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  “Yogurt and banana?”

  “No!”

  “Carob chips?”

  “No!”

  “Toast?”

  “No!”

  I fix him a bowl of yogurt with maple syrup and set it in front of him. He begins to eat without protest. I sit back on the couch and sigh.

  “Tat, tat, tat, tat!” Jasper cries, mimicking the construction noises coming from outside. Might as well be the sound of my trust fund draining away. I hope Dicken’s practice picks up so we can actually afford to live in this huge house we’re building.

  What I look forward to most each day is Dicken’s return in the evening, and the chance to hear about what happened at work that day. Did more patients call and make appointments? Did some well-connected community member contact Dicken and promise to refer people? Did he get invited to speak at an important conference? I gave up working when I had Jasper, determined to be a full-time mom, available to my child in a way my busy career mom never was to me. I don’t regret that and have no desire to return to my career now, relieved I don’t have to juggle a paid job with the very challenging work of raising a child. I wasn’t expecting my choice to make life easy. But I did think it would make my life simpler than it feels right now.

  Jasper climbs into my lap, covering my already dirty shirt with yogurt handprints. Laundry time. I run my hand over his soft blond curls, put my face in his hair, and inhale. Even through layers of yogurt and dust, I can smell his distinctive baby scent, like a strange and delicious mixture of sweat and fresh-baked cookies. I remind myself to take in his sweetness, not to miss this stage of childhood.

  Jasper pulls at my hair, then says, “Gugu?” I miss my sister’s company and wonder when she and Grace will return. Dicken won’t be back for another ten hours. The day stretches out long before me.

  February 2002

  Dicken is away for two days teaching a seminar. I’ve been with Jasper nonstop, and I’m exhausted. Maud is around and helps out some, but I still feel responsible for Jasper around the clock and can’t seem to relax. We’re living in the lovely and spacious house we built, with a wing for each family and a shared main house, but communal living in relative luxury is not the happy experiment I hoped it would be.

  When the phone rings and I hear Dicken’s voice, I’m momentarily lifted from my gloom. “Hi, honey!” I say. “How did the seminar go?”

  “Hi,” he says, and instantly I know he is low. “We didn’t get as many students or sales as we’d hoped. We’ll be lucky to break even.”

  “What did you do wrong?” I ask, realizing how critical this sounds as the words come out of my mouth. Luckily, Dicken doesn’t seem to take it the wrong way and answers me at face value. He is sensitive to those he loves, but not so self-critical that he takes on all my judgment.

  “We probably shouldn’t have picked the week before exams,” he says. “Bad timing, I guess.”

  I am silent, reeling in the wake of this disappointing news.

  “I miss you so much, love,” he says. “I just want to be home, snuggling up with you and Jabu.”

  I know he’s asking for comfort right now, but I feel cold and resentful. My side of the unspoken agreement we have is to take care of Jasper full-time, while Dicken is supposed to be providing for us financially. These last two days without breaks have been grueling for me, and there will be nothing to show for it except two exhausted parents.

  “See you when you get home,” I say. “Drive carefully.” I hang up the phone and flop on the couch.

  Maud is in the kitchen making a snack. “You okay?” she asks.

  Before I can answer, Jasper runs over and jumps on my foot.

  “Ouch!” I cry. “Don’t do that!”

  Jasper tries to jump on the other foot. I pull both feet into my lap so he can’t reach them.

  “Here, Jasper,” Maud says. “Have some carob chips.”

  He goes to her, takes a handful of the chips, and says, “One for Gugu?” Grace comes over from the play area and puts her hand out.

  “What do you need?” Maud asks me.

  I close my eyes. I feel tired and defeated, yet there’s an antsy energy humming under my skin. I haven’t exercised for a few days, other than straightening up the house over and over again, and carrying Jasper around in my arms. I tell myself I’m lazy and probably getting fat.

  “I think a walk would be good,” I say.

