Bob's Buddha sits serenely in the center of our mantle, as he has for over a decade, enlightened in his lotus position. I don't know if he's our god or our altar. Through the years, his lap has held rose petals, pennies and pebbles; his head has been crowned with vines, flowers, Santa Claus caps and bunny ears, his neck draped with beads, feathers, and twigs, and his face disguised in sunglasses and Halloween masks. He's endured all these alterations calmly, as a good Buddha should.
Right now he's wearing a sort of woven toga, which is really a piece of shredded tree bark that we found on the path by Lake Merritt. Bob has draped a bough from our monster parsley bush over his head: Buddha as a Roman consul on his triumphal march into the city of Spring? I hope he prevails. So far Spring has not been conquered. Today it rained even harder than before. It was daunting.
Bob ran out in the yard in the cold and wet, returning with the parsley branch grasped in his fist as he laughed maniacally: his gesture of triumph against the forces of evil (those being boredom and frustration at the never-ending rain.) I, too, struck a small blow against the rain by taking my Winter collage down from the wall and replacing it with Spring.
We pray that our domestic rituals may subdue the wet wild weather: rain dances in reverse.
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