We're Always Teaching

[A version of this piece originally appeared in my "A to Zen" column in the November/December 2015 issue of Unity Magazine, and is reproduced here by permission.]

I remember as a child paying very close attention to my parents, especially when they didn’t think I was. I’d hear them talking in another room. Their words might not have been clear, but I could feel exactly what they were saying.

I’d see their faces fall when bad news came. I’d watch the way they moved around obstacles, or got stuck in the mud of their own worst ideas.

When they took a bold risk, I’d see them draw deep from unseen reserves. When the money was tight, and it almost always was, I’d hear the fear in their voices. I’d see them shed ten years and the weight of the world whenever we camped in the Sierras. To this day, pine trees smell like freedom and grace.

I’d hear my dad breathing hard, leaning against his shovel as he dug a hole for a fruit tree. Then keep digging. I’d see my mom take her lifelong love of sewing and turn it into a business, making dresses for perfumed ladies in Cadillacs. I’d see exuberance pour out of my father’s eyes when he played a Scott Joplin rag on the piano in the living room. I’d see her quiet focus and creativity as my mom turned root vegetables into yet another no-recipe pot of homemade soup. Every Sunday afternoon I’d see my dad on the patio in our backyard with a portable typewriter on his lap, clicking away on double onion skins with carbon paper in between, long letters to both sets of parents back in the Netherlands. On weekdays I’d see my mom’s mood lift as three o’clock rolled around – dad would be getting home from work any minute. I’d watch the smile spread across his face as she kissed him at the door, not every day, but often enough. I’d feel their love and respect for each other as they shared a daily cup of afternoon tea.

I saw all of this when they didn’t think I was watching.

            We think we have the biggest impact on our kids when we make earnest speeches, but most of what our kids learn from us happens all around the edges of our careful lesson plans and ardent moralizing. They study us when we’re busy, caught up in the dance of our own lives, unaware that we’re being watched. As parents, who we are is so much more important than what we say.

            How do you handle adversity? Do you crumble at the slightest incline in the road? When things go wrong, do you look for someone to blame? Or do you simply get to work? When we bear down on our problems, we teach our children about the immeasurable freedom released in the exertion of discipline and resolve. And by simply deciding to work around obstacles, we demonstrate the power of thought. A problem becomes a challenge, a challenge an opportunity, an opportunity a solution, and a solution an unforeseen blessing. By simply re-clothing the events of our life in new thought, we turn scarcity into abundance.

            But explanations of these insights simply won’t do. We must embody them, model them, and prove their worth in the daily trials of our lives. Only then will our children come to mirror and embody these values for themselves.

            How do you treat the waiter when he gets the order wrong? How do you negotiate a dispute with your neighbor about who should pay for the tree service or the fence construction? How well do you weather criticism from a supervisor or a sibling? How do you react when the cat throws up on the rug, again?

            What do you spend your money on? How do you spend your time? What are the topics of your idle chatter? We know this – you spend your time, money, and energy on things you value. Your values are on glaring, continual display. Any child can see them.

            As Annie Dillard wrote, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” And our children are always watching.

My Mom

The hospital bed took up most of the living room. The steady hum of the oxygen machine masked the murmuring voices from the other room. Light from the summer garden poured through the windows. I took her head in my hands and kissed her forehead. She was drifting in and out. I kissed both of her cheeks. The smell of her warm skin broke my heart. It wasn’t going to be long. I told her I loved her and thanked her for being my mom. Her eyes opened and in a flash of recognition she smiled. For a moment we were together again, mother and son. The room fell away. We were young, happy, free, and eternal, beyond the grip of terrible time. Then her face softened, her eyes closed, and she drifted back into a dream. She died the following evening. She was 88 years old.

When my father died two years ago I knew what to do. I grieved, and I got back to work. I didn’t fall apart. I had my mom to think about. My brothers and I focused on her. There was a sense of relief at his passing because Alzheimer’s is a pitiless bully – death by a thousand cuts. The night he died it felt like a weight was lifted off of us. Now he was free from the betrayal of his brain and body.

But this was different.

My mom was diagnosed and eleven days later was gone. And now the home we all grew up in is empty. No one lives there anymore. It’s just a place we’re from.