  “Jasper, stay with me and Grace,” Maud says. “I’ll read you a story, okay?”

  “No!” Jasper wails. He pulls up my shirt roughly, trying to get to my breasts while I squirm and deflect him. Then Grace starts to cry, I’m not sure why. The sounds echo around the big main room and seem to magnify inside my head, a cacophony of pain and chaos.

  I need to get out. I push Jasper off me and head for the front door.

  Jasper runs after me and starts to grab every shoe and boot he can get his hands on, thinking if I don’t have footwear, I won’t be able to leave. “You stay here!” he shouts.

  I will not be controlled.

  I head out the door barefoot. But Jasper is at my heels and grabs onto my leg. His grip is tight.

  “Get off me!” I yell. Then I try to get ahold of myself, and I use the softest tone I can muster to say, “I’ll only be a few minutes. Ama will take care of you. Please go inside.”

  “No!” Jasper screams.

  Red-hot anger burns through me, and I grab a handful of Jasper’s hair. I feel a strong urge to pull it with all my strength, tear it from its roots, cause pain. I can already see it happening. But something stops me—my entire body freezes. I see stars for a moment, then collapse, falling to the ground. I begin to sob.

  Maud has rushed over. “What happened?”

  Jasper is bending over me, asking me for “nantos,” his word for nursing.

  The sight of his suddenly softened face, the pleading sweetness of his voice saying, “Nantos? Nantos?” and his urge to connect with me despite my anger make me cry even harder.

  I tell myself I’m just like all those mothers of the emotionally disturbed kids I used to work with, the women who lashed out at their innocent children, leaving bruises and scratches the kids tried to hide.

  I did not believe I had it in me to strike a child in a flash of rage, but now I know the truth. I’m failing my child. My perfect plan to become the perfect mother has come crashing down around me.

  When I calm down a little, I tell Maud I know what I need: “Your therapist’s phone number.”

  *

  “So, why are you here?” the therapist asks as I settle into her soft couch.

  “Well, mainly because I find motherhood crazy-making and I need to be told what I’m doing wrong on that front. That’s pretty much it, other than finding out my true purpose, what I’m doing here on earth. I don’t want to waste any more time on things that don’t matter.”

  “You want answers.”

  “I want to cut to the chase, focus on the essential.”

  “And you want it now.”

  “Yes, that’s why I’m here. I know I’m flawed, and I want you to tell me how to fix myself.”

  The therapist smiles.

  I look at the small clock on the table next to her and notice that five minutes have passed. That’s six dollars so far, plus the money the babysitter is costing me. I start to fiddle with my hair.

  “You look uncomfortable. Why don’t you sense in and see what’s arising.”

  “What do you mean, ‘sense in’?”

  “I mean close your eyes, check in with your body, see what physical or emotional sensations you notice.”

  “I notice that I don’t want to do that. I notice that I want you to do the talking, the noticing. Isn’t that why you’re getting paid in this transaction?” I smile nervously at my own irreverence, wringing my hands.

  The therapist smiles again too. “You want the answers to come from outside of you, that’s what I’m noticing.”

  Yes, she’s r
ight. I want a therapist, a doctor, a guru, a psychic, anyone who can tell me what to do. This is what my spiritual, open-minded, seeking mother has modeled to me all my life. Pay someone who knows better than you to fix your problems. Yet I’m driving with the brakes on, because inside me there’s a streak of my father’s skepticism. He is rational, agnostic, and loyal to what he calls his Scots blood, which makes him extremely frugal. My father has always had a strong work ethic and an equally strong aversion to extravagant spending, especially for intangibles like faith healers and energy workers. He even considers psychiatry self-indulgent, unnecessary except in extreme situations. He would have preferred that instead of studying psychology, I’d followed what he believes is my gift, writing. Meanwhile, my wealthy social-worker mother spends lavishly on dozens of such “indulgences,” from massage to chiropractic to Polarity therapy to Filipino psychic surgery.

