From Comfortable Distances (45 page)

In Your Own Garden

At the Monastery – En Media Ras 1985
         

There were three white
houses and one red-bricked house out on the hermitage grounds. There were no
bathrooms in any of the houses, but there were refrigerators and a stove and a
freezer, too. In each there was a middle room with a couch and in the bedroom
there was a bed and a dresser. The furniture looked as if it had come from a
garage sale—slightly beat up and aged. It was a ten-minute walk from the
hermitage to the main chapel. One used the shower in the guest wing when
staying out in the hermitage. The hermitage was near an apple orchard, which
wasn’t far from the apiary and the honey house, where Father Demetrius purified
the honey before it was ready to be eaten.  You passed the farm equipment on
the way out to the hermitage as well as the roosters and chickens—there were
dozens of them.

I had always wanted to
live out in the hermitage, to see what it would be like to experience that
solitariness, but a brother wasn’t able to just go out to live in the hermitage
for a few days. One had to commit to being out there for a long period of time.
I was never ready to make that commitment. I suppose that I craved the company
of the brothers too much.

In the church, the pews
faced each other, one closer to the east wall, the other closer to the west.
When I first saw the set up, it reminded me of the television show Family Feud,
with the holy table and pulpit in the middle ground, just like where the Family
Feud host was situated. I was positioned across from Brother Kirk. He was the
eccentric amongst us, with his long, unruly black curly hair and his pronounced
nose and his tall, lanky frame. He was a painter and a musician. Many of the
paintings that adorned the walls of the university and also the chapel were by
Brother Kirk. Some were religious, but many were of nature—trees and mountains.
He liked to play folk songs on his guitar and sometimes, sitting out by the
picnic tables, he sang James Taylor songs. The students at the college loved
him and his psychology classes were always full as a result. He used to teach
me about art and sometimes we got into discussions about Freud and Jung. He was
one of the few people at the monastery that I shared my ideas about religion
and the church with. I don’t know if he agreed with me or not but he always
listened. He seemed to have found his separate peace in the monastic setting
and as long as he was able to paint and play music and teach in the university,
he was happy to stay put. I often wondered if the brothers I lived alongside
wanted to stay in the monastery because they felt passionate about the life
they were leading or if they felt it was the only option for them in life.

In the same vein that
Brother Gerard was considered the organist, Brother Kirk the painter, and
Brother William was the stained glass maker of the bunch, I suppose that I was
considered the writer. I contributed to the newsletter we produced—
The Prairie Messenger
—and
was in charge of editing it quarterly, before we sent it off to press. I also
was responsible for taking the people visiting the monastery on tours of the
grounds. Father Demetrius believed that I was better suited to escort the
visitors around than he was. He believed that I was gentler and friendlier than
him. I liked to take the visitors out to see my gardens and to see the endless
jars of preserves we prepared in the basement, as well as the vast farmlands
that were rich with potatoes sprouting at certain times of the year.

As the years went by, I
came to spend more and more time in my garden, carefully labeling each of the
flowers I was growing and caring for them as if they were my friends. So in
that respect I believe I became the gardener of the bunch, too. There was a
small statue of Jesus Christ in my garden. A gift from Father Demetrius. I
surrounded it with stones, some white, some black, and a few larger, red
stones. In the winter, when the winds blew fierce, I would move the statue and
the stones into my room, to protect it from the elements. Each day during the brisk
winter I smiled at Jesus and he smiled back at me at me as if we were sharing a
joke. I don’t remember specifically what I was smiling about—life, the
universe, my love for everything around me. Looking at him, I envisioned the
spring and the flowers that would blossom and how I loved that coming to life
of the earth.

There was a bench facing
the chapel in my garden and circular flowerbeds with gnomes scattered in each
of them. There were also butterflies made out of wire in the center of the
flowerbeds and some small wire bees and a wooden yellow jack and a Canadian
flag. These decorations had all been in the garden long before it fell into my
care. Sometimes I sat on the bench and studied the stained glass murals that
blocked out the church interior. I imagined myself sitting on the pew in my
spot and I wondered if I looked at home in the chapel or if I looked like an
imposter. I’m not sure the first time I had that self-conscious thought and
what inspired it, but it was there in me. There was a constant, slight breeze
in my garden that lulled me. At odd hours of the day, even in the winter, the
sun visited the garden, but it never made me feel too hot in there. There was a
tranquility to my garden that possessed me. There, I didn’t have to think about
what was next in my life. Each moment unfolded independently of any other
moment in my life. There was a timelessness to the hours I spent there, a
feeling that the world would wait—that it was my insecurities and neediness
that imposed time on anything. I began to wonder why my days were structured
around the sound of church bells beckoning. I began to question following the
rules. For whom was I following them and why? To what benefit? In the garden
there was nothing to do but be and question, and explore my mind and heart. It
was there, in my garden, that I began to ask questions and seek answers.

