The first Buddha was stolen from my front yard one night. Its stone face peeked through the yarrow and lavender I’d planted in the narrow run. My kids dropped the second one trying to take it from the back of my car. I didn’t say a word when I saw it in pieces on the concrete; only walked away, dejected. A few days later I walked into their clubhouse to find that they had commandeered my hot glue gun in an attempt to piece it back together. The sweetness (and futility) of that scene hit me straight in the chest.
The third Buddha is a heavy, stoic head I found at the Good Stuff thrift store on my 35th birthday. I drove it home strapped into the passenger’s seat, the neon orange price tag still irreverently stuck to its forehead. I thought very hard about never taking it off.
The fourth my daughter found for me. This one a fat-bellied, smiling Buddha.
“Get it, mama! You have to get it!” she said. “To keep the head company!”
I did. Of course.
I’ve always been more than happy to appropriate the good parts of religion and leave the rest. At nine, I was captivated by the idea of being baptized. I had not been raised to consider my soul let alone to worry it might need saving. But church seemed like something irresistibly normal for a girl who could already tell she was anything but. A pretty white dress and a party in my honor didn’t seem half bad, either. At sixteen, I wore a cross I had cast in silver and set with a piece of jade. Being the godless little shit that I was, it delighted me to discover the necklace had the added effect of pissing off bible-thumping classmates.
Maybe the Buddhas started out as a gimmick, too. Just like the cross and the would-be baptism: an atheist’s shallow flirtations with the divine. But I think I’m starting to understand: they are a stand in for something I wish I could hold. Something I hesitate to even name. A name would feel so narrow for what I have slowly come to call mine. I’m not sure I can even call it a belief. Beliefs can be such hard, inflexible things. So hard they turn into weapons if you’re not careful. I only want to hold the things that soften me and remind me all separateness is just an illusion. I only want to stand at the intersection of chaos and karma and swim in the mystery of it all.