Dinner with Buddha Read Free Page B

on the sport, plays a lot.”
    â€œMaybe I’m too lazy for that, hon.”
    â€œI don’t want you to be.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œWhy didn’t you want me to hang out with Judy Millen when we were little?”
    â€œBecause her parents were racist homophobes who believed God loved them and hated your mother and me because we didn’t go to church on Sunday and sometimes voted for women.”
    â€œWhy didn’t you want me to binge drink in college and sleep with just anybody?”
    â€œFor obvious reasons, and I don’t see the link between binge drinking and the spiritual life.”
    â€œIf you love somebody you want what’s good for them, that’s the link. I don’t want to see my father fat and depressed—sorry, Dad—and giving up on life. Mom wouldn’t want her death to do that to you. I don’t want you to grow old and die that way. I want you to really understand what a great person you are, which is something you’ve resisted all your life. I think there’s some weird, I-can’t-possibly-be-special, North Dakota fake humility there. Have you ever looked at that?”
    I didn’t answer. We walked along. On the heels of her loving assault I tried to think of something funny to say, some wise remark, some deflection. Natasha had always been able to pierce that artfully constructed armor of mine, an armor that worked so well with my New York friends. At the office, at parties, meeting a neighbor at a café in town or on the front lawn during leaf-raking season, we had a repartee, my acquaintances and I, a hail-fellow-well-met bravado, in some cases a pattern of minor-league jousting. Harmless, to be sure, but an armor all the same. Here, in a few sentences, she’d pierced it again. I felt raw, unguarded, shaken up, afraid of something I couldn’t name. We went along for another while and then—again, without talking about it—turned around and headed back. Only a weak yellowish light remained in the western sky, the last promise of day. Finally, when we were again within sight of the farmhouse, I said, “So tell me about this new boyfriend. Name. Age. Characteristics.”
    I could feel her smiling next to me. I remembered what it felt like to smile at the mention of a lover. I remembered, so well, saying the word “Jeannie” to my friends and the warm feeling it raised in me. I remembered it as if it were yesterday.
    â€œHis name is Warren,” Natasha said. “And he’s got some of that same North Dakota neohumility I was just talking about.”
    â€œIt has a good side.”
    â€œSure it does. I love you, I love him. It’s just that sometimes I can clearly see those self-imposed limits and it makes me nuts. He’s thirty-eight but he looks much younger. He’s six-seven, 240 pounds. He played tight end at UND until he got hurt. He’s a woodworker, a great one. He has a little furniture shop in Bismarck. He used to have a drug problem, long ago, after the injury, and he went to jail for a few months—just the county jail, just for shoplifting. But he’s way, way past that now. He comes here on retreats three or four times a year and is a huge, huge fan of Rinpoche. He’s going to be staying here to help us out while you and Rinpoche are traveling.”
    I thought:
Thirty-eight! Very nearly twice your age! My daughter involved with an ex-con giant with drug problems! Walking alone on the country roads! Fending off Bakken creeps! Bike riding in thunderstorms!
    I said, “How did you know we’d be traveling?”
    â€œIt was all set up,” she said guilelessly. “Aunt Seese has been seeing you in dreams, on the road with Rinpoche. She’s been having the dreams for months now. She planned this a long time ago, at least in a loose way. Now she’s trying to set up some speaking engagements for him, too, I think, so it all works