Mothering River...

This is the opening. May these words be medicine.


The rain is coming down steadily in San Francisco. As I watch how water falls from the sky, Tibetan horns, bells, and drums move over this tea bar in a cacophony of waves. You would think the blaring throttle would disturb, yet what happens instead – a calm from the core. How is it that drumbeats that you feel in your feet, in your spine, which arouse a flurry inside, also call forth steadiness? Unlike the rain, this sensation is more like a quiet lake, or a river that carries you faithfully to the ocean - even as you go through rapids, eddies, frightening turns. This is how it is to be with the water, and the sound of the water. This is how it is to be with movement like water. Your own heartbeat, that water.


The kind of water that I speak of has everything to do with motherhood, but it may take me awhile to get there. Down stream, I will gather that thought. Suffice it to say that I am riding a wave today, hints of black tea and milk, alone. Every other moment I am thinking of my soon approaching two-year old daughter. Her name is River. She is across the bay today and greatly missed, though, it is exquisite to simply watch the rain, almost biblical. Exquisite to taste a small bowl of food, rounded mounds of brown rice, perfectly poached eggs, wild salmon, with a tiny teacup of tamari. Like meditation. Who knew that in between all the waking hours, those sleepless ones, I might get to feel into the world without my little girl-flower babbling, pulling on me, steaming like a geyser as she attempts to master elaborate, small tasks in my space. I love her more than I love this place, this resting place. But I have come to cherish such graces of time. Time away. Time with myself.


And this is why motherhood is so innately spiritual. I have spent many weekends sitting in retreat, cajoling the mind to quiet, cultivating the awareness to notice the details. Present moment awareness. It’s not that I am any better at doing that on my own these days. No one told me that motherhood gifts you with spontaneous openings of lovely, clear, graceful noticing. Perhaps the result of serious sleep-deprivation, but still, I find an accompanying wonder that shadows my looking. The way the teacup rounds just so at the top – why should this be amazing? Yet I can tell you that in this gaze there is great affection for the ordinary, easily unremarkable things. My own body, for instance – instead of weighty discomfort in the limbs, just now, to breathe is wonderful, sensual. The steam rising from a glazed terra cotta mug (set on a plate that is actually the heart of a tree, rings and all) moves with the wonderful breathing. Circles, spires, dakini clouds of steam dance in front of my face.


I was going to begin by talking about fear, but I am not afraid anymore. The drums, the woman who smiles as she delivers my chai, the guy next to me who looks my way and also orders chai, rows of tea, and lights like temples – I am not afraid. The rain has turned to mist and the clouds open down the street and around the block.