Tag Archives: dukkha

Spring Haiku #1

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deep night rain hammers
outside on the old tin roof —
blossoms arising

—

I drove home from work after midnight last night. It was my son’s eighth birthday. The cake from his celebration that I had missed sat half-eaten on the counter, surrounded by cards from his grandparents.

I haven’t had the time to capture poems and words lately, even as small snippets of them have run through my mind, my days. As I crawled into bed next to my wife last night, I heard the spring rain outside. For a moment, clarity.

Coloring a Sunny Day

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photo

Recently, our youngest son discovered a couple of large coloring books that had been tucked away on some basement shelves, unused since we got them years ago. He has sat with them several times for long stretches, simply coloring, tongue planted in his cheek just the way mine was as a boy when I was deep in concentration.

One afternoon this past weekend, he cleared some space at the kitchen table and asked me to sit with him while he colored. He chose a scene with a cowboy riding a horse, and worked carefully in crayon to make a sun in the corner of the page, complete with rays spreading out from a bright yellow center. I watched as he then colored a large swath of the sky, coloring blue right over the yellow sun. I wondered if he intended it that way, or if he was just caught up in the enjoyment of the blue. The answer came a moment later when I noticed him take a black crayon and make a scribble over and over the sun, and then slump back in his chair, dropping the crayon to the ground.

I thought this would fix it. It was supposed to be yellow, he said staring down at the sun, but I did the blue on it. I thought this would make it back to darker yellow, but it just ruined it.

He exhaled deeply and looked at me, then half-heartedly scraped with his thumbnail at the blue and black that covered his sun. The contentment that I had felt in sitting with him faded into sharing his deep disappointment.

What if we make it a cloud? I asked. It was the only thing I could think of.

Okay, he said.

I picked up the black crayon and traced an outline around the sun. There, now you color it in, and it will be a nice dark cloud.

He took the crayon from me and did just that. The black cloud looked a bit out of place in the otherwise bright blue sky, but he picked up a brown crayon and went back to coloring the cowboy riding his horse. I quietly exhaled in measured relief.

Until he started to cry.

But I wanted it to be a sunny day, Dad.

I was completely and utterly helpless. He had been enjoying our moment as much as I had; I was sure he had been enjoying the idea of his picture too, the image of it he held his mind. Now neither one was the way he wanted it to be, and there was nothing I could do about it.

Remembering his attempt to scrape away at the crayon, I thought of getting my wife’s sharp pair of sewing scissors to do the same, to reduce that paper to white, to give my son the fresh start he wanted.

Perhaps it was the scissors that gave me the idea of drawing a new sun on a separate piece of paper and pasting it on top of the mistake. I wasn’t sure he would like the idea, but he agreed and drew a new sun on a white piece of paper. He asked me to color in the blue so he wouldn’t go over the rays. I worked carefully and then had him finish before we glued it on. He was happy with it, and went back to the cowboy, the grass, and the fence.

Even though it turned out all right in the end, I can still hear him saying to me, through his sobs and tears, But I wanted it to be a sunny day, Dad. He had tried to set aside his disappointment – but he couldn’t. Instead, he surrendered to complete presence in the moment. No pretense, no holding back, no self-judgment. Isn’t that what we all long for?

Most touching as a father is that my son was willing to do this with me, and in this way expressed his complete love and trust. As an adult, experiencing and expressing anger, sadness, or disappointment in the presence of others is difficult for me. I have come to fear doing so.

Yet here was my five year old, showing me exactly how to do it right here, right now.

But I wanted it to be a sunny day, Dad.

—

Coda: In the days since, I have thought a lot about having fixed the drawing. I know I won’t always be able to give him the sunny day he wants. And I shouldn’t. But this one? I had to.

Almost Eight

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I stopped at the top of the stairs
to wait for him
as he shuffled out of his bedroom,
sleepy-eyed and not yet steady.

He took the old walnut railing
with his left hand
as we walked next to each other
towards breakfast and the day.

His right hand reached into mine,
gentle and soft,
warm from his blanketed slumber.

He’s almost eight years old, I thought,

in fear of the day
when he won’t slip so easily
into sharing his space
or his hand
with me.

I tried to tread carefully as we went
so as not to disturb our clasp,
wishing the stairs might go on forever,
a father and his boy.

A Son’s Gift

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As we turned the corner in the grocery store, my five year old son walked a step ahead of me, clear about where he was going and full of intention.

Making trips to the grocery store isn’t my favorite activity, and the number of cars in the parking lot told of a large crowd inside – but I didn’t mind making this Christmas Eve outing. As we drove to the store, I watched my son clutch the dollar bill that he had pulled from the old tea container on his dresser, preparing to contribute it towards his big brother’s Christmas gift. I listened to the assured way he spoke, without revealing everything to me, about what he had decided to give to him.

He marched confidently most of the way down the toy aisle and stopped. This one, he said, pointing towards the shelf. I followed the direction of his hand and saw the blue box of eight matchbox cars. He pulled it from the shelf with both hands, bringing it to rest against his winter coat as he examined it closely, then turning towards me as I caught up, hopeful I would approve his choice.

