I. The keys

After reading and researching "how-to" parent while pregnant with my son three years ago and then revisiting some literature when pregnant with my daughter—I realized what parenting really is: navigating between doing the opposite of what was done to you and doing what was done to you anyway. On the old map of how-to parent in the seventies, children are byproducts of failed relationships while parents chart new territory and develop the new them. On my map, these old roads lead nowhere. I am as developed as a planned city, but I don't know quite how to get there.

II. Points of Interest

Someone somewhere did a study that found that children between the ages of 0-5 years old need to have the opportunity for both social encounters and preschool—otherwise instead of floundering in college not knowing what to do with their lives and smoking too much pot and making whores of themselves, they'll do it as high school drop outs—at which point their only economic recourse will be to become drug dealers or real estate agents.

In Buddhism, once you have obtained the knowledge of a wrong, then you are obligated to attempt to heal or fix that wrong. Prior to my finding Buddhism, I was raised Catholic. And prior to that Catholic/Atheist. So, either way, as a parent, I'm screwed.

My children are three years old and sixteen months. If I don't take them to playgroups, enroll them in preschool and read to them before bedtime, I am learning that I will seriously fuck them up for life. Raising children is kind of like playing with a chemistry set without reading the instruction manuals or wearing the safety goggles. The older my children get and the more exposure I get to other parents, the more I am convinced that none of us should be having children.

I think of all the things that my husband and I screw up daily with the kids. Not wanting to hear our son whine, we often appease him to get him to shut up. We've taught them to eat the way we do—random grazing through the kitchen. My husband and I have neglected to invent or use 'nice' words for bodily functions. There's no going to the potty in our house. We poop. We pee. That's it. We don't give time-outs because I can't do it with a straight face —and anyway Buddhist parenting books specifically state that one should not get their child thinking that being alone in solitude is somehow a punishment. It ruins meditation later.

My son wallops his little sister. I yell No. Don't hit your sister. What the hell are you thinking, Diego? Do it again and you die. So much for non-violent responses.

Now, from my playgroup experience (playgroups are these state-sanctioned get-togethers where children ignore each other, push each other into carpet, or steal toys from one another so that they might one day have protected sex in Ivy League dorms), I know my responses are not acceptable. If I were a good mother, I would say:

"Now sweetie, don't put your sister in a headlock." Or perhaps I could say, "I'm going to count to ten and if you are still grinding her face into the carpet, I'm going to be angry at you, honey." "Oh look! You took off your diaper and are using number two to finger paint! How creative, dear."

My husband and I have also not curtailed our use of slang. Amongst our circle of quasi-vegetarian health nutty friends back home, the word 'crack' or 'on crack' means that you are watching too much TV, drinking too much coffee, or any number of non-illegal bad habits. One day, I expect to hear from social services as I am sure they will over hear Diego saying his mother was on crack all night long, and I will be left to explain that my son meant that I spent five hours on eBay.

III. The Moral Compass

I hate the way other mothers dress like, well, mothers.

My children are not allowed to play with Barbies or Bratz, toys that talk to them, toy guns or anything military. They cannot watch Barney, Wiggles, or Disney films made during Michael Eisner's reign of terror. No name brands can advertise across their little chests. No video games unless they were once on Atari. No gratuitous gun violence or movies with Tom Hanks (Pixar films are the only exception), Mel Gibson, or Steven Spielberg associated with them. No acting like an asshole.

They may read anything they want to. We don't have a working TV.

They can play with any art supply, any part of their bodies, destroy their toys, eat off the floor, use the eMac, watch Sesame Street, Miyazaki films, listen to alternative country, old school punk, electronica, folk, blues, classical, jazz. They both love Johnny Cash and trains.

IV. Finding Coordinates: Good Locations in Bad Upbringings

I am an illegitimate child. My father was off finding himself in the desert. My mother worked days and nights and when she wasn't doing that, she worked on her depression. I had the obligatory wicked stepfather. We moved around. My mother tried to find herself, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt that said hey, your mom is a lesbian.

I was dropped off at grandma's house for years on end.

I grew up hating football players, Norman Rockwell paintings, cheerleaders, and kids who listened to Top-40 radio. Eventually my parent's coordinates remained stationary. They are now found on any number of maps. I circumnavigated alone.

But for all the wanderings, I kind of like who I became. Where would I be without my loneliness? Where would I be without my stepfather's abusive words? Where would I be if I had to rely on these people? So, if I can retrieve that bit of logic class from college, if a then b, this means that without my fucked up childhood in the seventies, I wouldn't be—me?

And by extension, in order to be hip and groovy, to be the real honest-to-goodness artist, you've got to live in the cardboard box Basquiat-style or your art might very well be emotionless drivel. By staying home with my children, by being married in a committed relationship, by owning my own damn home, have I just doomed by children to pink cotton sweaters and pancake breakfasts? Will they become Mormons? Republicans? Listeners of commercial radio? Will Diego and Paloma get my sense of humor? This is what keeps me up at night. Teen pregnancy? Nope, I'll get Paloma on the pill at twelve if I have to. Drug use? I'll take them to visit some of our friends—shining examples of why to just say no. Hey Diego, you know why your uncle is still working a teenager's job at fifty? It's the pot. But how to stay out of the mainstream and be on, as Tennessee Williams put it in his intro to Carson McCuller's Reflections in a Golden Eye, "that other plane of existence?" Will they know how to do that?!

There is no roadmap for this kind of peace. There is no surefire way to get here. Art is the restaurant in the alleyway that's not in the guidebook but it's the best place you've ever been. And a lousy navigator like me will stumble upon it over and over again without knowing any directions at all. But will our children find this place too? Will the McDonald's manufactured in front of the alleyway block their vision?

V. Symbols Wait. Did I just make a circle? Am I back to where I started? Oh my god, the new me with children and husband is well, the old me. Only fatter. With more gray hair. Less drinking. Less sex. Less sleep. More making dinners at home. More laughter. Less—loneliness. And a mortgage.

Epilogue Before you call social services out to my house to cart the kids away, please note that we did get the children baptized. We found four people on the planet: a communist family man, a depressed singer/songwriter, a witch/painter/faghag (in case my son might need her services later), and rabid mainstream materialist (to make sure someone gives my kids the presents that the other kids have) and made them swear that they would provide balance for our children.

In the ceremony we created I said the following:

And may they know peace.

We lit candles. We lit incense. We said our prayers like the big churches do. We chanted. We walked down the street from the communist lawyer's house to a giant Greek food feast and belly dancing. Hopefully, somewhere in the universe, our words and deeds are falling into place, becoming longitude and latitude. Becoming the precise coordinates that will keep our children from getting any more lost than we've been.

Margaret Garcia-Couoh is part of the San Francisco diaspora now living in exile in the northeastern corner of the Sierra Mountains with her husband Julian and children Diego, 3, Paloma, 16 months. She does not advise having children less than two years apart. She is a work-at-home/stay-at-home mother who looks forward to kindergarten.