{"id":456,"date":"2015-08-12T00:00:10","date_gmt":"2015-08-12T00:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/new-wp\/?p=456"},"modified":"2015-07-31T23:57:56","modified_gmt":"2015-07-31T23:57:56","slug":"a-fathers-birth-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/?p=456","title":{"rendered":"A Father’s Birth (#5)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"luisluis\"<\/a>
Master Yao Xin Shakya<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A Father’s Birth<\/strong><\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

A series of articles on becoming a parent from a Zen’s priest memories, guts, and imagination<\/em><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Click here to access all available issues of “A Father’s Birth”<\/a><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Part 5:\u00a0A Tiger in the Belgian Forest<\/h3>\n

 <\/p>\n

My step-father and I raced to the Birth House and found my wife sitting calmly on the side of the bed. \u00a0At first, I didn’t know what to think. \u00a0We had been warned about Braxton Hicks contractions – those so called “false labor” uterine pains that are often taken for the beginning of true labor. \u00a0Was she so calm because the pains had stopped or weren’t really labor pains? \u00a0She smiled brightly at me, and I asked, “Is the baby on his way?” \u00a0She and the two nurses in the room said, in unison, “Yes… it has begun!”<\/p>\n

In French we have a saying that is almost exactly like the English, “Calm before the storm.”<\/p>\n

But everything seemed to me to be too calm. She explained, “My water broke and the contractions started about two hours ago.”<\/p>\n

I felt a little foolish standing there so I sat in a chair beside her bed and suddenly her face contracted as if she were really concentrating as if she were trying hard to remember something. \u00a0Her eyebrows were furled and her entire face became tense. \u00a0Little beads of perspiration formed on her forehead. Then she relaxed and her face seemed radiant as she smiled at me again. \u00a0I had put a few CDs in our “birth pack” and figured that this was the time to play some music. \u00a0I put on a recording of old French folk songs and suddenly the nurses, my wife, and I were singing along with the music. \u00a0This was the last thing that I expected to happen. \u00a0“Well,” I said to myself, “this is gonna be a piece of cake.” \u00a0Why did people make such a fuss about childbirth? \u00a0This was rather enjoyable.<\/p>\n

A sing-along! \u00a0Wasn’t that nice? The birds were singing in the ranches of the tree just outside. \u00a0The rays of the sun were coming through the window. \u00a0Every now and then the muscles in my wife’s face would grow tense, and she would squeeze my hand, but the muscles would soon relax. Yes… this was going to be easy.<\/p>\n

By the time the CD ended, \u00a0my wife started full labor and things weren’t so easy anymore. \u00a0The sun had set and the nurses lit groups of votive candles, giving the room a reverential or maybe even a cozy atmosphere. \u00a0And now, when the pain started, I could hear her chant “Om” and nobody was happily singing old French folk songs anymore. \u00a0I began to join her in chanting Om, and doing deep breathing exercises with her between her contractions. \u00a0Inhale for four seconds, hold the breath for 16 seconds, and exhale for 8 seconds… and then start again until it was time to chant Om again.<\/p>\n

And then, despite the fact that my wife has sung in choirs, the “Om” wasn’t singing anymore. \u00a0It was shouting. And since there was less time to do the breathing exercise and more time to shout Om, I tried to hold the singing syllable as she relaxed between contractions. \u00a0 We must have sounded like a couple of wild people in an ashram.<\/p>\n

