Earth Sanctuary

Two moms, three kids (ages 8, 5, and 5 months) pile into a car on a cloudy Seattle day and drive north out of the city to one of the many ferry docks, where we watch the ferry we just missed sail away and settle in to wait… We eat, pee, change diapers, nurse, rearrange, shuffle and rest. The next ferry is soon.

Once on the ferry, we shuffle, rearrange, exit the car, gather food, toys, put on the ergo, put baby in the ergo, look at the sea (one of us for the first time!) and tromp up the stairs from our car into the belly of the ferry, where Orlando immediately spots the cafeteria, which sells juice!

The boys check out the video games and we wander a bit and sit a bit and then we go back to the car (it’s a short ferry ride), where we shuffle, strap in, settle, snack, and eventually snake our way off the ferry onto land.

We drive until we see the small signs: Earth Sanctuary, and then we park in a small, empty lot. The boys jump off rocks and run down the path before we big folks have even figured out we’ve arrived.

We unstrap, unpile, climb out, collect and pack the snacks (what’s left of them), put baby in, visit the port-a-potty.

My friend has been here before, and there is something over this way, off the main path, and she tells us a little about it, and the boys say, “Yeah, let’s go see it!”

It’s a dolmen — a structure like a little house made of huge slabs of rock… sides and a roof balanced upon one another. The space within is quiet and dear. The ground is sprinkled with sand, which Mica calls “Buddha sugar.”

We spy the altar within, piled with rocks and gems and other treasures… we carry nothing in our pockets but I pick up a bit of lichen and say that it will be my offering. Mica gathers piles of lichens and Orlando a pine cone or two. We each go in and offer. We leave the quiet space.

And we enter more quiet spaces… a pond, another altar, a circle of stones.

And at some point the reverence gives way to utter air-splitting silliness. The goofiness, the laughter, the banging into one another and falling-down antics of my two sons.

My friend says something about how they are so full of life, so exuberant and expressive… in a beautiful way. This said after we visited the stupa, surrounded by a plate of green grass. The boys stripped themselves of socks and shoes and ran around, exclaiming, “It’s like I’m a kid again!”

And I think it is so sad-funny that they are kids and that they feel this freedom to be kids as… novel? Unusual? Noticeable, at the least.

And I am split right down the middle: wanting them to feel free to be kids — recognizing that there is no one else here, at all, but us, and who are they bothering (but me and my vague notions of them needing to be “quieter”)? — and wanting them to behave appropriately for (my ideas about) the situation.

And because I am not clear inside I am ineffective at guiding them toward any one direction. My exhortations to “Be quiet!” and “Settle down!” have no impact.

I do not meet their energy and flow from there. I do not find their yes, and say, “Oh, you want to run? Let’s run over here!”

I do not find the yes within me, “I am dedicated to teaching my children to be quiet and reverent here.” I do not directly model for them how to walk in a meditative circle around the stupa. (I turn the prayer wheels instead and churn inside.)

I am basically (internally) immobilized by the dual impulses of “They should not be running” and “There is nothing wrong with them running right now.”

{We have seen no one else our whole time here. If someone else were to show up, I think my clarity would click into place.}

On the walk back I feel better… the boys are calmer (maybe because I have stopped hissing at them to be quiet?) but also the talk with my friend helped.

The kids climb rocks and jump off them and slide all over the boardwalk (“Look how far I can go!”) and hold hands and each other’s backs and clamor back into the car saying they’re hungry and “Goodbye, Earth Sanctuary” and “Look at Baby H! She’s so cute!” who sits between them in our car filled with wonderful people.

And we get to the ferry dock, just missing the ferry but there is another one soon, which we drive onto, and then we get out and walk around and look at the sea, and get back into the car, and we drop our friends off at their house, and we drive to our house, and we go to the common house for dinner, and then we come home and we are in bed and we are lying together in a pile and we sleep a good sleep.

Later, I will reflect on “too muchness” and of all the ways children get this message (as I, too, received as a child), and this will be the beginning of that idea coming into clear focus… and once I see myself seeing it, and holding it (lightly) — another contour in the landscape — it will begin to loosen and unfold, and I will understand my churning at the prayer wheels as a way of asking for freedom. And I will be grateful.