When he first came, I tried to make him part of my family. I didn’t charge him for room or board, but I did expect him to do things that needed doing by a strong man, which he is. I expected him to water the garden sometimes, but he was too inconsistent about it for most plants to do well. I expected him to weed, but that didn’t work at all. We rototilled and planted a vegetable garden for him to take care of and call his own. It soon became a marvelously thick green growth of tall weeds. I expected him to help me put up some fencing for the goats, which he did, but with much moaning and groaning.
In fact, moaning and groaning accompanied any hard physical labor. He helped me enclose the front porch so we now have a sun and plant room, but there was plenty of wailing and gnashing of teeth. I did not feel good when he moaned and groaned. I did not feel good when he failed to do something easy that I asked him to do.
I wanted him to find some way to develop self-respect, because he could do many things, just not always at the right time or place. I kept trying to think of things he could do that might ultimately lead to a job or productive output. I knew his father had taught him a lot about bricklaying, but he didn’t want to have anything to do with that.
He’d already tried classes at his own community college, apparently without success. So those suggestions went nowhere.
I tried to interest him in making copies of my bird feeder, which has a beautiful oriental design, so he could reproduce it and sell it to local nurseries, but that never got off the ground.
I offered to buy a premade, do-it-yourself little barn that he could put together for when and if we have miniature donkeys, but he was not thrilled with the idea.
He must have thought I was the aunt from hell.
To keep the goblins from making a mess out of my stomach when he didn’t meet my expectations, I quit having expectations. It didn’t look as if I could change him, so I would have to change me.
Now I charge him rent, though not board, but I only feed him dinner and snacks. He has a kitchen of his own. And now he can choose to do some of my chores or not. I pay him $6.00 per hour when he decides to. When he decides not to, which is often, I hire a graduate student, who is much more efficient and knowledgeable, for $10.00 per hour.
I cook dinner and he does the dishes, which he leaves all over the kitchen counters, even though he knows where they belong. He will weed-eat the lawn edges about once a month, take the garbage up to the street once a week—most of the time. He’ll even clean the goat barn sometimes. He records TV shows he knows I like when I’m going to miss them, often Star Trek.
And now my stomach is happy. I’m happy. In many ways, I do live close to Nirvana, not just in my dealings with John, but by applying my John-learning to everything else. And I think John is happier, too. His aunt found her way out of hell and into his real world, such as it is. We get along well and understand each other’s failings.
I have quit trying to make John into all I think he could be—or even some of what I think he could be. He may already be all he can be. That’s not for me to know, let alone expect.
The Tibetan Buddhists believe that there is no greater vehicle than compassion and forgiveness to counteract suffering caused by the self-grasping attitude.
Dalai Lama and Phil Borges
THREE
GROWING UP
We do not “come into” this world; we come OUT of it as leaves from a tree. As the ocean “waves,” the universe “peoples.” Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe.
Alan Watts
I was fortunate growing up. I had a close, loving mother and a distant, but tolerant father. Both parents worked, and, as a result, we often had my grandmother or my aunt at home with my two older brothers and me.
Looking back, I think my parents did the most important thing parents can do for their children. They empowered us. I was allowed and encouraged to do lots of things. Until I was nine, we lived in San Francisco on Twin Peaks, a long way from the center of town. I remember hiking to the streetcar on Market Street and taking it to my mother’s office at the waterfront. She was a secretary for the Department of Agriculture. When I went to her office, we would go to lunch, and then I would go back home on the streetcar.
We all hiked a mile or so to school, and after school I went to Mrs. Drew’s for piano lessons, returning home on foot. In those early years, not much was expected of me, and I did what I did with no expectations for myself either. I especially did not expect to become a concert pianist.
As far as my culture’s expectations were concerned, I was too tall and too athletic. And, God forbid, when I was twelve and couldn’t read the stuff on the blackboard anymore, I had to wear glasses. So I had to work a bit harder than those who were the right size, who were fragile enough to be thought feminine, and who could see. I’m sure they had their own problems, because our culture doesn’t allow anyone to feel truly secure about appearance, even Ingrid Bergman.
When I was nine, my dad retired from working for the City of San Francisco and could now live outside the city limits, so we moved to San Mateo, twenty miles south of San Francisco. Dad was sixty when I was born. He didn’t retire until he was sixty-nine, because most of his friends who retired earlier seemed to die too soon. Mom was eighteen years younger than Dad and still worked and commuted to San Francisco. Now that my dad was around all day, he had expectations.
We bought a big old house, much in need of repair, and while my brothers helped Dad with the electrical, plumbing, and building stuff, I became chief house painter and gardener. And what a sloppy painter and gardener I was. I heard about it every day that summer. Though I did get better at painting and gardening, returning to school was a blessed relief.
Since my mother worked, I was also chief house cleaner, ironer, and kitchen aide. Mom preferred to be chief clothes washer (we had no electric washer or dryer) and chef. Perhaps she had tried me out on these and decided it was best to do them herself. I don’t remember. But I did develop some competencies and some positive self-esteem.
When I was sixteen, my dad said, “You’re old enough to get married now without our permission. I expect you to find someone as soon as you can.” But Mom said, “You can always get married. Live your own life first.” So I did.
Dad blamed the cod-liver oil I was fed as a kid for making me as tall as he was. He really wanted me to be petite, lovely, a good pianist, a good seamstress, and married. In some ways I’m sorry I did not live up to my father’s expectations, but I’m sure I’m more me now than if I had accepted his expectations as my own.
Fortunately, at that young age, I had a pretty good idea about what was me and what was not me, so I could make the choice.
A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct of what is beautiful and awe-inspiring is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood.
Rachel Carson
FOUR
ANIMALS
Animals are here in part to grant glimpses of the grace of beauty.
Matthew Fox
Having five cats around the house helps me have no expectations. They are not goal-fulfilling creatures in any human sense. There is little one can expect of a cat.
Whenever I have a cat on my lap, I am able to look at it as a remarkable being with perfect markings, perfectly formed nose and eyes, and delightful ears, and I am always awed at such perfection even though each cat is different. Even their very strange unique characteristics seem perfect to me: six toes, lopsided