The death of a loved one comes in waves – the initial, irreversible news, then the disbelief. You forget and remember and forget over and over again. It takes time for your brain to catch up with the truth. A holiday comes and you reach for the phone to call them. A scrap of paper brushes your hand in a drawer releasing a flood of memories. The smell of celery or the sound of a spoon stirring a cup of tea and bam, your throat catches and you excuse yourself to cry in another room. The wound stays fresh for a long, long time. You tell everyone you’re alright, but you aren’t.

In times like these you go back and sift through memories. You wish you had more. You can’t believe how much is gone. And the little that’s left takes on the burnished glow of treasure.

We lived a few blocks from my elementary school and sometimes I’d walk home for lunch. A cheese sandwich, maybe curried fried rice (my favorite), with Sheriff John on TV if she was in a good mood.

Always sewing. The crinkle of thin paper dress patterns from Vogue, Simplicity, and McCalls pined to large swaths of fabric on the dining room table. Her bending over and carefully cutting the cloth with special scissors I was never allowed to use. The sound of a sewing machine from the other room while I played with my toys on the floor. The clients who came by for a fitting.

The whine of my dad’s Honda 50 coming down the street right after I got home from school. Him coming through the door, the whole energy of the house shifting. They were always happier together than apart. My mom and dad having tea, talking in low tones about the mysterious things married people talk about.

The smell of dinner. Mom showing me how to cut up a cauliflower, core a cabbage, or mince onions. Stirring a pot of tomato soup. How to make roux and béchamel for the turnips. The darkening sky outside. The ritual of food and fire and the family table.

My two brothers were eight and ten years older so it was usually just me and my mom. She’d take me everywhere – grocery shopping, the department store, and in the early years before we got our own washer and dryer, the laundromat. She’d let me put the dimes in the slots. She showed me the right way to fold a shirt. She understood these things, and they seemed important, so I paid attention.

My mother was fearless in a way that I was not. I was passive, withdrawn, and contemplative. She had to muster assertiveness for two.

She made me take piano lessons. I was not consulted. It was mildly amusing at first, and then it got difficult. My weeks were filled with dread knowing that the next piano lesson was coming and I had not yet perfected this week’s scales. Sometimes the pressure motivated me to work harder. Other times it drained me of resolve and I resigned myself to my piano teacher’s withering glance and disappointed sigh. Outwardly I conformed as best I could, but inwardly I had some serious questions about the adult world. Why were they always taking on difficult tasks and setting themselves up for failure? Why didn’t they just sit back and enjoy life as it was? Why were they always trying to change and grow and learn and create?

Then it happened. My fingers obeyed. I heard music where once there was only embarrassment and inadequacy. And I realized I was doing it – those were my fingers making the music, my hands, my arms, my mind, my heart, and I was overwhelmed by all the possibilities that unfolded from this realization. I suddenly understood that I was unlimited, that I was capable of anything, and that discipline, will, and conviction nurture and cultivate the seeds within us. We do not become who we really are until we struggle up through the soil of our indifference, our sloth, our fear of failure. On the other side of the pain is an unspeakable beauty, a beauty unobtainable by those who love only comfort, only easy, only staying the same.

My mom got me a surfboard and wetsuit and drove me to the beach. She knew her introspective, day dreaming son needed an adventure. My friends and I loved the beach, but surfing was a quantum leap away from the Styrofoam belly boards and inflatable rafts we rode as boys on those long summer afternoons. Surfing is what men did. Out in deep water. And with her encouragement I began. Surfing became the center of my life throughout my teens and twenties. I learned a lot on the water. But mostly, again, I learned that fear is an obstacle to joy. Once I made the ocean my friend and learned to navigate, even celebrate her powers, my fear lifted and all that remained was beauty. The ocean taught me that it was safe to fall in love. Even with all of the tumbles and breathless disorientation, you always come up for air. And under the wide California sky you know that you are home wherever you are, and that everything always changes, and people die, but the big show never ends. Again and again we are affirmed in our love. The ocean never leaves us. And the final revelation – we are loved only as much as we surrender to it. Love is not controlled or calculated. There are no pro and con lists. There is only acceptance and surrender.

My mom brought me into the world. But that was only half of it. More importantly, she taught me how to live in it. I miss her, even though she’s right here in every cell of my body, in my discipline, my courage, and my creativity. Her living room is empty now, but she lives in the fullness of all the lives she shaped.