Tess waited in her car at
the corner, until she saw his mother make a right turn onto 66
^th
street, en route to the nursing home. She pulled up in front of Neal’s house,
put the letter on his porch, then inched a bit away from his house, beeped
twice, then again, until she saw him open the front door and walk outside, and
then she drove away.

Dear Neal,

The other night when I
didn’t invite you in – it was not about you, Neal. Not that you assumed I was
trying to shut you out. Perhaps that’s just my insecurity in thinking so. It
was about my need to be alone that night. I share this, as often in my life, I
didn’t explain things. I took it for granted that the other person would
understand and sometimes the other person did and sometimes not. What you may
not know about me, what I’ve recently come to discover myself, is that I am
struggling to keep my life simple. To keep it uncomplicated. My mother used to
say that certain people always chose to complicate their lives even when simple
solutions were available. I wonder if I am one of those people – I know the
simple solution is to leave you alone. To send you off, to tell you to work
through what you must work through on your own, without my being a part of the
equation. I know that logically. But selfishly, when I am with you, I don’t
care about what’s simple or hard, what’s right or wrong; I just want to be with
you.

I hope that as you read
this letter, you know that it wasn’t easy for me to write to you. I have been a
coward more often than not in my life by avoiding sharing what is in my heart,
in my mind.  I’ve lived my life keeping many of my feelings and dreams and
desires inside. I don’t know why – maybe I was afraid that someone would say my
dreams were impossible or that I would get laughed at or hurt. Or maybe it was
that I wasn’t always in touch with my dreams. I don’t always know why I do the
things I do. That is what happens sometimes when one chooses to live a fast
life. It’s more action and less thought. But lately, I am trying to make space,
to take time to think things through. I don’t want my life to be random.

You have to figure out
what is right for you. My feelings are my own. Only you know what your next
move will be and regardless of what you choose, of what chooses you, it will be
the right decision. That’s what I have come to believe. When you do what’s
right for you, there is no guilt, no fear, no shame.

I am sure the transition
back to secular life has been a lot for you. I am sure it’s not what you
expected when you chose to come back. Which makes me realize that I have never
asked you what it is that you really want?

You have been so many
different things to me, Neal. You are a gentle spirit.  You have helped me to
become in some respects, a better version of me, and because of that, a part of
me wants to own and possess you. Perhaps take you up to Woodstock and live
happily ever after with you. I worry and wonder, though: would we grow tired of
one another? Would our friendship grow old? Would we get bored, day after day,
being together, loving one another, taking pleasure in simple things—walks and
cooking and nights spent talking and making love? Could that ever be me? Could
I ever live a simple life and be satisfied with it? Or would I need to bring in
complications? Would we grow tired of one another and would your heart start
longing and wishing for the monastery? Would you miss the brothers and the
prairie grounds and would I miss Best Reality?  In short, can we ever lose
ourselves and create a new life in which we find new ways to live and love and
grow?

My mother would say
people don’t give one another anything, but a listening face. But your presence
in my life has impacted me in the most positive way, which has also led to my
feeling a little lost and afraid. Because now that I have found you, I have
grown attached and I am fearful of losing you. I am fearful that losing you
will cause me to unravel in a way that I have not yet experienced.

Or maybe I am confusing
things. Maybe it’s the loss of my mother that is overshadowing all that I feel.
Losing my mother this year was the most profound experience in my adult life. I
miss her in a way that surpasses all that I have ever felt and experienced
before. In her loss are the loss of parts of myself that were only known to
mother and daughter. Our bond was complicated but there was so much love there.
I feel uprooted in my life – homeless in a sense and yet my mother would tell
me that she and I were bound for life and our home is always within one
another, free of time and place. She would remind me that it was no simple act
of fate that she was my mother. That it was chosen, that we belong to one
another. She believed that there were no random acts in life. While she would
insist she is with me, I miss her in my tangible world. I miss her voice, her
face, her guidance.

There is a desperate plea
in me that says, don’t leave me, Neal, don’t go. But if I search within, there
is a voice that says, follow your heart, your path. It’s a loving voice, a
gentle voice, one that is deep-rooted in my heart, in my soul. I want you to
live your life as it’s best for you. I don’t want you to do anything other than
what is right for you. I want you to be happy, Neal. As trite as that may
sound, it’s what I want for you. It’s what I want for me. I pray that you find
peace, find your way, and that you move towards whatever light calls you. We
will never lose what we have shared. In some way, I believe that we will always
be bound.