It was the same gift his brother had gotten for him the year before. The same gift he had loved. I remembered him opening it Christmas morning, how he couldn’t imagine his good fortune at receiving a box of eight new cars, all at once. What could speak more clearly of his love for his brother than wanting to reciprocate, a year later, with the same?

Yet, as I stood there with Robin looking up at me, all that ran through my mind was how to get him to choose something else. His brother True is seven and a half, and hasn’t played a lot with cars and trucks in the last year. I knew he would be gracious in receiving the gift, but it seemed an awful lot of cars if he wasn’t going to spend much time with them. And at $12.99, well, it felt like a lot.

Let’s look around, I said, see what else is here. I suggested the small Lego sets that were in the same aisle – True loves Legos, doesn’t he? I suggested card games and even some smaller sets of cars. Robin dutifully obliged and examined that the alternatives I offered, but his heart wasn’t in it, and I knew it. I could feel the way the big set of cars pulled on him, even as we stood at each different shelf, motionless. He dismissed all the other options without words and returned back to pulled the box off the shelf. As he did, I thought I saw my opening in the form of a box just behind, a sort of combination track and ramp for matchbox cars that could be set up from a table to send cars flying. He’ll go for that, I thought, as I pointed it out it to him.

He looked, but didn’t take long. No, he said, I want to get this one for him.

He wasn’t demanding – just trying desperately to show me his sincerity, sincerity born from the warm feeling that still lasted from the previous Christmas, and his desire to share that with his brother, to get him the perfect gift, just like the extra large box of tea he had picked out for his mother.

Every bit of me could see that, could feel it, yet for some reason still struggled against it.

You don’t want this? I asked, holding up the track again. You could have races to see which of the cars you already have goes the farthest. I tried to paint a different picture than the one he had composed, the one he was holding dear. No, he replied, this one. Don’t we already have those cars? I flailed. No, he pointed out, these are different. He’ll love these.

There was nothing left for me to say. I could have flatly said no, that the set was too expensive. Or told him I didn’t think True really wanted eight new matchbox cars. But I couldn’t do either.

So instead I did something worse.

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Fatherhood and the Five Remembrances

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As a part of our sutra service at the temple, we regularly chant the Five Remembrances. Intended by the Buddha to ward off an impression of permanence in our current existence, these ancient words remind us that we are of the nature to die, and that we cannot escape separation from those who are dear to us.

It is stark reality – but it isn’t while chanting at the temple that I feel the weight of this realization.

Last night, in the brief interim between the frenzy of the day and the full silence of night, my wife and I were talking about our children. I commented about the way in which our youngest son had greeted me when I arrived home from work. He ran to me with a stack of coupons he had cut out of a junk mail flyer from the local warehouse store. We stood in the middle of the kitchen, the table being set, the oven opening and closing, his brother and sister whirling around us. He wanted to sit right there, right then, and show me. Later on, I wondered aloud to my wife about what had held him there. Was it the coupons themselves that he was so eager to share? Was it his pride in the careful cutting? Or was it just the chance be together, no matter what was at the center of it or what was going on around us?

My son is always reaching into my back pocket, looking for my phone to take pictures. He takes snapshots of crayon boxes, books on the floor, our feet together on a stool, cookies cooling on the counter, and toy dragons on windowsills. Pictures of each room, doorway, lamp, and family member. Hundreds of them at a time. It clogs the memory on my phone, and we try not to have our kids spend too much time with electronics. But I always give in when he asks. Each time I hear the shutter click, I feel his joy and his presence in that moment.

So when he was perusing and clipping these junk mail coupons earlier in the afternoon, my wife remembered, he had paused when he came across a camera. Could I get a camera, he asked her. She replied that maybe he should put it on his Christmas list. She showed me how his eyes brightened as he offered, Or maybe I should get a phone.

I could see his face in my mind as my wife finished this story and as I walked toward the kitchen to make the next day’s coffee. I could imagine his deep pleasure at the idea of having his own phone with which to take endless pictures. I reveled, as I reached into the cupboard, in how much I adore him.

Then, in the time it took to pull down the box of coffee filters from the second shelf, the warmth of that adoration was swiftly swallowed whole by the remembrance of change. My change, his change. The remembrance that I am of the nature to die, of the nature to be separated from him. From everyone. From everything. The feeling sank deep into my gut, an impossibly heavy mixture of sadness, anger, and confusion.

Some say the words of the Five Remembrances help them to live in the present moment. I didn’t have the sutra in mind then, but I did make an effort to stand in the kitchen and accept all that was being offered, that koan pulling deep inside me. Mostly, it was a moment filled with wanting desperately to go and wake up my son, to watch him walk about taking pictures, then sit closely and talk about the ones we liked best. Would it matter how tightly I held him?

The Five Remembrances

I am of the nature to grow old.
  There is no way to escape growing old.
I am of the nature to have ill health.
  there is no way to escape having ill health.
I am of the nature to die.
  There is no way to escape death.
All that is dear to me, and everyone I love, are of the nature of change.
  There is no way to escape being separated from them.
My deeds are my closest companions.
  I am the beneficiary of my deeds.
  My deeds are the ground on which I stand.