Beginner's Heart

Have you ever watched a new baby? Seriously observed one? Focused on the wide eyes drinking in light (pre-birth is a bit dark…), the mouth twitching towards milk, the tiny fingers curling around support.

Like most things in my life, watching a new baby seems a quintessentially Buddhist endeavour. It’s beyond illuminating. Everything is for the first time — even if it’s not. Mom appears and disappears. Dad materialises and fades. Other loving adults (and the occasional well-intentioned dog) nuzzle and murmur and generally love  you. But you have no context for any of this. It’s all as fresh as the first spring leaf unfurling in the watery spring sun, or first love. Fresher, even.

I have a new name. And a new job. Name: GG (code for Grandma Gildersleeve). Job: grandmother. Job description: rocker of baby Trinidad, cooer to baby Trinidad, singer & hummer to baby T. Changer of etceteras, soother of dreams, giver of occasional bottle. Unconditional lover of T.

In other words? I’m watching a newly minted human being learn how to be in this world. Each action is learned, except for his rooting instinct. Digestive issues make his face furl into purple effort, while a song sung softly elicits intense listening. A different position in the lap, a new person to smell while she holds you? All unsullied by familiarity.

We take our routines for granted. But once upon a time, the world was as new as the birth miracle: another human being becoming part of this whole crazy quilt of life. And for my grandson, it’s still like that. Sit outside, where the pale Oregon light falls in stripes across the grass, and Trinidad is mesmerised. This is what it means to ‘be here, now.’ Trinidad can be no other place. This moment is what he has, what he is learning.

It’s a lesson I too am trying to learn, a memory I want to imprint. I am trying hard to add ‘seeing through your eyes’ to my  changing job description. It may well be the making of my beginner’s heart ~

  So it’s bees again. AND poetry. Because really ~ why not?? What’s more  like June than the hum of bees, their own gently busy music? The poetry is what comes of watching, good Buddhist contemplation ~

Here’s John Ciardi’s poem, “Bees & Morning Glories”:

Morning glories, pale as a mist drying,
fade from the heat of the day, but already
hunchback bees in pirate pants and with peg-leg
hooks have found and are boarding them.

This could do for the sack of the imaginary
fleet. The raiders loot the galleons even as they
one by one vanish and leave still real
only what has been snatched out of the spell.

I’ve never seen bees more purposeful except
when the hive is threatened. They know
the good of it must be grabbed and hauled
before the whole feast wisps off.

They swarm in light and, fast, dive in,
then drone out, slow, their pantaloons heavy
with gold and sunlight. The line of them,
like thin smoke, wafts over the hedge.

And back again to find the fleet gone.
Well, they got this day’s good of it. Off
they cruise to what stays open longer.
Nothing green gives honey. And by now

you’d have to look twice to see more than green
where all those white sails trembled
when the world was misty and open
and the prize was there to be taken.

On the plane coming home from a weekend writer’s conference, I sat next to a very nice woman from Austin. She was unbelievably lovely, soft-spoken with a sweet Southern drawl. We talked, as passengers in tiny seats sharing breathing space do, about one thing & another. And I didn’t even realise that I had made certain assumptions — prejudiced assumptions — until Janet-from-Austin blew ‘em up.

Digression: Dolly Parton was once asked, as she first began her library project, when she thought people would stop thinking speakers with Southern accents were stupid. Her reply doesn’t fit w/ my epiphany, but the question sure does. Because I had assumed that this lovely woman — too pretty, too Southern, a monied stay-at-home mother (probably a Southern debutante) — wasn’t unusually bright.

At which point Janet mentioned she has a law degree and a master’s. In education curriculum & design. And I am frantically going back over what I’ve said — hoping I wasn’t a jerk, or even ‘just’patronising. Please note: it’s not that degrees (or even education) define being ‘smart.’ But I had made the totally bogus assumption that Janet wouldn’t even care about advanced degrees. And law school and master’s degrees ARE hard. I also wouldn’t have thought she’d stick even one, much less both.

At that point, our conversation deepened, obviously. And I’m left to consider, later, prejudice & stereotyping. How insidious it is. How difficult to see in ourselves. I wonder, over the next several hours, if the people who turn on Obama for things Bush also did see any double standard. And which of Janet’s ‘markers’ shut the door to my heart, initially.

Was it because she had a Southern accent? I have several close friends — and family! — w/ Southern accents. I know they’re smart.

Was it her soft, tiny, voice? Maybe — that’s been a problem for me (big-booming-voice me) for a long time. But it’s a lesson I thought I’d learned long ago.

How about her loveliness? Many of my friends — brilliant women — are drop-dead beautiful. Again, I know better. I don’t think it was any single one of these, really.

As for staying at home w/ her kids? I did that for years, and was grateful to have the luxury.

I can only assume it was gestalt: the Southern deb image. A stereotype? Sure. And one — ironically — that Janet really didn’t fit, once I visited w/ her. Yes, she has money. No, she doesn’t work outside the home. Instead, she’s considering returning to school for her doctorate. Because she’d like to teach. Something I relate to on every level.

So here’s what my beginner heart learned:

Next time you meet someone, consider this: are you — as Pema Chodron says — proceeding without intention? Listening w/out a filter? I would have said yes. But I wasn’t (obviously). And I suspect this is not the first time. Next time I meet a stranger, I will take a deep breath, and listen openly. Proceed without intention. For Janet’s sake. She deserves that consideration. Better late, right?

I don’t want to tell you how much of our retirement fund goes for bird seed. Not to mention bird feeders, suet and the containers to put it in, hummer feeders (and sugar for it — we make our own not-red ‘nectar’), etc. Thankfully my husband is a birdophile too.

Each spring it’s fascinating to watch as the fledglings learn to fly, and begin to frequent the feeders. Beginning last year, we have baby woodpeckers. Who knew they were sooo silly when they first start hunting food?? They will peck at ANY upright: a bird feeder hook (even a cast-iron one!), a post, the side of a hummingbird feeder… Not your brightest bulbs as they learn to shine.

This year, for the first time, we had a young blue jay. In competition w/ his parent (impossible to tell Mom from Dad, at least w/out a group; even the experts agree), he has been eating at the seed cylinder. Which has been so much fun to watch. Jays are big enough to shoulder off the darn starlings (we don’t encourage them, but we don’t do anything mean to keep them away), which is great. Somehow watching a jay eat is a lot more interesting than watching starlings war for turf.

Now the baby jay is gone, the victim of either an elderly, crippled cat (really — she’s 11, and limps badly), or a French bulldog with no good sense. And yes, I know a bird that can’t fly away from an old gimpy cat or a short, asthmatic dog, isn’t good evolutionary material. But still — my husband & I are grieving for a single wild bird, in the face of all the tragedy throughout our state. We returned to its passing over the course of the day ~ so sad about the baby jay… I wonder if it was Hugo or Sophie?…it’s just so SAD.

Somehow, the jay is immediate, tangible. Even though friends of mine have been impacted measurably — ranging from inconvenience to losing all they possess — I find myself mourning this nameless bird. Whom we knew for only a few weeks.

Everything passes, I know. I say it to myself frequently: a kind of Buddhist mantra. And when tragedy strikes friends or family, it’s my go-to self-comforting chant: this will pass this will pass. As did the blue jay, his navy & indigo and cerulean blue feathers scattered in confusion around his limp body. And I’m very very sorry.