by Jenny Cook-Deters
Boulder, Colo.
We noticed it after a hospital visit—a lump on the side of our newborn’s neck that limited his movement and breath. At three weeks, Benny had been to the hospital half a dozen times for jaundice and checkups on whatever else was causing him pain—day and night he cried, inconsolable. The jaundice had just cleared up when this apparently painful lump appeared. The only quiet we had was while he slept, but it was the quiet I feared the most.
Though my husband, John, was working long hours, he took it upon himself to check on Benny several times a night, in the hope that I would sleep. Often, though, I’d wake in a panic all the same, straining for the sound of Benny’s breath.
My chanting was one of the few things that calmed him down and provided rare moments of quiet that I did not fear, because I knew, with his body pressed against mine, that his breathing was steady. But that made one of us; even in prayer, my mind raced—catastrophizing. John was at a loss. He’d never seen me this way—a new mother, overwhelmed by fear. Not since my teens had I felt so incapable and lost. And for the first time, I questioned whether I could keep the silent promise I’d made my mentor, Ikeda Sensei, years earlier, at 18, in that hospital bed in Indiana.
I’d been in the backseat during the crash—an SUV cut my father off at high speed. In the hospital, I saw my face reflected in a mirrored light, shattered and covered in blood. Actually, I looked the way I’d felt as a teen—hopeless and broken. And yet, perhaps for the first time, I felt appreciative that I was alive. How I’d survive, I didn’t know, but I knew somehow I would. Though you’d have never known by the look of it, for the first time in years, I smiled—inwardly, I smiled—with true appreciation. I didn’t know how or when, but in that moment, I vowed that I would smile again.
In the coming weeks, my mother sat at my bedside chanting, reading and talking to me. I couldn’t talk and so of course couldn’t chant, or even show her how much it meant—but I could feel the fight in her prayer, a fight for my life and recovery. I began chanting in my heart, in rhythm with her daimoku, and a fighting spirit came alive in me. I made a vow in recovery that I would smile in the face of any hardship.
Naturally, then, John had never seen me this way. And yet, the unknown risk to Benny’s health was making him think deeply, too. In fact, he’d been thinking for some time about the future, which seemed, leading up to Benny’s birth, to grow more uncertain. He’d sat down with me in the third trimester and laid out the facts.
Thousands, he said, had been laid off from his company the year prior, with another round slated to impact his direct team that year. There was a lot of uncertainty, but he hoped to take on an entirely different role. He’d mentioned his dream role to a few close colleagues, all of whom advised it was impossible. John didn’t wholly disagree—he just felt strongly that he didn’t have the luxury for an impossible dream. Impossible or not, the time was now, he felt, to make it a reality.
I don’t believe I realized even then the function Benny was serving in our lives. It wasn’t until I took him to a chanting session—his first—at three months old, that I began to grasp something fundamental that my fear had blinded me to.
A woman came out, a member that few had seen in years despite her many years of practice. She’d been practicing privately, apart from the community, for a number of reasons. Throughout the chanting, Benny was fussy, then quiet, then fussy again. Afterward, she turned to me, eyebrows raised.
“Even your baby is challenging himself,” she said, “just to be here, battling this uncomfortable lump! He’s inspired me—I want to challenge myself, too!” She came to the next meeting, and the next, and got back in rhythm with her district. Whenever she saw Benny, she lit up, and I realized that he was reminding her, every time they met, of the very thing of which he’d been reminding me: that Buddhism is about fighting for a breakthrough in one’s life, together with others.
It was John who suggested chanting together, uniting each morning as a family in prayer. As we did, I began to recognize what had been right in front of me all along: Benny has his own mission; it isn’t up to me how he battles to fulfill it. All I could do was determine to support his happiness. Day by day, this capacity grew—my ability to trust in his mission—and slowly, this growing trust drove the fear from my heart.
That spring, the most improbable thing occurred—amid all the layoffs, John glimpsed the “impossible”—an opening for his dream job. To John, the idea that the job could actually be his seemed absurd, but I sensed that he couldn’t help, perhaps in spite of himself, but hope.
At home, Benny’s physical therapy—gentle stretches and massages—were beginning to bear fruit. He was regaining a normal range of motion and regular breath.
In June, I attended the women’s division conference—my first—and came back with a fire in me. I felt this intense awareness of time—how limited it is, how fleeting—and the sense that the time was now—now or never—to take full responsibility for my happiness. Returning home, I went into hyperdrive, upping my daimoku, planting seeds of the Mystic Law, and doing home visits. Everywhere I went, Benny came with.
By this point, John had been called for several rounds of interviews for the potential job, and I sensed in his own prayer a growing confidence. When he told me in July that he’d gotten the call that the job was his, I was overjoyed but honestly, not surprised. And we packed our bags for Boulder. (The dream job meant a move to Colorado!)
In August we moved, determined to make this place our home and place of mission. We settled in amid the whirlwind—amid new work, as new parents, we united wholeheartedly with the district and searched for a home in a trying housing market. But we did it—we purchased our kosen-rufu home (a district home now!) and somewhere in all of this John turned to me and shared that he wanted to become an SGI member. Come the New Year, I accepted district leadership, while John and Benny officially joined the SGI. By this time, Benny’s condition had improved dramatically—he’s become what I can only describe as courageous—a fierce, unstoppable baby, extraordinarily full of life.
What I see now, that I didn’t when our son first arrived, was that he came to us with his own mission, with something to show: that happiness is something we fight for—now, not later—and is found in facing doubts head-on and pulling them up by the root.
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