Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son's First Son

I was reminded of the Four Immutable Laws of the Spirit: Whoever is present are the right people. Whenever it begins is the right time. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened. And when it's over, it's over.

It is a violation of trust to use your kids as caulking for the cracks in you.

You should not bring more items and hurdles to the obstacle course.

Everything was coming together by coming apart . . . It is the most difficult Zen practice to leave people to their destiny, even though it's painful - just loving them, and breathing with them, and distracting them in a sweet way, and laughing with them . . . if something was not my problem, I probably did not have the solution.

You've got to learn to let go and let your children fall, and fail. If you try to protect them from hurt, and always rush to their side with Band-Aids, they won't learn about life, and what is true, what works, what helps, and what are real consequences of certain kinds of behavior. When they do get hurt, which they will, they won't know how to take care of their grown selves. They won't even know where the aspirin is kept.

We aren't a drop in the ocean, but are the ocean, in drops.

It is funny how no one seems to want my always excellent advice.

And what do you do in the face of this powerlessness? As a parent?" "You get to be obsessed and angry," Tom said. "And they get to be the age they are, and act like teenagers if they want to. There is a zero-percent chance you will change them. So we breathe in, and out, talk to friends, as needed. We show up, wear clean underwear, say hello to strangers. We plant bulbs, and pick up litter, knowing there will be more in twenty minutes. We pray that we might cooperate with any flicker of light we can find in the world.

I've always thought I could use my brain and my heart to jockey everyone around to the good. But life is not jockeyable. When you try, you make people infinitely crazier than they already were, including or especially yourself.

Maybe what we say to each other is not so important after all, but just that we are alive together, and present for each other as best we can be.

Kids are hard -they drive you crazy and break your heart- whereas grandchildren make you feel great about life, and yourself, and your ability to love someone unconditionally, finally, after all these years.

Life is like a nice fresh batch of Swiss cheese. Note to self: savor the holes, too, like the spaces between musical notes.

I recognize the divinity in you, but actually more like, I recognize our each-otherness, instantly

The single most radical thing I know . . . is that I get to take care of myself.

Children should not have treacherous diseases or be afraid. This should be one rule we all agree on.

This kind of beauty softens you and expands you, which is good, but of course it makes you vulnerable to all sorts of horrible things, like, oh, feelings. And being in your body.

You lose the known package of your nice organized self almost instantly here. Overeating is one way back, the way it is at funerals at home.

This family business can be so stressful - difficult, damaged people showing up t spend time with other difficult, damanged people

It’s wonderful to travel again when the rest of the world does not feel that war criminals are in charge of your country.

Sam, in what way are you like me as a parent that you are glad about?” “Oh, that’s hugely easy. I’m glad I’m hardworking like you, and that I naturally love to play with my kid, and that I’m sort of flexible for such a rigid, uptight guy. I’ll eventually go with whatever might just work. “What Jax will thank you for giving me is my ability to forgive and start over. Not everyone has it, and I can’t believe I do. I’m glad for two reasons. One, that I can do it, even though it’s hard, because you’re doomed if you can’t, and two, when you can do it, you start finding people in the world like you, who can start over, too, and these are the people you want to be with. People who can forgive. “It’s so incredibly humbling when someone forgives you—I can’t ever believe when people forgive me, because you know how badly you’ve screwed up, and how you’ve hurt them, and how hard it is for them to be brave enough to find it in themselves to reexperience the pain you caused, and the humiliation that is in them because of you—and for someone to be willing to refeel that much like shit again, reexperience it out of not wanting to lose you, means how deeply precious you are to them. And that’s pure gold.

Bonnie persuaded me to focus on the good, just for today: tomorrow I can call back and we will wallow in the total awfulness of Amy’s behavior, which will surely lead to permanent estrangement and dead bodies. Just for today, I was supposed to try to remember three things: The baby is not falling off the earth, or headed to Afghanistan. So many things are going well: Everyone has good health. Jax is perfect. Even though I have acid and sewage and grippage in my stomach, which I have had many times before and will have many times again, I can build faith muscles by bearing my feelings of misery and powerlessness—a kind of Nautilus. Rumi said that through love, all pain would turn to medicine. But he never met my family. Or me.

And because she did not shove this down my throat, this dawned on me.

She wants to have hiked; I want to have had dessert.

It's always the same old problem: how to find ourselves in the great yammering of ego and tragedy and discomfort and obsession with everyone else's destinies.

Jesus is busy with his own stuff, and is not going to get involved in your little tug-of-war. Plus, don't forget, he has his own mother to deal with. She's all he can handle, as far as mothers go.

Don't be mean to yourself, though . . .this is the only sin.

simultaneously manipulating her today over the phone, attempting to maneuver her toward setting a future date to go look for a job. She was quiet and unresponsive. Another way of saying that is: She did not take the bait. I like to think of what I am doing as “helping her get back to her career path,” although she has not worked since graduating from cosmetology school, six months ago. I actually thought that I was trying to impart my truth, which is that everybody has to work. But I think she sees me as chirpy, intrusive, and judgmental, which, while she is probably right, still hurts my feelings.

And third, he makes me stronger, because you have to balance so much now—you have to reschedule everything you have to do—homework and him. It forces you to tap into more of you than you knew was there—parts that you didn’t even know you had.

It is the most difficult Zen practice to leave people to their destiny, even though it’s painful—just loving them, and breathing with them, and distracting them in a sweet way, and laughing with them.

grace is a small white butterfly, and life is a semi trailer careening up 101.