I was away. Of the five bedrooms in the house, I got the one with no windows, the one literally under the stairs, the one that was only a bedroom in the sense that a bed would fit into it if you tried. I was pretty unhappy that this decision to give me the crappy bedroom had been made without consulting me, but when I got to the house and saw it, I was just exhausted. I had been driving all day, all my things were still in the truck parked outside, it was late, and I just wanted to go to bed. Fortunately there was a bed already in the room, so I borrowed a blanket, took out my contacts, stripped down to my t-shirt and underwear, and crawled into bed.

A couple of minutes later, I heard a strange sound in the room. It was a sort of a flapping, whooshing sound. I didn't have my contacts in and my glasses were in the truck with the rest of my worldly belongings, so it took a moment for me to identify the weird little flying shadow. But when I did, I leapt into action. Well, figuratively leapt. Actually, I wrapped the blanket around me, including my head, and I dropped to the floor. I scurried out of the bedroom and up the stairs, whimpering all the while. Finally I made it to Stacy's room, and I knocked on the door as politely as I could. When she answered, I threw open the door and cried, "Stacy, I can't see, there's a bat in my room, and I'm not wearing any pants!"

And bless her heart, she just scooted over on the bed and said, "Hop in."

That year probably did more than any other to change my life and turn me into the person I am now. It was full of independence, romance and foiled romance, academic achievement and frustration, and the realization that soon enough, we were going to be expected to do something with our lives. And through it all, I had these amazing people who, no matter what, were always willing to move over and make room for me, whether or not I had pants on.

Stacy and I have seen less of each other in recent years, though we try. It's hard, as your lives change, to keep in touch as much as you'd like. But there's something about the changing seasons, school starting, watching my own kids grow up and make friends, that makes me miss her terribly. I want to stay up late playing (and drinking) gin, talking about everything and nothing. I want to hear all about her job, her house, her love life. I want to show her my kids, my projects. I think I'll email her, see if she's free sometime soon just to get together and remember why we were friends in the first place. And to remind her that, no matter how much time goes by, there's always room for a good friend.

Does this mean I'm crazy?

I love the word "vicious." As a total word geek (when I was little and learning to read, I actually used to see the words people were saying up over their heads, like a green running caption), it always reminds me of "viscous." So instead of a "vicious rumor," I always picture something slimy and slow-moving, which is much more humorous.



There is this joke: Micky and Minnie Mouse are in counseling, and after Micky explains the reasons they're there, the therapist says, "I understand you're upset, but I don't think it will help to call her crazy." To which Mickey replies, "I didn't say she was crazy. I said she was fucking Goofy!" I think of this joke every single time I am forced to watch "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse."

I had a dream the other night that I wrote a song called "God is an Atheist." It was a huge hit. Then, because I apparently have no scruples in my dreams, I sold the rights to my song to a right-wing religious group, which changed the lyrics to "God is a Christian." I woke up and thought this was such an odd thing to "come to me in a dream," as it were, and I couldn't possibly be the first person to have come up with this phrase. Thanks to Google, I know I'm not. It got over 7,000 hits, including an actual popular song, which I had never heard of before.

Am I watching too much late-night drama on TV, or spending too much time with only small children and myself for company?

My Fortress of Solitude

I have recently realized something: I am never going to be really alone in the bathroom again.



When I was about 22, I moved into a miniscule apartment in downtown Minneapolis. It was the first time I'd ever lived alone--no roommates, no parents, no nothing. Just me and 200 or so square feet. So I immediately went out and got a cat--apparently it was vital that I start living up to crazy-cat-lady stereotypes right away. Many things happened, of course, when I was living in that apartment. The battery on my phone died as I was talking to my dad after I'd only been living there a few days, and he sped the entire half hour from his house, to come make sure I was okay. I sublet my apartment to a coworker and moved to LA for three months (three of the most painful months ever, but that's another story). I met the man who would become my husband. And I learned to pee with the door open.


