Another Zen Koan

Same subway ride. I give M-ito another Zen Koan.

A Zen Master has a student who leaves the dormitory at night to carouse in the town. He places a tall chair beneath his room window and climbs out. One night the Zen Master goes to the young man’s room and sees the chair. He takes it away and stands beneath the window where the chair had been, his head coming up to about the same height as the chair had. When the young man comes back through the window it’s dark so he doesn’t see the Master beneath him and places his feet on the Master’s head. When he gets down the Master says, “It’s a cold night out tonight.” The young man responds, “It is,” and gets in to bed. The young man never goes to the town at night again.

I asked M-ito what he thought of the story.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“Okay,” I said. I thought for a moment and then had an idea. I retold the exact same story but with a friend of his, Aus-ito, and the boy’s father, Big Aus-ito, in the place of the master and the young man. I thought he’d understand it better if it was about someone he knew. Aus-ito is a very adventurous boy who loves to climb and explore and who I knew M-ito could see doing something like the zen student – ie: escaping his room via the window. I figured he’d understand the story better this way – that it would be more relevant.

I asked M-ito what he thought of this version of the story.

“I don’t understand,” he said again.

“What do mean? I thought you’d understand it better if I used Aus-ito in the story.”

“That’s just it,” M-ito said. “That’s not possible because Aus-ito would use some kind of crazy zip-line and never have to touch his father’s head. Then he’d make some kind of bomb and blow up the zip-line so no one would ever know he’d used it. That way he’d never get caught by his parents and no one would know that he’d ever left his room.”

I’m still laughing about that one.

One Hand Clapping

I took M-ito to work with me today. Mom-ita was working, teaching a consulting gig, and out all day. I had work that had to be done so I couldn’t take the day off. We walked to the express station – what is normally a fifteen minute walk – in half an hour. The trains were fast though, and instead of 11am I made it in by 10:15.

He sat in my office for almost three hours, reading a Pokemon Manga and playing games on my iPhone. He’s so good. He even waved, his small, shy, bent-elbow wave, to everyone I introduced him too. They smiled back at him.

We had lunch and walked about twenty blocks downtown to the comics store, Forbidden Planet. I had him avoid all the “adult” sections and the “monster” sections. He bought two ugly dolls with his allowed funds, eyeballing the USS Enterprise model and a Godzilla action figure.

On the R train home, both of us exhausted, nodding a little, I took out a book of Zen Koans I’d been reading (Zen Flesh, Zen Bones) and asked M-ito if he wanted me to read him some stories that were like puzzles.

He said, “Sure.”

I told him the story of the Zen Master who had a young student who wanted to the master to give him a koan to help him to study and learn. The master asked him if he knew the sound of two hands clapping and the student said, “Yes.” Then he asked him, “What’s the sound of one hand?” The student went back and forth over a year coming up with answers like, the wind, an owl hooting, the breath and each time the master said, “No. Come back when you have figured it out.”

Well… I only got to the first time the master asked, “What’s the sound of one hand clapping,” when M-ito interrupted me and said, “there is no sound.” My mouth hung open for a moment. Then I shut it and continued the story, ending at the same place my son had already been to, camped out at, and completed. It took the student a year. It took my son about three seconds.

Heartbeat

“Dad-dito, put your hand here,” M-ito said, taking my hand in his and placing it over his heart. He’d just taken a bath and only had on his shorts. His skin is tan from camp and the mosquito bites from camping two weeks ago are almost all healed up. I could feel his heart beating through his chest. It was loud and made my son seem so vulnerable to me. He smiled as we both felt the strength of the thumping, thudding, pulsing, beating. It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever felt in my life.

The Two Headed Goose

At what point does sleep become important to you? I have struggled with the need for sleep and the lack of sleep since M-ito was born. Mom-ita gets less sleep and sleep is more important to her. I don’t get enough sleep and it’s important to me but I’m learning to live with less of it.

To sleep or not to sleep is a big parenting question. I would have to rate it as one of the top three parenting issues that challenge Mom-itas and Dad-ditos worldwide. Sleep deprivation can cause you to go around the bend. So many decisions are made in childrearing based simply on the need to get some uninterrupted hours of sleep. When M-ito was an infant and Mom-ita was breastfeeding she never got more than a couple hours of uninterrupted sleep. Let that go on for six months and you have a nervous breakdown waiting to happen. Point of information for other Dad-ditos. When Mom-ita is dealing with sleep deprivation it’s not a good time to go out after work with the boys or plan a weekend activity of any sort other than taking care of your own M-ito – just in case you were wondering. I know how Dad-dito’s think.

