the crooked path of motherhood

Karen Maezen Miller recently sent me her new book, Momma Zen: Walking the Crooked Path of Motherhood. It is so exceptionally good, so well-written and insightful, that I told my friend Elizabeth on her birthday that I'd give it to her for her birthday -- after I finished it. (Actually I just ordered another copy.) It so captures the Buddhist training that you can find in motherhood if you can only -- a huge only -- be patient enough to see it: how children constantly yank you, so often unwillingly on your part, into the present, how in "disciplining" them you must first discipline yourself, and just how hard that is. I took the book on a chaotic family trip to LA last weekend (Disneyland -- Never Again!)and it was a wonderful antidote....

In other news, here's the site for the NY Times op-ed I wrote last Saturday. It will be posted here and on www.katherineellison.com as soon as I can figure out a way to do that...