Misa Bretschneider

The Fortress

“who do you love the most in your life?” it was one of those questions you found yourself blindly smiling at upon casual musing, an unfounded, self-assured reflex that never pried for an explicit answer, yet never required one either.  you were human, you owned your heart, and so you hid behind this faith that there would always lay some response that would seamlessly align with the day and night inside of you, one that would feel so pure and right at that moment in time.

and yet, here i sat in silence, sharing a tattered bamboo mat with a bhante, who had just asked me this very question.  my mother had known him for many months and on my time off from school, urged me to go see him. “he has the eyes of an elephant” was all she said to me about him.  having been utterly defeated by school, all i could see to right now was someone gentle, genuine, and anything but judging.  so, with that, i cast my cynical shell aside, and walked into the temple alone.

still, i had no answer, my mind licking my brain for something to gnaw on. then, out of the nothing reemerged the blind smile, and looking straight into his elephant eyes, i answered, “my mother.” my mother? of course, she and i were so close growing up. sure i had been in “loving” relationships, but all had been lost and never reclaimed. most of my memories i still clung to belonged to my childhood when I would skip alongside my mother, traipsing the dirt roads that nestled between old meiji castle walls my mother once touched as a young girl. it did feel so pure and right. yes, my mother.

but then i waited for a response…no, not just a response, but a validation. yes, a mirroring smile of warmth and a reply of accord. but it never came…the bhante’s mouth curled into an unrecognizable gesture.  then a muted smile appeared, but the expected words did not.  “of course she loves you,” he replied. “everyone on this earth loves themselves before any other. we are bred out of love yet remain selfish.  she loves you, she must, because you were born from her body. you are part of her, and because she loves herself, she must love you.”

the hollow faith i had relied on all these years crackled, its splinters pee`ling away the last shreds of composure. the day within me extinguished into night. how could such a gentle being utter such a heartless thing? was he right? i couldn’t believe my ears, my heart, my mind. i couldn’t feel my be- ing, ha, no, my mom’s being, anymore. i felt like a ghost hovering over wandering without any direction, disowned by the one sacred relationship of my mother that once aided me as my spiritual compass. I felt at once naked, faithless, and above all, loveless.

quickly, my spirit ducked into my awaiting grave, digging up those love-drenched memories to disprove the bhante.  the mounds of dirt formed giant mountains around...a fear even more painful than the bhante’s words. growing up, i always felt a sinister tug on my mother’s capacity for love. she had moved to the states during college and coming from a very traditional Japanese family, she always said she could not properly express herself.  my mother had never given me a hug until the age of sixteen, when my warring hormones verbally expressed this resentment to her. she never even uttered the worlds, “i love you” once in my life.  thus, as an extension of her being, i could feel a waning in my heart, as this seeded fear of lovelessness began to painfully swell during my adolescence.

the overarching nightmare, however, that would render these fears immaterial, was that my mother did not love herself.  if she did not even love herself, did that mean her power to love me was motored by an empty vessel? she had always regretted deserting her life in japan for her one in the states, spoiled with rude americans, but also one with american daughters. during her college years, she trusted her own blind faith, and upon absconding from an arranged marriage, was disowned by her family, and officially unloved by her own mother. if these roots between mother and daughter had split so cleanly, what did they say about the bond between her and me?

i became consumed with finding the truth to this nightmarish obsession, mentally book-marking every incident where my mother’s love for me was in doubt. i remembered all the fights we got into, and every utterance of regret she had for her life here, or disappointment in raising me “improperly.”  These painful episodes piled up into other giant mountains that besieged me, leaving me completely isolated, without even the possibility of feeling either love or lovelessness. i was safe and protected, but entirely desolate.

in this loneliness, i then understood that in order to be truly loved, i had to risk the chance of not being loved.  if i built up such an impenetrable fortress around me, i could never have the chance to sail either vessel. as the saying goes, it’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.  even if this saying isn’t true, i’d rather dig up the painful truth on my own than hide behind a mountainous hollow faith. a fortress may protect and safeguard, but does not let out the night inside oneself to chance even a passing caress of the pure, right, and love-ly sun.