It is May 8, 2010,* the day before Mother’s Day, and I am in Takamori, Japan, with my one-year-old son’s hand in mine, carefully climbing the stone steps to the gate of my husband’s teacher’s temple.

We are here to celebrate Hanamatsuri, or the “Festival of Flowers”—otherwise known as the Buddha’s Birthday.

As we enter the garden, I see that the sliding doors encircling the main building are open to fresh countryside air. A number of families have already settled on their cushions around a statue of the baby Buddha standing beneath a flower-covered canopy.

Soon, the children will be invited to pour sweet tea brewed from the leaves of hydrangea over the likeness, bathing it as tenderly as a real newborn. In this way, the boys and girls are encouraged—briefly—to step into the parental role, an exercise in compassion and generosity. […]