A Visit from the Easter Cat

They say that Easter comes but once a year. This may be true for families who are visited by the Easter Bunny, but the Rioux Famille does things a little differently. Lucky for Ethan. Not only does he get to hunt and decorate eggs; not only is he spoiled with chocolate by his parents. All this little man has to do is bide his time until the Easter Cat comes for a visit.

Never heard of the Easter Cat, you say? He only comes to very special children, those who are loved by people far and wide. And when he comes he's sure to bring a train full of happiness. Just look at that face. Does it get any sweeter? Thank you Easter Cat.

The Easter Cat is generous. He brings gifts of toy trains and chocolate rabbits. It's hard to say which is the preferred delight. Sure, the chocolate is tasty; but once it's eaten, the pleasure is gone. Toy trains have a lasting power that is fueled by creativity, laughter and boyhood dreams. Chug on, Easter Cat, chug on.

Happy Baby

There's a yoga position by this name. You roll on your back and grab your feet, knees bent and hips open, like a roly-poly baby. E and J were both Happy Babies when they rolled out of his daycare for the last time. While they didn't actually roll out of the house -- they'd likely have rolled in dog poo if they had -- their hearts were rolling and their happiness was, like that of the rolling baby, unlimited. They were free!

E spent far too many unhappy months in the "care" (no word could be more unfitting in this context) of a woman who should not be providing childcare. The Js struggled with this. It is not an easy thing to find childcare in Victoria. Ask any pregnant mother who already has her baby's name, even before she knows the baby's name, on a waitlist. It's an ugly scene. But E was suffering and it couldn't go on. Between an incredible Aunt and Granny and the serendipitous reconnection with a young Nanny (a former student of J's) they made a new plan and bid their less than fond farewells to the bad daycare lady.

The difference has been incredible. In two little days, E has transformed into a happy baby and so has his mom. When J comes home or picks E up, he's calm and clean and smiling (or more likely eating). He's played. He's been outside. He's been cared for.

The Js have learned not to settle when it comes to the well-being of their boy.
This is a big lesson, one they probably thought they already knew.

Big mind, Little mind

Last night J attended her first formal Buddhist meditation meeting. In a room full of quiet breathers, she sat facing a wall, eyes gently lowered, and tried not to try to simply sit and be. This is Soto Zen. Serene Reflection Meditation. The breath comes and goes, without an effort to follow it. The mind fills and empties with thoughts, without trying to control, suppress, or judge them.

But of course this is impossible when you are new, and so J's mind filled with thoughts of how difficult it is to sit. She felt tension that she'd not even noticed in her shoulders and back. She felt thirst. She felt weariness. It was alternately a struggle to resist movement and to withstand the urge to sleep. After 25 minutes, a bell rang, signalling the end of the first seated meditation. J rose with the group and began to walk around the room, following the others who knew the path. This too was a challenge. They walked through the hallway of the old house and into the kitchen, back into the large meditation/living room and around again. It was tempting to look about rather than to focus on the placement of each foot. J's curious eyes took in the items on the counter of the kitchen, the small table, the many statues and wall hangings, the various heights and shapes of the others in the room, the colour of their socks.

The walk ended at the sound of another bell and they returned to their seats for the second round of meditation. J felt a certain dread as she seated herself again. Would this sit feel longer than the first? Would she succumb to the sleep that threatened to pull her under? Would her thoughts highjack her out of her being entirely?

And the thoughts did come. And one of them was fairly enlightening. What she will do with it is another matter. The thought was this: we are all of us, in this high-speed western world, afraid of the passage of time. This is what makes just sitting so difficult. How can you not think about the fact that time is passing and you are not doing anything to distract yourself from it? Anything would be better than sitting in awareness of the overwhelming reality of time. And this explains why we can allow ourselves to compulsively check our e-mail, busy ourselves with make-work projects, lose ourselves in the comforts of television or youtube or facebook or whatever electronic teat you've latched onto. And this too explains why a child, like E, who has no concept of the passage of time can be so fully and blissfully engaged in an activity, to move freely from one to the next, to focus or fall into deep sleep, to wake with enviable energy and simply be a part of the world without worrying about filling time or fleeing from it. We teach a fear of time and once we're adults we have a sense of its pressure that is entirely of our own making. And the only way to avoid this self-entrapment is to sit and face time, to simply be.

This is Big mind - Little mind in action. Big mind, daishin, that space we each carry and can train ourselves to connect with, tells us that time is, it simply is, and that we are a part of it. Little mind tells us time is something we must manage, control, attempt to fight or flee. Little mind is what we've been taught and what we must let go of in order to surrender ourselves, to be in harmony with time. But Little mind, like the little boy who demands and insists and throws tempers and wins his way, is tricky to ignore. We must cultivate infinite patience. We don't really have a choice, do we?