Now, as a woman, and a pretty self-conscious one at that, closing the door when I entered the bathroom was kind of a requirement. But if you've ever had a kitten who was somewhat over attached to you, you know what happens if you try to close the bathroom door. First comes the whining, then the scratching, then the incredibly pathetic little paw starts feeling around under the door, trying to figure out where you've gone and how to get you back. So rather than dealing with that every time I wanted to go to the bathroom, I started just leaving the door open. It was an incredibly freeing development in my life. I even started wandering around my apartment (sometimes) naked (partly). I couldn't turn into a free-thinking nudist overnight, but it was a big change for me nonetheless.

Of course, when I met my husband, I realized that I was still the kind of person who would prefer to close the door. I can live with a cat wandering around the sink while I pee, but I can't be one of those "I'm on the toilet while you're brushing your teeth and we're both fine with this" people. We moved in together a few months after I got back from LA, and while we were living together, his father stayed with us for several weeks after he had a stroke. He moved back into his own apartment later, but when we decided to buy a house, we concluded that having him move in with us was a good idea for everyone involved. Another reason to be a "bathroom door closed" kind of person.

Now we've come to a point I probably could not have envisioned when I was trying to get the cat to leave the bathroom door alone. My father-in-law's bedroom is across the hall from the bathroom. I have three small children who apparently cannot exist unless they are interacting with me in some way. I usually have a house full of other people's children, who are in all likelihood fighting with one or more of my kids. And the bathroom door? Well, until recently, I was convinced it was the one thing separating me--just for a few minutes--from all that. Right? I don't get to take leisurely baths; I don't even get showers without a 5-year-old suddenly needing to potty the second I turn the water on. I don't have a commute to complain about the other drivers while secretly enjoying this time that doesn't belong to my family or my employer. I don't have a bedroom to disappear to; while I do officially have a bedroom, it's shared by our daughter until the addition to the house is complete. So I am not out of line to expect that I get to go potty without interruption.

Except it seems that I am. One of the things about the blogosphere is that it's like having lots and lots of mom friends, and you can ask them anything you want or listen to them rant about anything they want, as though you had this endless back fence you can talk over anytime you want. And one thing I keep running up against is that no mom in the world can claim that she is left alone in the bathroom. There is always a kid who needs you the very moment you close the door, a dog who is scratching at the door, a spouse who doesn't understand that maybe you don't want to answer any questions right now.

I know that someday my kids will want to be left alone, that I will not think of the bathroom as the only place in the house I can hide. Someday I will miss them. I will bug them in their rooms when they just want to close the door and be left alone for a little while. I know that I ought to cherish these years, when they just want to be near me. But inside, I will grieve for the bathroom I once knew, the place I could think my thoughts, my onetime fortress of solitude.

Things My Mother Taught Me

Several years ago, I wrote this essay. I submitted it to a parenting magazine and, in one of the more humiliating events in my life, received only a smudged photocopy of their submission guidelines in response. After scouring the document, I confirmed that it did in fact meet their guidelines; I don't know why they chose to send me that. But I was thinking of it this morning and still like it. So in honor of Mother's Day (because there's no way I will remember to post this on the actual day): Things My Mother Taught Me


When I was a little girl, I always looked at the cover of the coloring book to see what color the pictures should be. Then as closely as I could, I matched them. To me, staying inside the lines was an accomplishment to be proud of. And imitation was the closest thing to perfection.

I never mixed the play-dough. Such a thing would never have occurred to me. My creations were always of a single color, dismantled and returned to their canisters before they had a chance to dry.

Then one day, when I was about seven years old, my mother sat down with me at my little table to color with me. I remember clearly, it was a Tom and Jerry coloring book, and calm as can be, she started to color Tom purple. I was in shock that such a thing was even possible. There, right before my eyes, my mother was creating a lavender cat. It was my first inkling that the right way was not the only way to do something.

Last week, I was playing with my 11-month-old son in his room. He has several wooden puzzles with farm animals and food-shaped pieces. He had recently discovered that there were pictures underneath the pieces and was enthralled with the process of removing the pieces, one by one, from their puzzles. He would then hold them up, examine them, sometimes suck on them. I found myself asking him again and again, "Where does the cow go? Can you find the cow?" I even guided the pieces to their correct places and applauded when they fit. And suddenly I remembered my mother coloring Tom purple.

