It’s Thanksgiving, Turkey!

It is hard sometimes to think of reasons to be thankful at Thanksgiving, we have had a few difficult years lately. My husband has been downsized three times in about a year and a half and our finances have taken a hit. In addition, the holiday season has long been a source of acrimony and nerves. This year I can only look to the ridiculous for reason to be thankful, things like ‘at least I don’t have a disfiguring wart on my lip, ‘at least the cat didn’t eat our bird this year’ or ‘at least they don’t have streakers at Thanksgiving’. My ability to muster a generous, giving spirit has stammered and constricted this year, the way the last drops of gasoline sputters and suspend an engine from dying as it is itself dying. I am ashamed to say I am faulty and life is flawed.

After all, I should know better, I should have learned by now how to make my way in the world, I should have moved on by now. Instead of holding onto past problems, live in the moment and overcome the troubles of today, ones that can be changed. When my husband lost his job for the third time, I was able to dig deep and call up the stability and courage that he needed. Just a few days ago, I told Mike that I couldn’t go through a fourth downsizing and I would like him to prepare for the worst and get his resume updated. He exploded, how did I dare suggest he quit his job. I never said quit his job, just be prepared, we need to be prepared for bad times whether they come or not. With each layoff my optimism has faded and I have become wearier and wearier of ‘getting along’. I just can’t do it again; something in me must be fractured if my faith in the future has failed so miserably. How can I be thankful at Thanksgiving when I am so disturbed and concerned about the past and the future?

I do realize that these financial problems are nothing compared to what some people go through. Some people have real problems. Some people have to deal with death and illness; some people are homeless or have no family. I have even heard of one family where the father had lost his job 15 times over the course of a few years. They had to move across country several times following jobs and had to exhaust their savings on these moves. In this family’s case, Oprah Winfrey’s production company dragged them onto television and gave them various items (a car, tuition assistance, more). Outward gestures of generosity are certainly better then nothing, but all charity should be anonymous, that way self-importance does not adulterate the heart’s importance. I have heard that audience members for that show are selected based on their enthusiasm and ability to do so on cue. Her audience did their job and cheered mightily – ‘Good Oprah’, ‘How kind you are Oprah’. At least there is a silver lining to human misery, the ratings were PHENOMENAL!

A few year ago my mother cooked Thanksgiving dinner for the family. At that time my brother had some sort of phlebitic condition that made it difficult for him to walk and time consuming for him to get ready to even go out. He used to drive but had not renewed his license for several years because his condition made driving painful. If his mother wanted him to come to the Thanksgiving dinner, she would have to have him picked up. She did and she did, she had me pick him up.

I drove across town to the small apartment Carl rented in the converted Victorian. Each floor had two apartments for a total of 6 all together. Carl lived on the first floor because of his ailment and the other first floor apartment was rented by a young man named Eric Markson. My first memory of Eric was of the first time I visited Carl in this building, Eric stuck his tongue out at me, through the mail slot – but out at me. He knew me from seeing me at Carl’s place so he made every effort to be polite. As I knocked on the door of Carl’s apartment, Eric spoke to me from the doorway of his apartment.

“Excuse me Carl’s sister, could you tell me what time it is?” he asked in his politest voice. I turned around and Eric stood in the hallway of that ancient Victorian completely nude. I quickly looked at my watch and related “11AM”.

Without noticing or seeming to care, Eric continued his conversation, as if he was in his finest clothing ready to go with us. But he wasn’t, he was nude. Not one to point out the obvious and compassionate for people with infirmities and mental conditions, I continued to both knock on the door and talk to Eric. This is my downfall, being overly polite, in situation in which it is not necessary. Eric wanted to know what we were having for dinner, he told me about his cat, the one he kept tied to his bed. Later, when this cat died, he kept it in his freezer. I was blushing beet red and I still blush every time this incident is mentioned. It wasn’t until Carl answered the door that the ‘spell’ that kept me talking to the naked man in the hallway was broken and we went on our ways.

“Jesus f---ing Christ, Eric; what the f--- is wrong with you.” “You stupid f---ing turkey, don’t you know you don’t answer the door in your birthday suit. My brother was a poet when he wanted to be. This is a f---ing holiday you moron, we don’t want to see that.” Eric shrank away, not from the sudden realization that he was naked but more so out of fear of my brother’s reprisals. “It’s Thanksgiving, Turkey! You’re the f---ing turkey today, you f---ing moron.” Carl, knew very few adjectives, most of them cuss words and his favorite start with f. I just shook my head, I was quite speechless.

These sorts of situations always leave me speechless – but not Carl. Carl always had something to say in every situation whether his input is desired or not. We have heard this story every Thanksgiving since, it has become a traditional whether we like it or not. I know it could be worse, we all could have seen Eric nude or we could attend an all nude Thanksgiving. Thinking about these events has given me a few things to be thankful for though. Even though our cat did eat our parakeet this year, I am thankful that Oprah Winfrey hasn’t gotten wind of our miseries and forced us to attend one of her audience participation exorcisms. It is not that glowing, warm, sentimental reason I have been wishing for, but still there is always next year to hope for something better. In the mists of my misery this year, I am thankful that Eric Markson is not my Thanksgiving turkey. That alone is reason to be thankful. Happy Thanksgiving! Is that a bump on my lip – I hope that wart doesn’t grow?

