Home At Last?

Birds draw the baby’s attention. From his post on my back, I feel him twist and wave his arms. We stop and mimic their tweeting song. And then we resume our energetic uphill walk. There is a spring in my step, a bounce from the little rider, and the scent of budding trees.

With every out-breath I consciously release what I have been holding. The tension in my throat can go. The clench of my jaws can go. The knot of maternal worry between my eyebrows can wash away. I breathe, we sing, and there is a synchrony between us. The baby vocalizes quite actively, and I take his syllables into my own song. Lo-i-LO, iloilo! We improvise together as we bounce and stride through the tall trees of Washington Park.

At the Japanese Garden, I have the urge to slow down. Walking becomes slow and meditative. I plot out a winding course on the plank walkway over the koi pond. The sound of a small waterfall here and the large one there should keep the baby’s interest along the perpendicular twists of the walkway. Perhaps as we go he will remember this sort of meditation from before he was born. I settle into a brisk kinhin pace, taking two steps on a slow inhale, and two steps on a slow exhale. I lift each leg, marionette-like, from the knee, which causes the foot to naturally touch the ground heel first.

Koi
Originally uploaded by BBMaui

Taking in the world, the breathing child on my back, and the sounds of water, I walk. There is only walking, and then there is no walking, just the functioning of nature.

And then there is a group of people striding toward the large waterfall that is also our destination. An dark Indian man with a generous belly leads the way, steering through the screen of his video camera. His wife and son trot down to sit on the bench in front of the waterfall; they are photographed, and they trot away again. In the space of a few steps, they’ve hooked me. I become lost in some thought about their cultural past and my own, about experience mediated through technology, about which of us is living in our own personal travel show.

I have forgotten the world is one thing. There is only walking, the sound of the water, the sight of the family with the camera, the chatter of another camera-led group behind me, the simultaneous being of one world, independent of judgment about who is the better garden guest and the more authentic liver of life.

The baby chooses this moment to grunt and wiggle. We are walking entirely too slowly for his taste. I pick up the pace from glacial to ambling, and begin to sing:

I’ve been a wild rover for many a year,
I’ve spent all my money on whiskey and beer.
But now I’m returning with gold in great store,
And I never will play the wild rover no more.

The lyrics vibrate softer and sweeter than ever before. They speak of our spiritual journey, of the urge to avail ourselves of distraction upon distraction in hopes of finding relief from the travail of being alive. We make the same mistakes over and over. And then one day our roaming comes to an end.

I’ll go back to my parents, confess what I’ve done,
And ask them to pardon their prodigal son.
And if they’ll caress me, as oft-times before,
Then I never will play the wild rover no more.

I think of how we are the poor man in the Buddha’s parable, who does not recognize his birthright. Of how we can return at last to our true home, the source of our being, no matter how crazy we’ve been in the past. We can make peace with ourselves, setting aside notions of being born some other way. And we can choose to withhold judgement on the years we ran wildly in search of something other than the person we’ve always been.

And it’s no, nay, never! No nay never no more,
Will I play the wild rover, no never no more.

I make a promise to stop wishing for something else, to enter my life just as it is, and to cultivate, without regret. Knowing there can be no other way but the way I’ve come, having learned what I’ve learned, and possibly wasted the time I’ve wasted, I have come full circle. So I can start all over again. Right here.



A deep breath, and we stop to look at the waterfall. It really is grand. Carefully designed so as to look completely natural and beautiful, the water’s course branches to fall, here fast, here slowly, in a dynamic curtain. Some streams of water spray furiously off the rocks in a blur. Others fall gently into miniature pools on their way down, running languorously from rock to rock. No thing is the same from one moment to the next. And yet there is some continuity to the waterfall, as one moment’s existence conditions the next. It’s the same way with our minds, our breath, our life.