T A B L E_T A L K

Are the gender police hoisting pink things on your baby girl? Discuss infant color-coding in the Mothers area of Table Talk

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Craving a little peace and quiet? Check out ashrams at barnesandnoble.com
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R E C E N T L Y

Drama Queen: The worst toys ever
This month's finalists battle the most nefarious play-pretties that ever tots have touched
(01/11/99)

Sleeping in
By Anne Lamott
No one tells you that the profound tiredness you feel in your child's first year of life doesn't go away with the 2 a.m. feedings
(01/07/99)

One mother's gain
By Maurine Zarlengo Christ
After adopting three children, a mom says it's love, not blood, that makes parents
(01/06/99)

My mother's daughter
By Kristina Zarlengo
A child of adoption wonders: How much is my nature a product of my nurturing?
(01/05/99)

The baby girl I gave away
By Ceil Malek
Putting up a baby for adoption was the first act of my adult life, but it took me almost 30 years to face what that decision meant for me and my daughter
(01/04/99)

BROWSE THE MOTHERS WHO THINK FEATURE ARCHIVES

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

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WHAT I LEARNED FROM MY BREAKDOWN | PAGE 1, 2, 3
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A staff member, Nehri, drove me from the Boulder bus station to the yoga retreat, which turned out to be an actual ashram -- the Eastern version of a monastery. It was hard to settle in. I wasn't quite prepared for an ashram since I had told my friend I wanted to go somewhere without a bunch of New Age religious crap. She had assured me that Alhambra was mellow, without an agenda. But I later realized that my friend had only been at Alhambra on weekends, when there were enough other urban and materialistic guests to outnumber the yogis and effectively dilute their philosophy, which I never quite figured out but could, if forced to, sum up like this: Detach from demanding people and your own desire for external success; walk around quietly, noticing things; and realize that humbling tasks like cleaning toilets are an opportunity for spiritual growth.

Unlike my friend, I got to Alhambra on a Wednesday and found myself the only guest among 14 resident yogis. At the group vegan meals, which were served on long wooden picnic tables, I felt as if everyone was staring at me, noticing how fucked-up and neurotic I am. At other times in my life, being fucked-up and neurotic has seemed kind of good, an interesting plus. At the ashram, I just felt like I was at negative-15 on the scale of relative enlightenment.

I felt judged, so I started judging back like crazy: "These are a bunch of loser white people, mostly from New Jersey. Their parents named them Joe, Anne, Susan. Now they want everybody to call them Manu, Niti, Sudha. Give me a break." The main guy, Swami Prabavananda, was an Italian-American from Detroit, originally named Caruzzini. Since no one talks about their past at Alhambra, I had to piece together quite a lot to figure out Swami's origins. I learned that Swami started the ashram in the early '80s, and he and his followers are Shivaists -- a kind of cross between Buddhism and Hinduism.

I was curious about Shivaist beliefs and not always hostile. I admired the yogis' peacefulness, except when I thought it was blankness -- then it scared me. And I was desperate, sick to death of my own personal manias and definitely in search of a calmer, more spiritual life. So I asked a lot of questions. Here are the ones that seemed to disturb people the most: 1) What does your family think about your being here? 2) Is there anything you miss about the outside world? 3) If yoga is about a mind-body connection, why do all of the swamis have such big bellies?

The yogis didn't seem to want to answer. I guess they wanted their privacy. Or maybe they could tell I had become the queen of judgment, and since they were trying to live a life of acceptance, they ran for the shrine when they saw me coming.

Part of the reason I was going crazy, why I had come to Alhambra in the first place, was because I couldn't stop judging. Primarily I judged myself, but there was still plenty of judgment left over for others. I wanted to stop the whirring in my mind, but I spent the first 12 hours there whirring on hyper-speed. The peace and silence seemed to egg me on, to silently scream: Fill me up, fill me up with all the brain chatter you can muster! Finally, at about 4 a.m., I had my first revelation: Stop striving.

I never talk to myself like this -- like an inspirational speaker who has written a really bad 12-step book. I talk to myself in the conditional, in questions, in if-then propositions:

• Since I only have 45 minutes before the baby sitter leaves, maybe I should try to edit my essay on magic. Or maybe I should try to fix that really messed-up poem about my mother, but that might put me in a bad mood, and I won't be able to face the grocery store, and we have no food in the house ...
• If I give the kids a bath this afternoon before we all go to the pot-luck dinner, then I won't have to worry about the fact that they won't get a bath tomorrow with the baby sitter ...
• Should my son go to the Baptist day care I think I like better even though, in general, I am afraid of Baptists, or should he go to the secular preschool that strikes me as depressing but where all our professional friends have their kids?

After I woke up, I moved back into my familiar conditional and analytical internal chatter, but at a slightly less hyper pace. Stop striving did not mean stop working, which was horrifying to me, which would mean I didn't get any time to think my own thoughts, to write. Stop striving meant stop trying to prove to other people that I'm a real writer, as opposed to what I imagine they think -- that I'm a mother who doodles around with cute, Hallmarky poems while her baby naps.

Nor did stop striving mean stop parenting, which is an equally horrifying and unpleasant prospect to me, but stop trying to parent perfectly, stop walking on tiptoe around my children for fear that I'll do something egregious, something my parents would have done -- like spank.

And stop parenting guiltily, thinking I'm not giving enough to my children if I'm not with them 24 hours a day. I am a writer. Nothing makes me more unhappy than acting like I'm not a writer. Tasking around, doing errands, dropping by the mall to see if there's a sale on kid sneakers -- good God, just shoot me now if this is what my life has to be like.

Why do I say "has to"? Who do I think is forcing me to act like someone I'm not? Some days, it honestly feels as if there's a roving mother patrol out there checking up on me, making sure I'm spending the requisite number of hours doing the trivial shit that everyone else seems to think is so important for kids' well-being. Like buying matching Thomas the Tank Engine napkins and plates for my son's birthday party. I did this once, at a place called Party Pig. The sub-50 temperatures maintained by massive air-conditioners blowing interminably, the bad Beatles songs, the insane amount of plastic, the depressed salespeople, the sugared-up wailing kids -- this is hell.

But still, I feel judgment when my son has plain yellow plates at his party. Doesn't he like trains? Doesn't he like Thomas? Sure he does. But I think he also likes a mother who is not a basket case. I actually think he likes that more. Of course, I could be wrong -- Thomas is pretty cool -- but even so, I will never voluntarily go back to Party Pig.

N E X T_ P A G E: From the ashram to Babies "R" Us: A tough transition

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