If you have resisted saying “blogosphere” without sarcastic air quotes, brace yourself for this new almost-term: the momosphere. Even though it hasn’t made it into the urban dictionary (yet), the marketers and moms don’t care. There are thousands and thousands of blogging moms—some of whom claim that blogging has saved their lives and some of whom are making serious money advertising on their sites. And there are plenty of topics to choose from: from debilitating postpartum depression, to gory details of toddler tantrums and maternal meltdowns, to handy tips on cleaning up puke. I wish I could laugh and cry, take note of helpful hints and, in short, embrace and affirm my fellow moms and their attempts to elevate the minutae of their lives, but that would mean that I have to accept my own. Part of the problem is my own ego, and the other part is everyone else’s. It’s really the same problem, of course, from two points of view.
I would like to devote this space—in theory at least—to addressing what drives me crazy about the rarefied realm of contemporary parenting, blogging included. David Hochman, writing in the New York Times about the 8,500 parents who are writing about their kids, put it well: “Today's parents—older, more established, and socialized to voicing their emotions—may be uniquely equipped to document their children's' lives, but what they seem most likely to complain and marvel about is their own. The baby blog in many cases is an online shrine to parental self-absorption.” I know that I am guilty of this myself, which makes it that much more difficult to embrace the whole scene. But as a Buddhist I have a finely tuned, ancient technology at my fingertips, expressly designed and tested by the most subtle human minds to walk the earth with one purpose: to see through the self as empty. In other words, to see reality clearly. What parent (and moms especially, I dare say) couldn’t use some of that?
I have been practicing Zen for over 10 years now, met my husband, Thayer, at Zen Mountain Monastery in Mount Tremper, where our teacher, John Daido Loori Roshi is the abbot (www.mro.org/zmm/index.php). I lived at ZMM with my husband for the two years before getting pregnant. I have done probably close to a hundred sesshin (silent meditation retreats) and, up until giving birth to Azalea 10 months ago, did zazen (meditation) pretty much every day. I say this not to brag but to make it clear that this Zen thing has been more than a passing fancy. I have really devoted my life to this practice and it has, pardon the phrase, paid off, and not just for me. Anyone who knew me before practice and still does now will be able to testify that indeed the world is a much safer place.
And so, after leaving full-time training for lots of reasons, one of which was to have a baby, Thayer and I decided to stay close by instead of moving back to Brooklyn, where we had lived before. Now, we live in Phoenicia, eight minutes from ZMM. And we have a baby. And we continue to practice. But everything has changed. This shouldn’t be a surprise to a Buddhist, but it’s actually been a total shock. The kind of shock that happens when someone dies in the middle of the night. But who has died? Who is born?
All of that being so, now I’m here, committed to Azalea’s new life, trying to figure out how to be her mom and myself while being careful to not become so busy being someone that I am not really doing anything. Some days, I don’t even want to sit on the cushion because it is so painful for me admit that I haven’t sat in days, and that I don’t feel like a Zen practitioner anymore. I teach at SUNY New Paltz part-time and Azalea goes to daycare, but I don’t feel like a professional person either. I don’t know who I am. I know I love that little lamb chop so much it makes my bones ache; I know that her face is burned in my mind and I carry her with me everywhere I go. I also know it hurts to look in the mirror and see myself getting old, doing laundry around the clock, picking up Cheerios, making stupid faces at, yes, even the sweetest face in the world: my daughter's. I should be doing great things, even though I’m not sure what those things are, or why I don’t think raising a human being is great enough. And yet Zen Master Dogen has written, “And though it is like this, it is only that flowers, while loved, fall; and weeds, while hated, flourish.” I got pregnant and had a baby. There are 24 hours in a day. I want this and I want that. I am not the center of the Universe, and yet I am responsible for it all.
Bethany Saltman lives in Phoenicia with her husband Thayer and baby Azalea. She has been a student of John Daido Loori Roshi, Abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery, for ten years. Her work has been published in magazines like The Sun, Buddhadharma, Geez, and, of course, Chronogram. She is currently working on a book called Sweet Jesus: Americans Convert to Christianity.
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