It was expensive, but I bought it without hesitation.
The stone Buddha on the antiquity dealer’s table conveyed an immediate sense of hope to me. Its soothing color and the elegant curves of its composure felt like a promise: This is possible for you.
It was a compelling prospect for someone like me, grappling with a recent divorce, re-marriage and the challenging split custody of our teens; my son with me and new wife, my daughter staying with her mom.
After paying, I went to lift the statue up—realizing only then that I hadn’t thought the purchase through. I’d been visiting France for a few weeks and my flight back to Arizona departed in less than twenty-four hours. Suddenly I had a forty-pound, twenty-inch-high artifact in tow.
Checking in the next day I wasn’t sure how to answer the ticketing question—are you traveling with any small children?—since I was carrying a rendering of childlike innocence that weighed the equivalent of one.
As there wasn’t enough time to find a shipping service to convey it for me, I had to figure out how to get it on the plane. The weight and size restrictions would have made the price of checking it exorbitant, and I would have sooner let myself be thrown around by baggage handlers than entrust my new treasure to the ground crew.
“What about carry-on?” I wondered.
Turns out, there was only a size restriction for an unchecked bag, not a weight limit. So I emptied the contents of my carry-on into my checked suitcase and slid the Buddha statue wrapped in towels into the backpack. Two friends held it aloft while I slid into the straps, the back of the stone sculpture on my own spine, and headed for the airport.
I was anxious, but the substantial weight of the statue kept my nervous system hugging the ground, like the spoiler on a fast car, giving me a sense of traction and stability as I approached the gates.
Fortunately, the antique cast its spell in advance of our path. As I dropped it onto the belt of the x-ray machine with a thunk, worried I might get stopped or detained, I watched the eyebrows of the security attendant climb up in astonishment as it came up on the monitor. I was asked to unpack it for inspection, but not because it posed a threat. Apparently, they were curious to see it in person.
Two security officers stared at it for a few minutes, visibly softened in mood, and went through the motions of poking around its edges and running an explosives test, but they seemed to be looking for excuses to linger with the art. Finally, they waved me and the Buddha through without objection.
Occupying the emergency row center seat and the floor space in front of me—we navigated the international flight without incident and made it safely home.
Upon first introduction my wife felt the same instant bond with the Buddha, and the question of where it should stand was short lived—it clearly belonged . . . in the kitchen.
We stationed it on the front-edge of the island counter. It was viewable from the kitchen itself, the dining room, living room, and vine-covered staircase to the second floor, all at the same time.
It bore continuous stable witness there to four years of parenting my older son and the expressions of our family passions, affections, arguments, and stand-offs. It watched over our celebrations, movie nights, furniture shuffles, parties, nocturnal silence, sunrises, changes of season, and remained loyally with us in sickness and in health.
Eventually my son moved from our Arizona home back to Canada with his mom, until the big news came.
It was a call from my ex explaining that she’d had a recurrence of cancer, and both my son and daughter were likely to need me soon.
Back in Arizona, my current wife had just delivered our youngest son.
It had been a 40-hour labor that started as a home birth and ended in the hospital with four of us—a family friend, one nurse, our eighty year old obstetrician, and me— shouting at my wife until we were purple in the face to push our son into the world. He finally emerged in the middle of a thunderstorm that split a cottonwood tree down the middle upon his arrival.
Waiting for us at home on the other side of the pushing, yelling, exhaustion, and an unexpectedly hefty hospital bill—was our Buddha. Whatever came, the highs and the lows, we were constantly reminded that a steady and present mood was always an option.
It would have been a good time to stay still and rooted with our newborn, but with the news of my ex’s illness, we prepared for a move to Canada.
Just weeks later in October, I was towing our car to the pacific northwest behind a 27-foot U-haul, our stone Buddha wrapped and wedged to keep a bookcase from toppling over in the cargo bay. I found a house to rent and began unpacking while my wife and baby followed by air close behind.
The year had barely opened its gates.
On Jan 3rd, 2010—my ex passed away.
It felt like we became an overnight family of five, reeling from the loss of life, celebrating the arrival of a new one, and coping with the economic meltdown of that year that wiped all my work off the map.
I was attempting to write a book to jumpstart a speaking career when I took a break to referee a squabble between my son and daughter in the kitchen. They’d later become best friends forever in high school, but at thirteen and fifteen they were frequent triggers for one another. Overwhelmed and barely coping, none of us were talking about our feelings at the time, so having a go at one another was the only emotional release available to them.
I sat down at the table and watched my son, perched on the counter, exchanging hooks and bait with his sister.
“You’re not even sad about mom dying,” she suddenly said.
I knew the moment she made the claim what had been unleashed.
It was the beginning of a grueling and exhausting five-minute moment that started with my son reaching into the fruit bowl by his knee and hurling tomatoes, bananas, and kiwi fruit as warning missiles in her direction. I could see what was coming.
“Get out of the kitchen,” I yelled.
I lunged for my son, knowing what was about to erupt from the young man who bore his grief like me, bottled inside, feeling no permission to show a hurricane of heartbreak and the cyclone of his outrage that God deserved to receive from a kid who’d lost his home, his mom, and his bearings all at once.
I held on tight, determined to ride out the storm without anyone getting hurt. When it was done, we both lay sobbing on the stone island in the kitchen. Anything made of glass, ceramic, tile, or parts had been shattered into tiny fragments and scattered across the floor.
“It’s ok,” I told him. “You’re ok. I’ve got you.”
We wept for a time, sweaty and spent, and I invited him to leave the clean-up to me.
I tip-toed over the shards to get the broom and started dragging the broken pieces of our family kitchen into piles, still shaking from the necessary earthquake of expression I needed to experience just as much as him. My daughter had done us all a favor by provoking a catharsis that would guide our healing.
As I swept the last stabs and slivers of glasses, bowls, vases, and plates into the bin, I looked up on the counter and saw the one and only object that had not been dislodged or disturbed.
Our steady, smiling Buddha.
The pillar in our corner who had always been right there, exuding regard without judgment, concern, or falter.
But who is The Buddha?
A historical figure? A spiritual luminary? Or perhaps an energy or presence that we collectively honor and now culturally represent in the form that still sits on our counter, twenty years since carrying him over an ocean on my back.
I must admit that I don’t fully understand how the powers of myth, art, and story weave into our psyches, inform our spirit, and create acts of service, or changes of heart in their wake.
But I really don’t need to understand.
At the end of the day when everyone’s in bed and I lock the doors, clean the sink, lower the heat, and pause before turning off the lights, I look back, and he’s still there.
Whether an undefinable force, a spiritual energy, or just a mighty and enduring myth, the Buddha is there—and in the quiet of the night seems always to be saying . . .
“I’ve got you.”
Many thanks to
for feedback on the concept for this article, and a huge thanks to my patient wife, and editor, who reviewed many versions of this essay as it found its way home.
"It's ok. You're ok. I've got you."
Rick, that, right there, captures why your kids and wife are damn lucky to have you. Your ability to see the big picture, even during the shattering meltdown in the midst of so much going on (the start of a life, the loss of life, the economic meltdown, the recent move...), is remarkable.
You may not understand who The Buddha is, yet it's *your* Buddha nature, imperfect though it may be, that turned a violent outburst into a cathartic teaching and learning moment, one that I'm guessing still resonates with everyone involved.
And the way you relate all of this is simply beautiful.
Wow, Rick! Truly moving . . . no words, really, other than to say, thank you for sharing such a powerfully personal story.