Saturday night. I’m hanging out with my parents at a bland suburban bar. They are in Omaha for the night, having temporarily fled their small town due to its chronic microbrew shortage. I have joined them partly because I have nothing else to do, and partly because I truly enjoy their company. Also, they buy me beer.
I could tell when I arrived that my dad was spoiling for an argument. He and Teresa, my stepmom, were already seated, and I had caught them in the middle of a debate about watching Colbert before bed.
“I just want to watch Seinfeld,” he says. “I’m beat at the end of the day, and the punditry with Colbert and all of those, it’s tiresome. And, you know, I’m very Zen these days. I don’t let politics bother me anymore.”
I’ve been hearing about my dad’s flirtation with Zen Buddhism for about the past year, but I can’t remember an instance where he wasn’t at least partly agitated by something in the news. I make a face at Teresa. She laughs in her no-holds-barred way, but my father is not dissuaded.
“The great thing about Zen is you can just throw your hands up in the air and say pbthhhhh,” he says, his palms opening to the ceiling tile.
He leans back from the table and looks to me, testing whether I might have something to say about that. He’s daring me to step into the ring.
I briefly consider not arguing with him. We have an entire evening ahead of us. It would be pleasant to not debate a spiritual practice about which we know practically nothing. But then I flash to an overheard street conversation from earlier in the week, where a guy was explaining to his girlfriend about this Dalai Lama teaching that, like, really resonated with him.
And then, all on their own, my eyes begin rolling into the back of my head.
Though I’m dimly aware of the misery that’s now in store for Teresa, my full-body contrarianism is taking hold. My palms start to sweat, and my shoulders tense their way toward my ears. I need to tell my father how wrong he is. I need to tell him immediately.
“I don’t think that’s how Zen works,” I say.
He pushes his eyebrows together and clenches his jaw. This is the face he makes when he is about to tell me how wrong I am.
“Pbthhhhh,” he says.
And we’re off.
Our “debate” about Zen lasts a good 20 minutes – though our form is so sloppy, a high school debate student would chew off her cuticles in despair. His argument seems to be that with Zen, nothing really matters. I counter with variations of, “You’re doing Zen wrong.”
Not that I have any idea of how to “do” Zen. At this moment, my mental repertoire contains only a few nuggets from the thumb-sized Pema Chödrön book on my desk. I curse myself for having been, for the past 10 years, too lazy to attend 8 a.m. Sunday meditation at the local Zen temple. If only I’d gone to meditation a few times, I think, I could really get him.
My father urges me to read the Buddhism book he’s currently reading on his Kindle.
“If I buy you the Kindle version, will you read it?” he asks me.
“No, but if you buy me a hard copy, I will.”
He harrumphs.
“When are you going to modernize and get a Kindle?”
“I’ve told you a thousand times,” I sigh. “I read books on paper. The way they’re supposed to be read.”
But my sigh is just posture. Giddiness seeps in as I realize the potential for a subject pivot. This new argument that might be taking shape – about the format books should come in – is one I can get really into. I can really wave my hands around over this one.
Teresa flags down the waiter. Time for another round, and some snacks.
After informing my father that a book is not a book unless you can put the pages to your face and smell it, we have a brush with political debate.
Politics are our go-to when it comes to arguing, even though we share mostly the same views and end up chasing our own tails. Tonight’s political touchstone, however, goes nowhere.
“Wow, Congress, huh?” he tries.
I offer a sympathetic sigh.
“Yeah,” I say. “It’s a big fucking mess.”
How can you argue that?
Our waffle fries arrive. The fries themselves were a point of disagreement, of course, but I don’t want to get into it. Anyway, once they arrive, talk to turns to food, which leads to disagreement about, of all things, fruit.
“Apples, you know, are just exquisite. Do you eat apples, Melissa?”
Two beers in, and I’m feeling strident.
“No, apples are pointless. I’m into berries.”
“You know, apples, they’ve got these varietals out of Michigan. That’s the only place that breeds these kinds of apples. They’re crisp and sweet and juicy. Or grapefruit, what about grapefruit? I like a grapefruit every day. They used to be huge – remember that? Now they’re just normal orange size.”
“Grapefruit makes me nervous because they interact with some medications.”
“I’m not on any medicine, so I don’t worry about it. So, you eat berries, huh?”
“Also bananas. I like bananas.”
“You know, a lot of banana plantations exist because of slash and burn, so they’re terrible for the environment, and exploit the workers, too.”
Teresa presses her palms to the table and looks searchingly at my dad.
“How do you even know all that about the apples? Why do you know that?”
It’s the best question of the night.
Just when I think we are done with Zen, it comes back.
“Do you have a problem with me being Zen?” my dad asks. By this point, my energy is flagging. I craft a response that I think is neutral. We can have peace yet, I think.
“You use Zen to describe your worldview. That’s totally cool. I just use other language to make sense of the world. We’re probably not far off from each other at the core.”
There is a pause in which my own bullshit echoes back to me.
“I really respect you, Melissa. You’re insightful and I want to know your thoughts. What language do you use to describe the world?”
For a moment I can’t respond. Is this a sparring tactic, or is he asking in earnest? My thoughts turn to soup. I suddenly realize how underdeveloped is the thing that passes for my ‘worldview.’ As an agnostic, I don’t follow any particular faith tradition, but I do have a complicated belief system involving jinxes, pseudoscience, and advice columns.
But this truth will not do.
“Well, I like academic research. I make sense of things through reading about psychology, or sociology, or anthropology, or what-have-you.”
My father nods his head. What I do not tell him is that much of my reading about psychology, sociology, anthropology, or what-have-you is actually the product of hours of my life lost to a Wikipedia wormhole. Or that one of the most illuminating books I’ve read lately dealing with psychological theory is actually a graphic novel.
What are we talking about? God, I can’t even remember. I take a drink of water. All I know is that I’ve just said something that made him make a face at me.
“You’re being didactic,” he says.
I make his eyebrows at him. Is eyebrow-furrowing a genetic trait? Whatever. I figure if I glare well enough, it will cover the fact that I don’t know what ‘didactic’ means.
I make a plan to look it up later. But let’s be honest: I care less about what it means than whether he used it right.
The waffle fries disappear, and then so do their crumbs. Even Teresa’s patience has worn out; she long ago tuned us out to focus on the guitar player in the corner. My father and I stop provoking each other. We fall silent. For a while, all I listen to is the guitar player and his Counting Crows covers. They aren’t songs I would play, if I played guitar, I think. And then I stop myself from mentally arguing with the stranger on the barstool.
“Well, I suppose . . .” Teresa says. That’s our cue.
Dad pays the tab, and we set forth with putting on our coats and saying goodnight.
“Which way are you going to go?” He asks.
“Probably up 72nd.”
“The highway would be quicker, wouldn’t?”
God, even this? But instead of arguing for my route, I give him a hug. And shut my mouth. And get a little Zen.
“Pbfffffff,” I say.