File This Under Strange but True

I don’t call myself Buddha Babe for no reason; it is because I am a practicing Nichiren Shoshu Buddhist and have been one for going on thirty years. Oh sure, life is full of adversity and life has been full of problems for me, not the least of which has been because I have chosen to be a Buddhist in a Christian country. I do have to say though that our country has become more open minded and the occasions when I feel prejudged have diminished greatly. Also as an aside Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism is not the same as a group called Sokkai Gaki which is a common misunderstanding with westerners, both groups do recite the mantra ‘Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo.

Anyway, even in my early teens I was fascinated with eastern religion and thought and researched yoga, Zen, Hindu, meditation and more. I am sure that my teachers and parents were very concerned about me, but I was single-minded. When I was in my late teens, as luck would have it, an Asian couple moved in next door to my parents and in time we began to talk. From the moment the wife taught me the Buddhist chant that they used, I knew it was for me. I started immediately practicing this chant and I began to learn the sutra passages (in Japanese) of the ‘Lotus Sutra’. She told me that in a couple of weeks they would be going to Chicago for a Buddhist meeting and they would take me with them.

I couldn’t wait, that weekend I jump in my car and took off in search of the Buddhist temple in Chicago. I drove all the way up their and then found a telephone book and simple looked up Buddhist temples. I found it, I thought. I drove to the northern part of Chicago around Foster Avenue and drove to it like a woman possessed but when I found the temple it was closed. A little disappointed, I walked around the neighborhood to look for a McDonald’s or something. The neighborhood was a mixture of Asians and hippies so it was an odd mix to my subdivision mind, but a not unusual for a big city.

One hippie stopped me on the street and singled me out. In slurred English said “You’re so beautiful, man, you are beautiful!”

I smiled and tried to walk around him. Always trying to be polite, it has been my downfall! I am polite in situations where it is not called for and rude when politeness could have worked wonders. Anyway…

“Man,” he said “If I wasn’t so loaded on heroin right now, I’d jump you right here.” He was cute underneath all of the grime so I was oddly complimented, perplexed and frustrated all at once. Why did I have find hippies so fascinating, life as a hippie (at least his kind of hippie) meant drugs and homelessness? As a teenager in the ‘70s it was interesting. I am afraid that today that man is either dead, homeless, or possibly in jail. I got away.

I was disappointed, but happy that I found the temple at the same time. I could go on my own any time I wanted now and wouldn’t have to rely on someone else to take me.

I headed home later that night; I would be worried if my kids took off for Chicago all alone but it was approaching 10 pm, I was driving through south Chicago and Gary when I noticed that I was running low on gas. I pulled off of 94 onto Grant Street, the thought there would be a gas station near the interstate because most businesses do that to make money. There was nothing here. The further I drove, the fewer businesses I saw, but I did begin to see boarded up buildings and businesses with bars in the windows and chained up door. These businesses were all closed, locked up tight. I did see gas stations, but they too were locked down and chained up. I am an optimistic person but I became a little frightened. What if I run out of gas, would I be lucky enough to meet the decent citizens that live in this neighborhood (they are everywhere) or would I encounter the reason for all the chains. Worried that I would run out of gas, I finally came to a screeching halt along a residential area of Grant that had few street lights and few people. I took a deep breath, thought a moment. I looked at the glowing yellow lamp inside the nearby house and thought of knocking on the door and asking directions but my fear got the better of me. I retreated back to the interstate; of course the very next exit had several stations right on the exit. I gassed up and got home.

The next day I found out from my mentor that this particular temple was not ‘the’ temple in fact they had not build an official temple yet, the Buddhist meetings were held in houses at this point. My trip seemed to have been totally for nothing, I did not find the Nichiren Shoshu temple, I was accosted by a heroin addict and I could have been mugged. The very next weekend my friend took me to a Buddhist meeting in Chicagoland. We drove nearly all the way into Chicago but exited just before we got there. The area looked strangely familiar to me. As I looked at the bars and the grey buildings I realized we were driving down that same lonely street I had used before when I searched for gasoline. It was a little friendlier before sunset. She drove through that residential area and finally came to a stop - exactly where I had stopped the weekend before. That little friendly house with the warm yellow windows was the location of the Buddhist meetings. It turned out that I had chosen to stop right in front of the house where the Buddhist meetings are held and I did not know it. I had found the Buddhist ‘temple’ last weekend and I did not know it. I made shivers run up my spine.

I always look at this experience as an example of how deluded our knowledge and understanding can be and that we should be open minded and open to new things. I looked for the temple in a logical way and used the appropriate means to do it - the telephone book and my car. I did not find it that way. How mystical that somehow though my subconscious, my spirit, my Buddhist nature was pulling me in the right direction. Not only that, my fear of the unknown made me look at that neighborhood in one way - a source of danger and the unknown. In truth that neighborhood became for me a source of knowledge and friendship, a begin point to enlightenment.

I only have one problem though, what was the purpose of the heroin addict, I suppose the meaning in that deluded moment is yet to be revealed.

A few of my favorite things





These are two recent digital scrapbook layouts that I created for www.deco-pages.com. I really like the colors and the format of these and I have been experimenting with plaids, grungy fabric and rusty looking items. I am very happy with the way these turned out. We never take good Holiday pictures but this one of my son looks great. Having most of my family pose during a hike - priceless.