Through the window, I watched the stars come out. \u00a0And then a feeling that is known to all Zen meditators came over me: I felt a Oneness with my wife, the nurses, and the entire room. \u00a0It was as if the room was lit by something inside me. \u00a0Her chant of Om had been reduced to a whisper and then it disappeared altogether as if it had been internalized. \u00a0At that time the feeling of Oneness also disappeared and I was just myself sitting beside her. \u00a0She was totally in herself, her own world, and her thoughts were not shared with anyone. \u00a0She had that prowling look on her face, the look that in Chinese Chan we call, “A tiger coming out of the forest.” I wondered whether all the things I had once read about Yin and Yang were actually occurring. \u00a0Had her Yang chi risen up to meet her Yin chi, merging with it, so that now she had the eyes of that bright, determined but calm, tiger? Had her Yin chi come down to her belly where it was nourishing the baby before his long trip in his quest for light and love? \u00a0As I watched her lying on her side, transfigured, she became to me a magnificent tiger that occasionally lifted its head and roared.<\/p>\n

The roar became more coarse, a growl or grunt was added to it, and one of the nurses said to me, We’re in the last stage. \u00a0The baby will soon emerge.”<\/p>\n

At that point I was lost. \u00a0I felt like a spectator at a play that was given in a language I didn’t understand. \u00a0I didn’t know what was going on. \u00a0There were a few more deep grunting roars and then the nurse said, “I can feel the head.”<\/p>\n

And then, a few moments later, I could see the crown of my baby’s head for the first time.What a feeling! For some reason I felt like an archeologist who had just discovered a priceless artifact.<\/p>\n

He came out, but face-down, and I couldn’t see his features. \u00a0Then the nurses picked him up and turned him around to show us that he was perfectly formed. \u00a0He wailed and we yelled in triumph. My wife just totally went limp and cooed the way mothers always do.<\/p>\n

The nurses washed Eliott and tended to my wife for a few minutes. \u00a0They weighed him and filled out his birth certificate. \u00a0They wrapped our little tiger cub in a little blanket and handed him to my wife. \u00a0Her cooing exponentially increased.<\/p>\n

A few hours later, we were all lying on the same bed. \u00a0The Birth House, unlike ordinary hospitals, allows patients to call restaurants and ask them to deliver food. \u00a0All the grandparents came into the room and we all celebrated with Pizza and Coke. \u00a0My wife was as hungry as I was relieved. \u00a0Little Eliott slept between us. \u00a0He was no longer our little “shrimp.” He was our son.<\/p>\n

I felt as though I had conquered the world. This birth business was so easy! \u00a0What was all the fuss about? \u00a0So it took a mantra and a breathing exercise… and, Oh yes… a few French folk songs… I patted myself on the back. \u00a0Zen preparation! \u00a0Zen training! \u00a0And this was all there was to it. \u00a0My wife and I were on a bed with a sleeping baby between us. It was simplicity itself. I felt like reciting the old Dao quatrain: \u00a0“How wonderful! \u00a0How mysterious! \u00a0I chop wood. \u00a0I carry water.”<\/p>\n

Little did I know. \u00a0Maybe the Dao monk who penned those lines meant chopping the wood of all the trees in the Ardennes. \u00a0Maybe he was thinking about carrying the water of the entire Mediterranean. It may have been wonderful and mysterious, but it would also be scary and exhausting.<\/p>\n

I would soon learn that what I knew about babies any father on earth could safely forget and not run the risk of being uninformed. In short, I knew nothing… nada…zilch.<\/p>\n

My first lesson would be:\u00a0tiger cubs are nocturnal creatures.\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0My second?\u00a0They have toilet habits that are totally unacceptable in an adult world!\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Fatherhood takes a man out of dreaming and, like the Buddha, causes him to awaken… frequently.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Calm<\/a>
Calm Tiger Sitting on Stone<\/strong>
Photo credit: http:\/\/wonderwordz.com<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Deliverance Day finally arrives for Da Shi Yao Xin. In Part V, A Tiger in the Belgian Forest, he tells us how it feels to suddenly become the dad of an adorable tiger cub, a.k.a. his son Eliott.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":460,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10,25],"tags":[27,18],"class_list":["post-456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english","category-essays-by-fashi-yao-xin-shakya","tag-a-fathers-birth","tag-essays"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/tigre.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/phd6fo-7m","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=456"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":461,"href":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456\/revisions\/461"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}