Andrea McDowell, a garden of nna mmoy
Momma Zen is a slim book that isn't quite a parenting manual, and isn't quite a momoir, but feels like something in between. Advice mostly consists of "you're doing better than you think" and "there's lots of ways to raise a kid," portrayed through her own experiences and Zen Buddhism (she is a priest).
The book it most closely reminded me of is Writing Down the Bones, and I wonder if it's a Zen thing--if there's something about the training or perspective that lends itself to developing this pared-down, spare, poetic style. The language was lovely. The chapters were brief and combined humour with insight. There was a refreshing lack of judgement.
"What would happen if the nit-picking narration were absent? What happens when you watch a TV football game with the sound turned off? The players still scramble, they still fall, but they are saved from the injury of evaluation. The same would be true of your life. What is a mistake without the self-critical label? It is just what it is. It is always perfection in action--not perfect as in better than something else but perfect as in complete. Your actions need nothing--not analyzing, not punishment, not instant replay. It is impossible not to do your best, you just don't think it's your best."
That sums up the spirit and style of 99% of the book. But there's the one per cent--the chapter titled "Tending Garden: seasons of marriage," in which she advises people to stay married for the sake of the kids. And it's hard to square this with the rest of the book, where she writes about how hard it is to take care of yourself too and the importance of cutting yourself some slack. It isn't even that I disagree with her individual reasons for staying married to her husband through the upheavals of having a first child (my child adores my husband, and he adores her, and so on) but that I don't think this is a standard to be applied to every marriage. In the worst-case scenarios, of course it is better to have one parent than two if one of the two is abusive or negligent.
While reading it, I thought about who I would give it to, if I'd bought it as a gift. I think I would give it to a friend who is prone to self-doubt and self-criticism and who has a stable relationship. In fact, I can think of one such friend off the top of my head who might receive my review copy in the near future, though she hasn't any Buddhist tendencies that I know of.
It was lovely. If I might borrow the author's phrasing, I would say it is perfect, not in the sense of "better than everything else" but in the sense of "complete." I'm not aware of any other book quite like it.