In retrospect, I had a pretty idyllic childhood, at least until about the age of 13 or 14. After adolescence kicked in full force, things got a bit rockier, but this post isn't about that.
As a preadolescent, I felt I had everything I could want. My parents weren't rich. Far from it - they were just then entering the middle class, my father starting a career as a public-school teacher and my mom a stay-at-home mother. But Dad managed to buy a house with a G.I. Bill, and I had a roof over my head, three meals a day, a warm bed, and a mother to tuck me in at night until I was old enough that I didn't want to be tucked in anymore.
We weren't rich, but I didn't know I was lacking anything. Every weekend from late spring until early autumn, my parents would take us kids to the beach, where I would play in the waves, bask in the sun, and watch girls in bikinis as they walked by. Heaven. What more could I want?
Mom and Dad somehow managed to find a tiny little house but with just enough bedroom for their four kids (provided we were willing to share rooms) in Head of the Harbor on Long Island. The town is now and was even back then a weekend and summer retreat for the wealthy of Manhattan, a hillier and less ostentatious alternative to the Hamptons. We were most decidedly not among that mansion-and-sailboat crowd. But some of my classmates were and I grew up a low- to mid-middle class child among a lot of income inequality.
I hardly noticed. I had the beaches in summer, and woods and ponds full of turtles and frogs in the spring and autumn. In the winter there were hills to sleigh ride and ice for skating. While other parents gave their children high-end toys and amusements, my parents gave me the Atlantic Ocean. I grew up feeling I got the better deal.
Sometimes I'd bring friends along to the beach for our weekend trips, but honestly it was as much fun if not even more fun without them. I'd dive into the surf and get tumbled about by the big waves, I'd body surf the biggest crests back to shore, and when I was exhausted, I'd go back to the family's blanket-and-umbrella encampment where Mom would have ice-cold lemonade to wash the taste of salt out of my mouth.
Sometimes friends would invite me over to their homes and I'd notice the stark difference in house size. One girl in my class lived in an ultra-modern redwood-framed ranch with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the surrounding woods. Her father was always home playing at a grand piano - it was only later that I realized her Dad was jazz musician Mose Allison. But for all the cool sophistication of their home, I was happy for our humble and loving abode.
I didn't want for any of those things that I saw at my friends' homes. One kid had in his sleek, modern, stainless-steel kitchen about the coolest thing I had ever seen - a soda dispenser, that served Coca-Cola from a fountain instead of the one-liter plastic jug we kept in the fridge at home (and which would always go flat half-way through). I thought the Coke dispenser that always served effervescent, fully carbonated soda was just about the greatest thing one could ever have in their kitchen, but it never even occurred to me that we should also have one in our home. Humble as it may have been, our house was full of love and light, and was our launch pad for trips to the beach, to the woods.
Our television was black and white with rabbit-ear antennae on top. Other kids had wall-mounted color t.v.'s. I liked watching my friends' big color t.v.'s, but was content to sit on the floor in front of our b&w screen when I got back home. The father of one of my best friends built a large, above-ground swimming pool with an even larger deck around it in their back yard. I loved going over there and playing in the pool, but didn't feel that I had to have one in my own back yard.
Today, I live as an urban monk in the upscale Buckhead section of Atlanta. I have a small, humble house, my pile of bricks on a hill, among larger, considerably pricier houses. My car is 15 years old but still drives fine, while my neighbors all drive around in recent-model BMWs, Mercedes, and other high-end vehicles. My furniture is comfy but shabby and no one would ever think that I had hired an interior designer for my home.
But what need have I for this, what need have I for that? A cat keeps me company, I have my walks and hikes, and I have my own private zendo for sitting. I have a high-speed internet connection and access to books. I'm an urban monk, happy to spend my latter years in quiet contemplation and placid solitude, enjoying the entertainment of music, literature, cinema, video games, and sports between my daily meditation (zazen) and walks (kinhin).
And for this gracious acceptance of things as they are, in fact this peaceful enjoyment of things as they are, I should thank my Mom and Dad.
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