Found (12 page)

Steve: I don’t get it.

Therapist: As if she isn’t here. Just tell me who you think Jennifer is.

Steve: Well, that’s easy. First, she is a woman, obviously. She’s tall, great legs, good cook, confident, hardworking. She’s my wife. We have two kids. She’s smart. Really smart.

Jennifer: (Laughs.)

Steve: What? It’s true. You’re smart. Hell, you’re smarter than me.

Jennifer: Don’t put yourself down. You’re always putting yourself down.

Steve: I don’t always put myself down.

Jennifer: You do too. He does.

Therapist: (Hands up.) Okay, hold on. Let’s stay on Steve and the question.

Steve: (Frowns, shakes his head. Doesn’t remember question.)

Therapist: What else do you see when you look at Jennifer?

Jennifer: (Restless with therapist. Thinks he is a hack.) The dark stuff, Steve. He wants to know the deeper things. What pisses you off about me?

Steve: (Nods, grateful for the translation.)

Therapist: (Gives Jennifer a small nod too. Makes a note on his pad,
Jennifer = controlling
.)

Steve: (Shifts in his chair, looks at ground. Passes glance over to Jennifer.) Are you sure you want to hear it, Jen? Do you really want to go there?

Jennifer: You’re not telling me, you’re telling him. Tell him. Who am I?

Therapist: (Looks at Jennifer for a long moment. Considers asking her to leave room.)

Steve: (Takes a deep breath and rubs his face.) Well, I guess I would say Jennifer is one of those people, you know, she’s sad.

Therapist: (Perks up again, makes notes.) Can you tell me more? Can you tell me more about this sadness you see?

Steve: (Looks at Jennifer with more concern.)

Jennifer: (Nods as if Steve should continue.)

Steve: (Clears his throat and coughs into his fist.) Well, when Jennifer gets sad, it’s hard. It’s like she turns around and disappears—even though she’s right in front of me.

Therapist: (Leans forward in chair.) How does that make you feel?

Steve: (Looks at therapist—hard—looks at Jennifer, looks at his own shoes, looks at time on watch. Thinks about how this session is costing him two hundred and fifty bucks.) Well, I guess I want to pull her out of wherever she goes, out of her sadness—I want to be like the guy who saves the day—you know, the hero who rides in on a horse. I guess I just want to be the one who makes Jennifer happy.

Therapist: (Takes furious notes, both congratulating himself on a job well done and also getting ready to ask Steve about his childhood and his relationship to his own mother.)

Jennifer: (Crying.)

Steve: (Furious with himself. Thinking,
Great, now I’ve made her cry
.)

 

 

AFTER ELEVEN YEARS together and a good amount of therapy, Steve didn’t really want to look at his need to rescue me and to take it so personally. He didn’t want to talk about his mother and his past either. For Steve, childhood belonged back in childhood. He was from Spokane, for heaven’s sake. No one did therapy in Spokane.

Steve and I went on with our lives, we argued about paint chips, movies, and where to eat dinner. I continued to feel lost and ambivalent, and I continued to go away, deep into myself—after all I was writing a memoir. And Steve continued to believe that I was going away from him, that I didn’t want to be with him or our children. He felt he had failed me.

In the end, when I left our marriage, I told him I just had to keep looking for that missing something.

“Looking for what?” Steve would always ask. “What are you looking for, Jen?”

EIGHTEEN

THE JOURNEY

WHEN HE WAS in town, Steve stayed in the house overnight and I slept at my office, a few blocks away. When he was out of town, I’d sleep in the basement.

This was not an arrangement he created. I was the one to put myself on the outside and to put Steve on the inside with our kids. I cast myself out as the failure.

On the nights I was away from my home, the routine, and the children, I was so unhappy, I’d curl up into a fetal position and cry for the physical pain I felt in missing my own children.

“Come home, Jen,” Steve would say, but I had to batter myself. My mind fed me lines of failure that buried me deeper and deeper still. “You’re trash. You blew it. It’s all your fault.”

I cried until I passed out.

 

 

BEFORE, IT HAD been Carmel who saved my life. But since Carmel had died of old age—a few years earlier—the task of calling me out of my habitual loop of self-torment fell to Spencer.