  I am caught in the middle, as I have been since their divorce when I was fourteen. I go back and forth between the extremes my parents represent, one part of me always second-guessing the other, doubting myself and my decisions, rarely sticking with one plan for long because the cynic pulls the plug. Then I am more confused and self-critical than ever. I’ve seen therapists, but I’ve never fully trusted or opened up to any of them, pulling back and figuring my father is right: they’re no help and just after my money and I should be able to get by on my own. But on my own, with the harsh inner critic at me almost constantly, I spiral lower and end up more convinced that salvation can only exist outside of me. So again I search for the cure, willing to pay well for it, at first. Thus, the cycle continues.

  “Tell me why you think you need to be fixed.”

  “Well, I have everything anyone could want. A hardworking and loving husband. A beautiful son I adore. Enough money to build a dream house and not have to work while my son is small. I have friends, a great family, good health. And yet I’m feeling trapped and miserable a lot of the time.”

  “How old is your son?”

  “Jasper’s four,” I say, my voice breaking as tears well in my eyes. “I have this one chance to enjoy having him as a four-year-old, and I’m constantly wishing I were somewhere else. What a waste. And it’s probably my last chance with a four-year-old, because I can’t imagine ever feeling confident enough in myself to have another child. And it can’t be his fault, it must be mine, so I obviously need fixing.”

  I explain the shattering experience of seeing myself as a less-than-ideal mother. “If I’m not parenting effectively, if my child shows any sign of maladjustment, I am failing at my only purpose. I set aside everything to raise this child. All my expensive degrees, all my ambition, all my time. I have no excuse to not be doing this well.”

  “It sounds like your entire sense of self-worth and meaning is derived from this identity.”

  “Exactly. So when the slightest thing goes wrong, I lose my bearings. I panic.”

  “You’ve really set yourself up with impossible expectations,” the therapist says. “Is there any room for you to just be human?”

  “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “It just seems like you expect yourself to be beyond human.”

  “Oh, I know I’m human. I just think I should be doing a better job with all I’ve been given.”

  “Who’s telling you that you need to be doing better?”

  “I don’t know, me, I guess. I just don’t think I have any excuse to be struggling so much when I have nothing concrete to worry about. Most people in the world have real problems.”

  “You don’t seem to have much patience for yourself.”

  “I don’t want patience, I want results. I want to straighten myself out, raise my child well, and help the world. There’s no time to lose. So can you please just tell me what I need to know? I can tell I’m missing something.”

  “Why do you think you’re missing something?”

  “Because it’s not supposed to feel this way. I’m so close to the answer, yet so far, and what a waste if I’m this close to the truth yet never grasp it.”

  “Why don’t you take a big breath and close your eyes for a moment.”

  I do what she says, then open my eyes suddenly. “I don’t want to spend a long time on this. I’ve already done two years of therapy in grad school and I have my life to get back to.”

  I look out the window and notice a young man in a down jacket carrying pruning shears across the large landscaped garden. Leafless trees stand still in the fading afternoon light.

  *

  In time, I will see that landscape change from sleepy winter to blooming spring to arid summer to crisp, colorful autumn and through the cycles over and over. I will begrudgingly write out checks that increase by five dollars every year or two. I take breaks from therapy, pulling the plug now and then, but parenting crises blow up like landmines with enough frequency to bring me back, humbled. I will also see a handful of less conventional healers over the years, usually one-time visits that disappoint my hopes of getting “the answer” to my perceived problem.

  It will be a few years before I begin to entertain the idea that maybe nothing in me needs to be fixed, and that the process of therapeutic inquiry is not only supportive but fascinating, even joyful at times. In the meantime, I begin separating out the parts of me that reflect my mother, the parts of me that reflect my father, and the mysterious essence that is me, stand-alone me.

