I emerge from my Platonian cave.

I don't know where to start. I suppose I should take a cue from those loveable Von Trapps. "Let's start at the very beginning/A very good place to start."

...but I've never been one to listen to the advice of nuns. (sidenote: The Herrmann's, our Austrian circus/Lipizzaner family-friends, claim Maria was a MONSTER. Like, awful. Mommy Dearest style...)

My sister and her family (and my mom) are going on a trip to DC this weekend. I have funny DC memories. I've always had oddly clear memories from a very early age, visual and emotional. I remember what my eyes saw and the way that made me feel. I've been told from a developmental standpoint that suggests very early language development, but I don't think I started talking particularly early. I do, however, remember the moment I spoke.

So we go to DC. I'm around 3, although I've never been able to get a firm age from my parents. That's what having stoner parents does for you, I suppose. Details like age are lost in the ether, and I'm left doing the math based on the years Kodak printed on the back of pictures.

I don't remember things chronologically. But in no particular order:

• We walked through the cherry trees, which were in bloom. My older sister (at that point, my only sister) was skipping through them, proclaiming how BEAUTIFUL and MAGICAL the blossoms were. I clearly remember thinking "Well, she's being awfully dramatic about this." Not in those words. Just that emotion.
  
• We went to Monticello. I don't know why, but I remember peacocks there. I can't find any evidence of peacocks at Monticello, so perhaps that memory is filed wrong, but my whole family remembers the experience the same way. Never-the-less, whilst standing in front of a male peacock, (which are GIANT birds to a 3 year-old) he suddenly unfurled his tail in front of me. I was in awe. It was a wall of beauty from a bird who simply blinked at me as if saying "Ain't no thing, little girl." I also remember chasing peacocks, which I was yelled at for. I just wanted to hug them! Dumb peacocks, playing hard to get.
  
• We went to the White House. I think I had a picture book about Ling Ling and Hsing Hsing, the pandas that China gave to the US as a show of Cold War good will. The president (Nixon) accepted them, which to my mind made them pets of the White House. So I fully anticipated a dog house on the South Lawn with two pandas rolling around, just waiting for 3 year-old Brooke to arrive to roll around and play with them. My disappointment at finding no pandas was soul-crushing.
  
  Strike one, Reagan.
  
• I also assumed we would meet the President on the tour. Initially, I expected that we'd go to his house, knock on the front door, and I'd ask to play with the pandas while my parents were invited in for a tour. We did not knock on the front door. The president did not answer the door. There were no pandas. Ok, thinks me. Well, they'll end with the president then. I mean, we're in his house. We're his guests. Why wouldn't he just take a minute to say hi? If someone comes to my house and I hide in my room and don't come downstairs to say hello, I am being rude. The president wouldn't be RUDE, would he?
  
  Strike two, Reagan.
• We went to Busch Gardens on the trip. This was exciting because I could not yet swim, but they had a BALL POOL there. Imagine! A pool you can't drown in! A pool that doesn't involve putting your face in the water, which I found VERY SCARY at that point. I had seen the ball pool on commercials, and I knew it would be the highlight of the trip for me. Especially given the White House debacle. When we got to Busch Gardens, we had to stand in line. And there were two nuns in full habits in front of us in line. "Well. That's odd. It'll be funny to see the nuns in the ball pool." See, I just assumed that's what EVERYONE was going for. Not roller coasters; BALL POOL. When we eventually made our way to the ball pool (it took FOREVER) I joyously flew down the slide, expecting to be cushioned by a pillow of balls (TWSS), which I could throw in the air. I would swim across that ball pool like Scrooge McDuck in his money pit. And when I hit the balls...it was not what I expected. First of all, it was 3 feet deep. I expected the ball pool to be over my head. I expected to be buoyed and supported. In actuality, I was just sitting in pit slightly larger then a sandbox with hard balls in it. Yawn. I demanded cotton candy to sooth my wounded soul and called it a day.
  

All-in-all, the trip taught me to not have expectations. Of anything. Ever. I am, and always have been, a dreamer. I'd get yelled at in elementary school for staring out the window and day dreaming instead of listening to the teacher, which taught me to day dream and listen at the same time. That way, when I got yelled at, I could just repeat what she had said most recently word for word, thus making an authority figure look foolish. I learned that the world doesn't live up to the expectations I create for it. I learned to want for nothing, and therefore be endlessly delighted and surprised when the world presents gifts to me.

I still, 30 years later, struggle with this. I study Taoism, and there is a passage which reads "A cup is useful only because of its emptiness." Freeing myself of expectation, I've learned, is the best way to avoid disappointment and pain. In Taoism, you cannot have good without bad. You can't recognize and appreciate joy unless you have experienced pain. You cannot have balance within yourself until you welcome the darkness into yourself with as much enthusiasm as you welcome the light. Because if you only expect happiness, you will be endlessly surprised and disappointed by the sadness which inevitably partners with the happiness. You learn to seek balance, contentment. Not happiness.

My father gave me my first copy of the Tao. When he returned from Vietnam a deeply physically and emotionally wounded 19 year-old, who was initially told he would never walk again, he was given the Tao. I don't remember who gave it to him, I'll have to ask him. But it helped him. There are many passages about war and destruction in the Tao; many passages about letting go. There is a passage about how when a river encounters an obstacle in its path, it learns to flow around the obstacle, and in time, this simple action of non-violence results in the obstacle being worn down. Slowly. Passively. Nearly unintentionally. The Tao is about self-acceptance and being still, without being disconnected.

Buddhism is much more rigid in its teachings, much more about desireless. Taoism isn't a religion, it's a philosophy. In Buddhism, if you don't live a good, honest life according to the teachings of Buddhism, you are reincarnated as a lessor creature. Taoism doesn't have a cause-effect system as a philosophy. It's much more of a "If you're not happy, try this. No worries if you don't, though."

So. I try to be free of expectations. I try to be free of need, of wanting. Of desire. But despite the 30 years of knowing that expectation leads to heart-wrenching disappointment, I still dream. I can't help it. I am hard-wired to drift into revelry.