I can still picture myself getting up at 3am with a crying 3-month old M-ito and walking him back and forth in the living room, myself half asleep, intimately aware of all the obstacles on the carpet around me and the number of paces it took to get from one end of the room to another. When M-ito wouldn’t go back to sleep after he’d been rocked, walked, and sung to for an hour, I’d take him into the kitchen and make myself a cup of coffee, because I figured I’d be up all night and unless I had caffeine I wasn’t going to be able to stop myself from passing out on the couch. Usually around the time I’d made the coffee and drunk it, M-ito would be sound asleep and I’d be wide awake. So it goes.

Last night M-ito woke up sometime between 3 and 4am and stayed up. I stayed up with him. We have a family bed, which at this point in time means he sleeps next to our bed in a bed of his own, but around 1am climbs over me (I usually don’t feel it or remember him climbing over me), climbs under the covers, and snuggles in between us.

I’m in bed by midnight, usually. Mind you I know it makes more sense to get to bed earlier – or even to go to sleep closer to when M-ito goes to sleep, but I just can’t do it. I work at night on my writing and it’s the only time Mom-ita and I have together to talk. So midnight it is.

“I’m scared,” M-ito says to me in his little voice.

“Everything will be all right,” I mumble and pull him in close, kissing the top of his head. “Now go to sleep.”

“Am I going to camp today?” he asks Mom-ita a few minutes later. “Yes you are, now GO to sleep.”

Over the next hour this procedure will be repeated many times with nice touches added like, “I’m thirsty,” and, “I’m hungry,” and, “I had a nightmare of the two-headed goose again.” Here’s the thing about M-ito. When he’s up, he’s up until exhaustion takes him and he’s then… asleep. He won’t go out into his room or the living room and play without one of us going with him. I’m usually too tired to get up completely and go with him so in bed we stay beneath the covers. My fantasy is that he’ll simply go back to sleep. It could happen. Maybe once it did happoen. I can’t remember because, well, I was only semi-conscious and couldn’t tell if it was a dream or reality. Next he starts wiggling his toes into my belly, or stretching them into Mom-ita’s back. Two hours later I haul him over to the other side of me where at least he can’t bother Mom-ita. At 5:45am I finally give up.

“Do you want to get up and go in the other room?” I ask in a whisper.

M-ito nods.

“I’ll get up with you,” I say. He takes my hand and leads me into the living room. I have to do a presentation in Maryland in the afternoon for a group of type A personality prosecutors on teambuilding and I’ll be public speaking on three or four hours of sleep. It’s happened before. In the past I’ve lost my temper with M-ito and shouted, “WOULD YOU GO TO SLEEP!” or tried to put him back into his own bed, but that would require so much energy putting the restraints on him and then monitoring his attempts to climb Dad-dito mountain and besides… it will not get him back to sleep so… my yoga practice awaits me. This is how I’ve grown. I did not yell or scream. I simply got up. I’ve learned it’s the price of admission.

Some people Ferberize, they put their child in his/her own bed in his/her own room and shut the door. Then they try and ignore the crying, the wailing, the pleading, until it stops and the child has cried himself to sleep. Some people can’t function without a certain amount of sleep and for them this becomes the method of choice. It’s human to need to sleep. We have to be able to function as parents during the day and sleep is so key to being able to function at a higher level. I don’t think it teaches anything to a child, though, other than crying won’t get your needs met. Some decisions have to be looked at in a larger context, I guess. Ferberizing is just not for Mom-ita and me. Instead we struggle and wonder when he’ll sleep through the night without climbing over the Dad-dito mountain into the valley of sleep. We’re glad the family bed represents safety and home for M-ito. But sometimes we’d really like to get some sleep.

I’ll try to catch up on sleep later on in the week. Usually I get to sleep until 7 or 8am on Sundays. Yoga helps too. It helps reduce the screaming inside my head, “BUT I NEED SLEEP.” It reduces the font size.

It helped that I had to come to terms with not getting a lot of sleep before I had to do large presentations prior to M-ito’s birth. It was like practice for having a child. Anxiety wouldn’t allow me to get more than four hours of sleep on big presentation days so over time I just gave in and got up. I couldn’t make myself go to back to sleep and I didn’t want to take any meds to sleep. Within the last year I finally extended my night before presentation sleep time to 6 hours – just in time to give in and get up, for M-ito. At least I’m building on past success. Besides, today I’ll do okay presenting. It’s my job and I know that even on a bad day I’ll be good enough. Having a child means that many times I have to allow being good enough at my job to be good enough. It’s all about priorities. M-ito comes first, Mom-ita second, my job third.

The good thing is the two-headed goose rarely, these days, visits two days in a row. The only problem is that after the presentation is over this afternoon, boy am I gonna crash.