Fondly, Tess

Tess stared at the phone
beside her on the kitchen table before she picked it up. Without realizing what
she was doing, she had dialed her mother’s number. When her mind began to
register what she’d done, she held the phone away from her ear as if she was holding
it out to some invisible person. It was the rising beep beep beep tone followed
by the recorded message saying that the number was no longer in service that
accounted for her hanging it up, slowly. She didn’t know what it was that she
had to tell her mother, what she had to ask her. It was more an instinct, an
inherent need to hear her mother’s voice, to listen to her.

The clock above the
kitchen sink ticked away. One second followed another. The refrigerator hummed.
She thought of the nights when Prakash had first gone off to college on the
West Coast, and she would sit in the kitchen after midnight, as she was doing
now, missing him, wishing that he would call, knowing all the while that she
could call him, but not wanting to be a nagging mother. She had wanted him to
live, to enjoy his life, and not feel burdened by her. It was only during that
phase that she had glimpsed what her own mother may have experienced when Tess
had gone off to Brooklyn College.

12:30 am. A whole night
ahead of her. She didn’t understand where this loneliness, this desperation was
coming from. She couldn’t tell if she was regressing or perhaps moving closer
to some unknown point in her life, some new understanding. She could study
The
Four Noble Truths
right now. Re-implant non-attachment and non-suffering
concepts into her mind. Only no, she didn’t feel like it. She was tired of
trying to live up to words written by other people.

This very moment. Each
second. Awareness started with a fraction of a second. That’s what her mother
had said, only she had never examined the statement, had just nodded her head,
yes. A fraction of a second. If she could stay present in the fraction, then it
would lead to a second, then a minute, but there she was, already moving on,
beyond that fraction. It was so hard to be present. Her mind was like an
airplane on a runway, picking up speed; now she was thinking about work, to the
calls she had to make come morning, to all the things that she had yet to cross
off her to do list. She thought of yoga training and how in less than two-months
time she would stand up in front of a class and have to teach them yoga. That
seemed an impossibility to her—the concept of telling people how to move their
bodies, the attempt to make them feel good, centered, by way of her directions.
But no, she wasn’t going to get stuck on that now. She had two months to
prepare. Her hand was still on the phone. She thought about calling Michael.
That would make for a good distraction, perhaps some amusement, but that might
lead her to have to talk about work and she didn’t want to go there. Not now.
She had a fleeting wish to call the young brother at the monastery in New
Jersey, and tell him her Neal story, only what was it that she wanted anyone to
say about it? And besides, what would another’s opinion matter?

She closed her eyes and
focused on her breathing. The present moment. It was amazing to her all the
things she could think about to get her out of the moment. She focused on her
inhales and exhales. With her eyes closed, it was easier to lose everything
else, go inside. Until her insides began to panic, and her to do list—food
shopping, laundry, yoga reading, practice teaching, work calls to make, the
fact that she would feel tired tomorrow from being up so late—began to wreak
havoc, darting from her mind to her gut, where it gripped at her, so that she
grasped her knees into her chest, hugging them to calm her insides. No, she
whispered to herself. No, no, no, go away. She began again, focusing on her
inhales and exhales. Within a few minutes the chaos within her began to
dissipate. Inhale, exhale. Steady, slow. All she had to do was breathe.

When the phone rang, she
froze—its sound pierced the silence—before she picked it up on the third ring.

“Mom. I thought that I
was going to get the machine. You usually turn off the ringer at night.”

“I’m so relieved you
called,” Tess said.

“Please don’t tell me
you’ve been worrying about me. I’m fine,” Prakash said.

“I was practicing being
present and it was giving me palpitations,” Tess said.

Prakash laughed. “You’re
my favorite yogi,” he said.

“Everything okay?” Tess
said. “Work? Life? Are you eating healthy?”

“Everything is fine. I
was just checking in. I think about you sometimes, you know,” Prakash said.

“Well that’s nice to
hear,” Tess said. She put her legs up on the chair adjacent to her and slumped
back in her chair.

“Remember when we used to
make cookies – oatmeal raisin were your favorites.”

“We used to eat them up
before they even cooled.”

Tess laughed. “It’s
funny, the things you remember from a lifetime,” she said. Then, “What made you
want to be an architect?”

“There are a lot of
reasons,” he said.

“Like what?” Tess said.

“You were so interested
in real estate—every house we passed that was for sale or being built, you
commented on. I guess it made me pay attention to houses and buildings—how they
were made. I often looked at a house and thought about the ways I could make it
better. “

“I’m glad to hear that I
played a role in your career,” she said.

“Yeah, well, I was either
going to be an architect or a spiritual guru, but I knew that wouldn't be a hit
with you,” he said and they both laughed.

“You’re a good architect,”
Tess said. “I’m proud of you, Kash. Really proud.”

“What made you want to go
into real estate?”