Now that I am a mother, I have the opportunity to shape my son's view of the world. I can teach him that there is only one way to do everything, or I can show him that there are a million ways to look at a problem and there are a million solutions. Putting pieces into puzzles is one way to play with them. Sucking on them, banging them together, and putting them into drawers are others. And are they any less useful? When I color the cat purple, I am showing my baby that he can do anything he wants, that the borders of thought and action aren't closed. I am letting him try out life and see what works. I am letting him mix the play-dough.

He will figure out what cows are and what they say and how they fit into the puzzle. That will come with time, I have no doubt. But more importantly, he will figure out who he is, what he has to say, and where he fits into the world.

When my mother colored that cat purple, I'm sure she was thinking only that it was pretty. But she taught me a lesson that day, one that I will be sure to pass on to my son: No matter what they tell you, there is more than one way to color a cat.

My Dad's Marriage(s): Part 1

I felt it was appropriate to title this one "Part 1" because I know this is going to be one of those stories that, even though you think it's done, there's really more.



Let me begin with the most basic information. My parents were married--to one another--all my life. I was born (several weeks early after an unplanned conception--yay me!) a little over a year after they got married. I grew up as one of the only kids I knew whose parents were married to one another. It wasn't the greatest marriage in the world, but I figured they were doing a good job, because they were still together. I always knew, although it was almost never discussed, that my dad had been married before. It was short lived and there were no kids. In fact, it was very shortly after his first marriage ended that he met my mom; the story went that he was visiting a friend to "get over" his divorce, and they threw a dart at a map to decide where to go. It landed on Crystal Ice Caves, where my mom was a tour guide. And the rest was history. Until 2005, when, a month before Ezra was born, my dad announced that he was moving out. There had been stirrings in the marital waters to be sure; in 1997, when I was studying abroad for six months, we learned that he'd had an affair with one of his (graduate) students for pretty much the entire time. There had been speculation, mostly between the siblings, that this wasn't the first time. But officially things were back on track. And then suddenly they weren't. Officially they were taking a break, he was going to "find himself" or something for a year while living on his own, but it was pretty quickly clear to everyone but my mom that he wasn't looking back.

He told us all that this was a hard time for him, that he was really a private person who'd been living for the last 30 years as though he were a very social person. He was trying to be true to himself, to be the fundamentally alone person that he was. And no, there was no way on earth that he was seeing someone--not now, not while he was still with Mom, not at all. Those rumors that he was dating my friend--the one who had coincidentally gotten a divorce around the time he moved out, the one who was his student, the one who had kind of stopped calling me? Those rumors were completely false, and it was kind of insulting that we would think otherwise.

Until the day he told me they were true. And they were getting married. And, as I have tried over and over to explain to him, I don't have excesses of friends or family. And my dear friend, the first one to visit me in the hospital after Zachary was born, the first friend I'd made at my first grown-up job, the one with a daughter 9 months older than Zachary, my friend and my dad had chosen one another over me.

There's more, of course. There's always more. But that continues to be a crux of the situation for me. My mom is hurt and angry and insists that the only thing we can do to help is "be loyal." My brother, who has always looked up to my dad, is not speaking to him. My sister is sick of being the one my mom turns to, sick of being the one to take care of her and tell her it's going to be all right. And I'm the pushover, the easy one, the one who's always been closest to him--and terrifyingly, most like him in personality. And I'm the one they betrayed most, at least more than my siblings. And though I haven't actually spoken to her since all this happened, he has never once apologized. He's said he understands that people are hurt and it's too bad that things worked out that way, but he's never once said, "That must really be hard on you. I wish you hadn't beem hurt like that. I'm sorry."

I smelled the chemicals and that's how I knew

I had this roommate in college, Gwen, who was this really unusual mix of trying too hard to be different and genuinely being different. She was pre-med, very scientific mind. But she also wore this long red velvet cloak all the time and hung out at the Renaissance Festival. She also claimed to be a wiccan, which frankly has colored my impression of all other people I've met who claim to be wiccan. It didn't seem to be so much an identity or a religion, so much as a thing she could call herself when she wanted to stand out: "Don't mess with me, I'm a witch," and so on.

