Aftermath of Dreaming(124)

The sheet and blanket are wrapped around me as I sit on my couch looking outside at the thwarted yet growing tree and finally I understand that my father was never completely there even when he lived with us. I must have always known that, at least part of me, when I was a child to have had a dream where I had to save myself. Like I’ve been needing to save myself from the scream dream. And from other things I can’t stop seeing. Like my grandfather’s secretary, Miss Plauché, constantly walking backward to look at her past that she needed so badly to see and consequently missing her entire future.

I suddenly remember a day the summer I was ten when Suzanne and I went to our grandfather’s office to have lunch with him at the top of the big bank building in the private dining room where the ma?tre d’ always brought a perfect red rose to Suzanne and me and the bartender would send Shirley Temples to our table as if we ate there regularly. Suzanne and I were waiting in our grandfather’s office while he was in the outer room, speaking to Miss Plauché.

“She lost her fiancé and two brothers in World War Two,” Suzanne said in a hushed tone, nodding with her head toward the outer room. “Then both her parents died a few years later, and she’s walked backward ever since.”

My sister spoke with all the romantic drama that only a fourteen-year-old girl can, infusing love and death—almost a longing for a similar fate. As if Miss Plauché’s love were more pure because she refused to let it go and move on. Which I guess is what I’ve been doing with Daddy and Andrew.

I go into the kitchen to fix some tea—I want warmth inside me. As I wait for the water to boil, an image of my father comes to me of him in his leather chair listening to jazz. His eyes are closed, fingers tapping, and he is alone in his study, off in his world. Then I walk in and immediately he makes room for me. I sit on his lap, close my eyes, and join him where he goes in the notes and harmonies and melodious discord and he is there with me as much as he could be. And maybe that was enough really. Or can be. Maybe that was what En Chuan was trying to tell me—that awakening to an entirely different reality is the ability to see my past differently, as a reality that was always true, but that I was asleep to.

As I pour the water into a mug, the chamomile’s fragrance is released and it moves toward my face, enveloping me. My father was there as much as he could be and it didn’t last as long as I needed, but he had to leave because even when he lived with us, a part of him was already gone or maybe never even moved in. And somehow I knew that and found my own way of reaching him.

I throw the tea bag away, and measure honey into the mug, stirring gold sweetness into the pale green liquid. Maybe what I had with him was enough. Okay, it wasn’t what a lot of girls get, but our connection is still valid and now I have it in a way I didn’t before—not obscured by memories of need. All this time, he’s been with me in my art and jewelry, as surely as I could hear him teaching me how to use his tools in his work shed. I can’t not be connected to my father—he is me. Like the 10 freeway from home out here—the same spirit, just farther along in its journey.

I take my tea to the couch and sip it slowly, letting it fill me inside. The aromatic warmth holds me until I fall asleep.





37




The Zen Compound, in the middle of Korea Town just west of downtown where the Zen for Christians retreat is being held, is a group of small concrete buildings with an eight-foot-high chain-link fence surrounding them—a far cry from the Asian-style house and gurgling brook that I envisioned every time I imagined my three peaceful days here. But Buddhists aren’t known for being rich and the whole point of the retreat is to go within, something I definitely will want to do to get away from the aesthetics here, or lack of them.

But after registering in the main gulag-style building and walking into my dorm room, it is all I can do not to turn and run. My room turns out to be a room that I will share with the other five female retreatants. The furnishings are minimal to say the least. Six thin futon pads lie directly on the scarred hardwood floor with a sad pile of sheets, one thin blanket, and a lump that I guess was a pillow in a previous life at the foot of each. There is no other furniture or decoration, as if reminders of our Western life would erase the meditation’s effect. A row of hooks runs along one of the chipped green walls, to hang oneself from, I think, but I know it is for our clothing, the few tunics and comfortable pants we were instructed to bring. Who has ever owned a tunic, I thought when I read the confirmation letter’s instructions, other than Halston or a monk?

Oh, good God, what have I gotten myself into? Did Steve know it was going to be like this? I fight the urge to run to find him and ask if he has gone completely nuts. I mean, this is clearly going to be very formal Zen and I did learn a lot of this stuff from En Chuan, but that was years ago, and this is looking very intense.

Okay, calm down, I tell myself as I unpack my bag, which means hanging my garments—I can’t even think of them as clothes in this forsake-all-worldly-concerns environment—from the hook nearest my futon and putting my toiletries under the blanket. Not out of fear of thievery, I have a feeling any transgression here would cost the perpetrator twice the karmic years, but because the case they are in—the one I got for free when I bought Chanel No. 5 cologne—looks way too materialistic with its white camellias and black ribbons on gold fabric.

I walk downstairs in the late-afternoon November light and locate the building for the meditation sessions. As I enter the anteroom, I can see that the meditation hall it opens into is already filled with the other retreatants. I slip off my shoes and select a plump black zafu cushion from the shelves. At least they spent money on these, considering how much we’ll be sitting on them. Carrying it in front of me, I join the group in the hall. Plain wooden platforms slightly raised off the dark hardwood floor line three sides, and on these, the retreatants are sitting deep in meditation. Steve’s eyes are shut and he is in full lotus, so I settle into an empty spot a couple of retreatants away from him.