While I walked him to school, pretending all was well, Spencer tugged on my hand. “Mom,” he said, “I can’t find you.”

We were on the way to his second-grade classroom. His teacher, Beth, stood at the door and shook hands with another child. We were next.

I did a quick U-turn and maneuvered into a stairwell. I collapsed on the sticky, dirty stairs and held his upper arms. I looked into his dark chocolate eyes. “What do you mean, Sweets? ” I asked.

“I look for you, at night. I go through the house and you’re not anywhere.”

Spencer, seven years old, had dark, shining hair cut in the shape of a bowl and a long, angular face.

“What about Jo?” I asked. “Is she awake at night too?”

“I don’t think so,” he said. “You know Jo. She’s always so happy.” The school bell rang but we didn’t move off the steps. I chewed the edge of my lip. How to fit this huge news into a small headline? “Well, Sweetie, Dad and I aren’t getting along so great and I’ve been sleeping at my office,” I finally admitted. “I’m sorry. I should have told you.”

I smoothed his hair and Spencer looked relieved. A part of him knew.

“I want to sleep where you sleep,” he said. “Can I come to your office too?”

His longing, so pure and raw, made me so sad. Hadn’t I learned that children know everything, feel everything?

I hugged him close and promised that yes, he could, but I would
also go to work and find a place of my own. “I’ll find a house,” I said. “I’ll make a place for us to be together.”

“When?” he asked.

“Right now,” I said. “Today.”

“Good,” he said.

 

 

I FOUND A house just a few blocks from Steve, made a down payment, and created a new home. I bought all new things so moving was like a party for the kids—a time of expansion—and not a funeral march through divorce.

I circled tight around their routine and recreated myself around their needs.

Jo was just two and a half. Spencer neared eight.

Jo had her art projects and Mommy and Me classes. Spence had school and play dates. We had dinnertime and reading time and bedtime. Mundane activities like brushing teeth, taking baths, and folding clothes were my sanity. I buried myself in their schedule as if in a cave—belowground.

Lovers entered and exited. These men started as momentary comfort and became monotonous and suffocating. I seemed to attract a long line of losers who were needy, clingy, and even abusive. I found a poignant passage by Nor Hall, who wrote
The Moon and the Virgin
, and with a Sharpie pen I transcribed the words on the wall over my bed:

The passage stood as a warning to all lovers: You are temporary! Do not settle in.

My internal state became that of a virgin.

This began what some might call the spiritual journey. That is, the call to the spirit within—or perhaps the soul of a person—or the soul of everything. I now entered the deepest part of the quest toward the elusive and the unknown.

This is when I discovered meditation and a teacher of meditation named Tylanni Drolma.

 

 

TYLANNI DROLMA. TYLANNI. While I didn’t know what her name meant, the sound of it contained worlds unknown. At first I found a series of meditation tapes she had recorded called
Awaken from Fear
. I listened to these tapes—over and over again—not just for the meditation she offered but also for the story she told of her life. Tylanni had traveled through India and Tibet, had been a nun in the Tibetan tradition of Buddhism and then went on to marry—not once, but twice—and had several children.

I thought,
Here’s a woman who has traveled deep into the complexities of marriage and motherhood and even into spirituality.
I needed such a guide at this stage of my own life.

I ordered her book titled
Illusion’s Wake Up Call
and when
it arrived, paged directly to the center to find a photo of Tylanni Drolma as a young woman. Her hair had been shaved—traditional for someone who had taken the vows of a nun. She held a bundle of wool blankets. As I stared into this grainy image, my body was covered with chills. I told myself I had to speak to her.

I learned, via Internet research, that Tylanni lived in Canada. She ran a retreat center called The Pure Land.

The name itself felt mysterious and vast—like the sea. I was speechless and also felt called to action.

I wrote a quick email: “I read your book. I wanted to ask how you were able to maintain a spiritual life and be a mother.”

Within hours, Tylanni typed a return email. “Come to Canada, perhaps take the Tara retreat, and we shall talk about this.”

