There Is A Lot I Don't Understand....

...about my mother, but this one thing I know for absolute sure - she was a zen master.  And that having a zen master as a parent - perhaps especially as a mother - is not easy.

Okay, so those are two things I know for absolute sure.  And I didn't even begin to grasp either one until a couple years after Mom was reunited with her O! Best Beloved.

It seemed that Mom held onto no memory of what I considered numerous raw hands she'd been dealt over the years.  Even worse than that (in my eyes), she seemed to harbor no expectation of others might treat her in the here & now or in the future.  

That drove me nuts.  

"You NEVER learn that they are (fill in the blank) you every time!  EVERY TIME it's like the other times never happened."  I would say this or a similar statement dozens of times over my adult lifetime without once realizing the truth of my words.

It was only after her death that it dawned on me that one - of many - reasons people were so drawn to Mom was due to the draw of an unseen, yet felt, force field around her.  Any one, no matter how badly they'd treated her in the past, stepped into that sphere free of any previous blemish.  Mom accepted each as he or she was, in THAT moment.  And once they left, they left without her attaching any expectation to them.  In 2013, that leaves me in awe.  In 2001, it drove me around the bend.

Maybe there is a reason Zen masters tend to be celibate.  It feels to me like they made lousy parents, doling out koans instead of drumming life lessons into their children's heads.  And batting away in modest yet firm fashion a hoped-for sense of righteous indignation for the perceived woes heaped upon a child.   Arrrggghhhh!

On one occasion, Mom went off to spend a weekend with one of my siblings, having promised she'd discuss with said sib a problem plaguing me at the time.  Did she?  In spite of all her promises - No!  So, did she willfully misrepresent her intentions?  Did she flip-flop, telling me she would, but then falling in with my sib's equally strong desire to leave it alone?  No! 
    
Mom WOULD have been willing to discuss the problem (which I had not, in spite of many efforts, been able to get said sib to address) if it had come up, but said sib never mentioned it.  For years, I thought her telling me she would discuss it, then didn't, was a major betrayal.  She'd promised, then left me hanging in the wind!!  Took time & a spike of wisdom to realize that all she'd promised was she'd be willing to discuss it - she'd never agreed to bring it up.  

My gosh, it was not easy to give up the pile of harbored associated with that time, but there's no turning away from such an AH HA! moment of recognition.  Being very unZen-like myself, it took a while to get to the point where I ceased denying what was so obviously true.  Doing so felt liberating.  And I didn't feel a smidgen of regret because of being so beastly critical of Mom for letting me down.  I

 just saw it as a lesson.  

What a hoot Mom would have over the thought of herself as Zen master.  I don't even know if she had the slightest idea of Buddhist principles.  As far as I know, what she knew about a Buddhist-like faith was gleaned from watching Ronald Colman in Lost Horizon.   And maybe that was enough.  Or maybe she had greater experience with such concepts than I ever knew. Or maybe she was just the rare pure soul who knew without learning.  

There is a lot I still don't understand, but this one thing I know for sure - my Mom was a Zen master.