color me tickled

I guess if you wait long enough or live long enough or something like that, everything comes around again.

Last night, my daughter returned from a book group she belongs to ... people sitting around discussing a book everyone has read. Last night, because the bartender where the discussion was being held recommended it, the group decided to take on some book by Pema Chodron -- maybe "When Things Fall Apart" or maybe "The Wisdom of No Escape: And the Path of Loving-Kindness" ... I can't remember which. Pema Chodron is a Buddhist pooh-bah.

I never brought my three children up to be either Buddhists or "Buddhists." They knew I had a robe, knew I had built the backyard zendo or meditation hall and knew that there were occasional visitors who might come along to sit in the zendo with me on a Sunday morning or, occasionally, other times.

But there was no fuss, no muss and no bother. I think my Buddhist schtick was about on a par with stamp-collecting in their minds ... and that was pretty much the way I liked it. I hoped they would become good people, not good Buddhists, and I was largely rewarded.

But it tickled me that my daughter might run across some aspect of life I had some experience of. Perfectly ordinary, in one sense, and yet somehow tickle-some on the other. An Internet chum once predicted that my daughter "will inherit the robe," but I didn't and don't put much stock in that.

It's enough to get tickled once in a while.