Her message was so surprising and yet also felt so important—although I had no inkling why. All I could do—as if something larger than myself was driving forward momentum—was to arrange childcare, book a ticket, and make the trip.

 

 

TO THE AVERAGE city dweller, getting to The Pure Land is not easy. You have to take a plane to Calgary and a puddle jumper to Golden (and keep hold of the barf bag because it’s a brutal, bumpy flight). Next, you make an hour trek to Jasper and another hour trip on unpaved roads. Make a hard right and cut through raw forestland on a one-way double-track trail. Be careful of the huge boulders, don’t careen your rig into the creek, and keep your eyes on the horizon—in search of silk prayer flags.

When you get to The Pure Land (if you get there), know that you are someone who wanted to get there. It takes serious focus to make that journey, and it takes serious commitment to stay.

When I arrived that first time, I thought to myself,
what the hell am I doing here?

My only religious training—which I had walked away from—was in the Catholic Church. In my twenties, with my mean first husband, I had dipped into the vat of ecstatic Christianity and accepted Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, into my heart. I just loved that phrase—
Jesuschristourlordandsavior.
When I said it, over and over again, it felt like being born. Eventually I made my way back to the more subdued and stern Catholics where there were absolutes like:
If you do bad things you burn in hell
and
God is up there and we are down here
. I had my first marriage annulled by a Catholic council, just to play by the rules, and even though I didn’t go to church (the whole perspective on women bummed me out), I did consider myself to be a faithful person. I believed in forces bigger than myself. I believed in divine intervention. I could count off several moments in my own life where I felt the power of Grace. But my faith was my business. Religion felt very personal.

I suppose I could say that I arrived at The Pure Land with an open heart. I was ready to believe I had come for a divine reason that would be revealed. But it also fair to say, on the issue of religion, I was skeptical too.

 

 

THE PURE LAND had rolling hills, open meadows, a few yurts, and a lean-to style kitchen built among the leaning trunks of aspen and pines. Upon arrival, I was assigned to a dusty tent, ate a bit of wilted salad, and found my way to the first teaching.

In hiking boots, I clomped up a gravel road that ended at the double doors of a canvas yurt.

Inside, the air was thick with incense and candles burned around a circular altar where a dozen statues of the same beautiful jade green woman were arranged in a circle. On the lattice walls, there were silk paintings of Asian men and women dancing, sitting cross-legged, and even making love. All I had ever seen were statues of a pious Mary, head bowed in contemplative sorrow, and Christ ratcheted to a cross, his face distorted in eternal pain. I found myself staring at the Tibetan interpretation of the Divinity with a voyeur’s curiosity.

At the back of the yurt
, the
Tylanni Drolma sat on a pile of cushions and sheep skins. I stopped looking around and stared at her.

The
Tylanni Drolma was a small, dark-haired woman wrapped in a prayer shawl. She had a serene smile and vivid amber eyes.

While I had never been one to place another on a pedestal—I didn’t have a penchant for celebrity—Tylanni had been elevated to star status in my own psyche.

I found my way to the back of the yurt and eased to a cushion on the floor, all the while staring at this woman, this VIP.

With all the buildup in my mind, I had expected rockets to explode upon seeing her, but nothing happened. She didn’t even look my way. I was just one of a dozen people—a stranger.

 

 

AS THE RETREAT progressed, Tylanni taught the history of Tara. She was the Buddha of compassionate action, born from the tear of another Buddha. In one story, Tara was a princess who reached enlightenment at a time when it was believed women couldn’t be enlightened. Tylanni told us that meditation on Tara could bring good fortune and remove obstacles.

I realized early on that it wasn’t Tylanni who drew me. It was Tara, and as soon as I learned some basic history, I was a goner. I filled pages of my journal from Tylanni’s lectures. I thought it was just great that this woman—this Tara—existed in the annals of women’s history. I liked to think it was possible, even provable, that women were capable of active divinity and not just passive acceptance. Whereas the Virgin Mary, in my own mind, kept everything in her heart, Tara was a woman who got the job done. Tara was a powerhouse of compassion with a purpose. Tara was the Go-To Girl. Yes, I liked Tara right away.