I am a
Karen Maezen Miller groupie.
I love her
voice, her easy smile, her cute do and effortless style. I love her wisdom and
subtle humor. I am thankful for her kindness.
If you see her around town, it
would be easy to think, "I could never be like her," "her" being that kind of
mom of who is chic and so well put together, maternal and calm, the mom who
never raises her voice after calling her children three times (usually to get
these hypothetical children to pick something off of the floor or get out of
the car while you're holding the car seat with the baby in it as well as a
heavy purse.)
Karen (it doesn't feel right to use
her last name in the usual journalistic style), is a mom, wife, daughter and Buddhist
priest and teacher. Meeting Karen after reading her book, "Momma Zen," I
realized that yes, I could never be like her. And thank God. That's not the
point. I can be me. (And why do I suddenly hear Sammy Davis Jr. singing in the
background?)
Karen lives in Sierra Madre, in a
beautiful home with a century-old Japanese garden that invites serenity. She also
does laundry, and picks up after the dog, teases her husband about his new flat
screen TV and worries about her daughter and our material world. I know she
gets angry and frustrated too, but she has a deep perspective that helps me out
every time I visit her site.
]]>
Her first book, "Momma Zen: Walking
the Crooked Path of Motherhood" saved me in more ways than one. Too many times
to count I read a page and thought, "She's just like me!" or laughed out loud
at an observation Karen makes about parenting. The simplest things, the
everyday, is elevated to something sublime and sacred.
I turned to it in the first
panicked minutes when I realized Baby No. 3 was on the way, and found myself
breathing again. I still turn to it in stolen moments, my well-worn resource of
spiritual reading, wise and true. It's a reminder, a start, an "atta girl" for
anyone who just needs permission to be, and let go, and try to be better.
Her second book, "Hand Wash Cold:
Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life" is coming out in April, but her
newly-revamped Web site, www.karenmaezenmiller.com,
has print and audio excerpts (that voice!) among a trove of enriching
offerings.
As I type this, Wonder Boy is
waving a Pokemon ball in my face, delighted to have discovered it under his
bed.
"Mama, look what I found! Look!"
And it is Karen who tells me, "Stop
what you're doing. Pay attention. Value the child. Savor the now."
Wisdom in the everyday, salvation
in the laundry.
In her new book, which you can
preorder from her site, Karen offers tips for happy laundering, literally and
otherwise. I'm more of an ironing person myself. I love how ironing smooths out
the creases and folds and crumples of each fabric. I love how clean everything
smells and how neat that pile of ironed clothes looks. I love how I can usually
start and end this chore: " Mission
accomplished!" unlike so many things done in spurts and stops, interrupted by,
well, life.
But back to laundry. First off,
Karen says, is empty the hamper.
"Laundry gives us
an honest encounter with ourselves before we're freshened, fluffed and
sanitized," she writes. "It gives us a mirror to the parts of ourselves we'd
rather overlook, and makes us take responsibility for our own messes.
Self-examination reveals the pure wisdom that resides within each of us."
Read the rest at www.karenmaezenmiller.com.
Karen ends with the observation
that every day is laundry day. In our house, with two boys who like to roll on
the ground and a very drooly baby, that's certainly true in a literal sense.
But I have resolved to do laundry as Karen does too.
"Every day brings the chance to
slow down, pay attention, take care and engage intimately with the fabric of
your own life," she said. "Sort the light from the dark, the delicate from the
indestructible, and the heavy duty from the hand wash cold. The very thing you
think you're missing - happiness - is found every time you reach the bottom."
]]>