Opposites Attract

I just finished two books that couldn't have been more diametrically opposed, on the surface. Fun House is a tragicomic memoir illustrated by Dykes to Watch Out For creator Alison Bechdel which examines her relationship with her father before and after his death/suicide, including her own coming out as a lesbian and his closeted gay life which she discovers right before his death. Momma Zen is also a memoir, but that of Zen Buddhist priest Karen Maezen Miller who writes (would it be wrong to say) enlightening pieces on the aspects of motherhood such as the importance of being present, embracing change, self discipline, and the like (Mama has my copy so I can't look specifics up) that resemble Zen practice. But, on reflection, I realized that each is a memoir examining the parent-child relationship and its effects on parent (Momma Zen) and child (Fun House).

I have long loved DTWOF but only recently learned about Bechdel's memoir, which a friend loaned me last week. At first, it was odd to see a young Mo, but soon I was completely entranced by the narrative, the illustrations, the heavy literary analysis (Proust, Joyce, Hardy, Wilde in a "comic book"?). As the tale progresses from the early a-ha moments of her father's death (a suspected suicide) and his closeted gay life to her more substantial reflections on those, often through the books that she and her father, an English teacher (and funeral home director!), shared, my reactions to the family and family dynamic became similarly increasingly complicated. I might have to read it again. And again. If only to (and I can't believe I'm going to write this about a lesbian memoir) penetrate all the multifaceted layers.

While Fun House is a child's look at what many would term a dysfunctional family, Momma Zen is a mother's attempts to avoid just such a thing. Following upon my readings of Everyday Sacred and Plain and Simple, as well as my attendance at the NVC workshop and reading a couple of NVC books (and maybe even The Bean Trees), this book spoke to many of the strands of spirituality, identity, purpose, and practice that I have slowly been gathering. Miller is my kind of mother: admittedly flawed but trying anew everyday out of this enormous love. I read the book awfully fast--in less than a day, as I recovered from my cold in bed on Sunday (blessedly alone, as the kids went to church with Mama)--and will likely refer to it often (and there's a handy list in back of chapters to read when you need to hear something particularl, like patience or presence), especially because I want to try the meditation technique at the end (Mama had taken meditation through work but hers is different--there's a secret word and stuff that I don't know--but this is accessible). I remember practicing my breathing when I was pregnant and how I could lower my heartrate as I watched the monitors (which in those last few months, I was hooked up to on a weekly basis). I think I might even check out her blog. Because, I think, of all the parenting books I've read (both advice and memoir)--though admittedly, that's not many, since they aren't usually my thing (who wants to spend "down time" being told that you aren't doing motherhood correctly, as many of the books do)--this is the one in which I most see myself, both flaws (making everything work, not easily being present, for example) and aspirations (not doing those two things! among others . . .).

My next book, which is for the Hungry Book Club, is Geraldine Brooks's March, a fictionalized biographical account of Bronson Alcott, father of famed Louisa May (you remember him from Little Women, he was off at war until he came home but then still didn't figure in it much--they call it the first homosocial/all-female novel). But he was famous in his own right, an educator and Transcendentalist, friend of Thoreau and (I think) Hawthorne. And, if I understand it, there's parenthood and sexuality, though probably no Zen and little advice, in that book too. Can't wait, love that I'm reading again. And what I'm reading.