  A quote from my father-in-law’s commonplace book: “Those who say, don’t know. Those who know, don’t say.” My mother says a lot. She seems to have read nearly every self-help book and religious classic and sampled every spiritual tradition from East to West for at least a weekend. My father doesn’t say much about spirituality, but what he does say is revealing. He has always written off religion with remarks like, “How can there be a God when there is so much suffering in the world?” End of discussion. In my mind, his approach is just as shallow as my mother’s, only there is less room for curiosity.

  I start to seek out religious writing and ideas. I want a path that keeps me on the straight-and-narrow, imposes discipline, gives me clear instructions I can follow. Something based on sound reasoning that no one, not even my dad, can question. At the same time, I also crave a path that provides reassurance, peace, inspiration. Something to soothe me in the darkest nights. And on top of all that, I am just plain curious; I want to know why we are here, I want to be taken deeper, to brush up against the mystery by forces greater than I can imagine.

  I begin to embrace spiritual practices like prayer, dance, and silent retreats led by my therapist. The path of Sufism calls me because I am introduced to it gradually, not directly. It finds me, not the reverse. My therapist imparts her teachings subtly, over years and by example, and somehow my inner critic isn’t able to catch on fast enough to reject it outright. My teacher is like Sufism itself: consistent, yet paradoxically always changing. You can’t pin her down, yet she is always there, and she can be counted on to be authentic in each moment. The form of her teaching evolves over time, building on itself but never remaining stagnant. She changes what she calls her practice from “psychotherapy” to “spiritual counseling.”

  The retreats begin as weekends, and evolve to be five days long. She focuses primarily on the enneagram, a system of personality types, for years, then moves on to themes like relationships and instincts. She develops a way of using movement as a teaching tool. Yet some things remain constant: Rumi’s poetry, the Dances of Universal Peace, periods of silence, inquiry, and meditation. She doesn’t broadcast these as Sufi practices, and she doesn’t recruit students, but by the time I realize I’m on this path in a serious way, it’s not an abstraction I have to think my way through: I’ve already experienced the power of its practices in my emotions and in my body. I feel at home and grateful to have my teacher as my guide.

  As I become more willing to receive help, life gradually eases for me, and the joys of parenting begin to stand out, while the struggles see
m more manageable. Soon I am seriously considering getting pregnant again.

  CHAPTER 5

  February 2003

  In the early hours of February 19, Maud gives birth to Sam Patrick in her wing of our house. I get to hold him minutes after he is born. Big and bald, he reminds me of Jasper as a newborn. I am filled with a giddy, warm joy.

  The next morning, Tom comes to find me.

  “Maud’s having terrible after-birth pains when the baby breastfeeds. She’s wondering if you can nurse him for a while so she can get a break.”

  I dash to their room and try not to act too eager as I take Sam into my arms and offer him my breast. He latches on easily and begins to gulp milk, which flows copiously because I still haven’t completely weaned Jasper. I wonder if my milk might not be made up of the right nutrients for a newborn but decide not to say anything.

  I’m happy as can be, nursing this sweet little boy, marveling at his tiny fingers and hairless head as if he were my own.

  I find it hard to leave the house for the next couple of weeks because I want to be near the baby as much as possible. Whenever I hold him, I feel transformed, like I’ve entered a new realm, more peaceful and sacred than the outside world. “Baby energy,” the midwife calls it when she stops by to check on things.

  Dicken is moping a bit, probably because I’m not paying enough attention to him. He finds Jasper’s baby album on the shelf, sits down at the table, and gazes at the photographs.

  “What a beautiful baby he was, look.”

  I stand over him and look at the images of the three of us in postpartum heaven. I put my hands in Dicken’s thick brown hair and it makes me think of Sam’s bald head.

  “I’ll be back in a bit,” I say, heading for Maud’s room.

  While in one way having Sam around fires up my longing for another baby of my own, it also puts things on hold because I have access to as much baby energy as I want, right in my own house. I can even nurse him and get the bonding-hormone high. And I’m not losing sleep or having to change diapers.