But the thing that always amazed me was that in addition to all this trying to hard to be different, she was genuinely different in some of the most amazing (though not always good) ways. I first met her when I was a freshman in college and a friend of mine had had it with her assigned roommate, so she moved into the on-campus apartments. She was assigned three roommates there, two other freshmen and Gwen, a sophomore. Gwen was a whole year older than us and way more experienced in just about everything. She was an EMT and worked odd hours and knew boys and stuff. So she was the one we went to with all our problems. For example, one winter morning Gwen had worked late the night before and was passed out in the bedroom. Her three roommates were up and around, making toast for breakfast. Suddenly, the toaster caught on fire. It was placed under the cabinet in the kitchen and flames were shooting up out of the toaster and touching the cabinets. In a fit of terror, the girls ran into the bedroom and started screaming, "The toaster's on fire! The toaster's on fire!" Gwen rolled over, said, "Put it out," and covered her head with the pillow. They ran back into the kitchen and, seeing the toaster still shooting flames, turned around and ran back into the bedroom, screaming. Gwen realized they weren't going to stop, so she got out of bed, stumbled into the kitchen, ripped the toaster out of the wall, walked out onto the balcony, threw the toaster off the balcony and into the snow, and went back to sleep. Saved the day, classic Gwen style.

A few years later, Gwen and I shared a house near campus with three other friends, five of us there altogether. And by this time, she had developed some truly strange habits. Now, granted, we were not the neatest people you'd want to meet. I don't know that we vacuumed the entire year we were in that house, and the dishes just piled up until we ran out. Then it was an entire day (there were A LOT of dishes in that house) of washing disgusting smelly dishes. But Gwen had her ownthing going on. A favorite was that she liked to keep her cheese in the couch. I'm completely serious. She would buy a block of cheddar cheese and stick it in a zip-loc bag, then she would shove the plastic bag between the cushions of the couch. She insisted, "I like my cheese warm." And that in itself wouldn't have been so terrible if she hadn't always included a knife with it. So you never knew, when you sat down on the couch, whether you were going to be stabbed in the ass by a cheese knife.

She also had a propensity for falling asleep on the couch and just staying there. One night our roommate had been bartending all night and was finally coming home. But this night was special, because she'd had a long-term crush on a friend of ours (who had been briefly, painfully engaged to another one of our roommates). He'd hung out at the bar all evening with her and was now coming home with her. This wasn't so unusual since many of the people in our large group of friends often ended up coming over after the bar closed, but this was the first time it had been just the two of them. When they walked into the house, there was Gwen, asleep on the living room sofa. She was wearing a peasant dress and nylons, nothing else--and the dress had hiked itself up to her armpits. So my poor friend grabbed kitchen tongs and used them to lift the blanket back over Gwen while she slept; it did not turn out to be the most romantic evening. (In case you're wondering, yes, they did get together eventually; it was always rocky and he finally broke up with her via email.)

Another time she was sleeping on the couch, we decided all of a sudden to pln a party--a themed party. So as we were coming up with storybook characters for people to dress as, we thought of the Seven Dwarfs, from Snow White: Dopey, Sneezy, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Doc, and someone else. I always forget the name of the other dwarf, and neither of us could remember it. So we ran into the living room to ask Gwen. We shouted at her, "Gwen, what was the name of the seventh dwarf?" The logical question would have been, "Which six have you already named?" But that wasn't her style. She definitively announced, "Pinchy Smurf." And that was her nickname for years.

But the best ever sleeping-on-the-couch quote was heard by me alone. I had been tending bar and came home later to find her passed out in her usual spot. I probably said hello or "Are you ever going to get off the couch?" or something like that. And she mumbled, "10... 9... out of 10 birds are dead. I smelled the chemicals... and that's how I knew." It seemed to sum up something, although I've never been certain what it was.

It's been more than 10 years since I last saw her, and I still think of that quote all the time. My husband, whom I met years after losing touch with her, will sometimes repeat it. I hope she no longer keeps her cheese in the couch and that she sometimes sleeps in a bed these days. But I hope she still offers up such entertaining nuggets of wisdom.