“I liked houses.
Something about getting to go inside of all of them, matching the right person
with the right house, appealed to me. Sometimes, though, I wonder, Kash. If I’m
on the right path. Or if I missed my exit somewhere along the way,” Tess said.

“Mom, more than anyone I
know, you’ve never been afraid to make a change in your life,” Prakash said.

“Sure, I got divorces and
got remarried and all that. But what if I was meant to follow in my mother’s
footsteps? What if I was so caught up in what I thought I wanted that I missed
out on what was supposed to be?” Tess said.

“Grandma always used to
say that we’re exactly where we need to be in life, down to the second,”
Prakash said.

“Yes,” Tess said. “You
never wonder, though, what else you may have been?”

There was silence for a
few moments. “Right now, I’m focused on what I’m doing now, and I suppose when or
if the time comes that I lose that focus, I’ll start wondering,” he said.

“Spoken like your
grandmother.” 

“I’ve never heard you doubt
anything,” Prakash said.

“Maybe I’m losing my
focus, Kash. Maybe it’s time to make changes.” The clock ticked on.

“Well, if you want to
teach yoga, San Francisco is the place to be,” he said. “I’ll get you a good
deal on a condominium.”

“When you get married and
have grandchildren, I’ll consider moving to San Francisco.”

Kash laughed. “It’s too
late at night for you to bring up relationship talk.”

“I just want the best for
you, Kash. I want you to be happy and have more in your life than work.”

“I know, I know. When
it’s time for me to settle down, I promise you will be the first to know.”

She heard a sound at the
front door and it was a moment before she realized that it was most likely
Buddhi. She hadn’t remembered letting him in earlier that night. She moved to
the front door and pulled it open and then unlatched the screen door. Buddhi
scrambled into the house and up the steps before her like a mad man. When she
made her way back up to the kitchen, he was already busy at his food bowl.

“Someone there?” Kash
asked.

“Just the cat,” she said.

“So aside from saying
hello, I was calling to let you know I’m thinking about coming east for a
visit,” Kash said.

 “Wonderful. It must be
my lucky year to see you twice in a few months’ time.”

Buddhi had finished
drinking his water and splashed it about with his paws before he made his way
under the kitchen table and began to groom himself.

“Well if I wait for you
to come here, who knows when I’ll see you again,” Prakash said.

“I meant what I said
about visiting you for New Years,” Tess said.

“Maybe we could meet up
in Woodstock and spend some time up there. What do you think?” he asked.

“I think it sounds great.
Is it a vacation or do you have a hidden agenda?”

Prakash laughed. “I have
some ideas for the house. I was thinking about fixing it up a bit. Restoring
some of the rooms. Assuming you’re not going to sell it that is.”

“I’m not selling it,
Kash. Michael doesn’t see any point in holding onto it, but he doesn’t
understand the history of that house. I told him that I might consider moving
up there to live one of these days,” Tess said.

“You wouldn’t,” Prakash
said.

“Maybe I would,” Tess
said. “Create a little yoga studio at the house where I can teach. I’ll leave
that to you to figure out, if you’re interested in the job.”

“You may have to fight me
for the house,” Prakash said. “How about we meet there around your birthday,
stay there through New Year’s and come up with some building plans?”

“You’re on,” Tess said.

“And Mom, it’s never too
late to change anything—if you’re not on the right path, you’ll figure that
out. Just live your life and let the answers come to you,” Prakash said.

“Don’t power my way
through it,” Tess said. “Let life unfold as it will.”

“Exactly,” he said. “Grandmother
Caroline taught us well.”

“You turned out okay,”
Tess said.

“You’re not so bad
yourself,” he said. “Crazy, but okay. Get some sleep, Mom.”

It wasn’t until Buddhi
nudged her hand that Tess realized she was still holding the receiver, a busy
signal buzzing. Buddhi darted down the hall. He was ready to settle into his
basket at the foot of her bed. When she placed the phone in its cradle, the silence
of the house, her house, her life, set in. She felt strangely happy, content.
Tomorrow was a new day. A lone meow echoed in the hall. She turned off the
kitchen light, glancing to make sure the front door was locked before she made
her way into the hallway, where she turned off the hall light en route to her
bedroom. Buddhi’s eyes sparkled in the darkness. She would be okay no matter
what happened in her life. She believed that. She had always been okay. Buddhi
kneaded the blanket in his little bed, as Tess got comfortable and pulled the
blanket up over her. She stretched her legs to the left, taking over the empty
side of the mattress that at various times in her life had belonged to various
men. They had come and gone with the years. And still, she was okay. Better
than okay. She didn’t know if it was her mother’s presence she felt with her or
her own, but what she was sure of as her eyes closed and before sleep overcame
her, was that tomorrow may be the best day of her life.