“How are you doing?”
It’s a question we often ask without really wanting to know the answer.
We usually want to know what someone has been doing with their time. What exciting updates do they have to share? A promotion?
A vacation? A crazy adventure?
A new TV show to recommend?
To be fair, it’s hard to answer the question of “how are you doing?” if you want to do it right. Our lives are complex, with so many layers to them. And each layer is subject to change, and so is subject to uncertainty.
How am I doing?
It depends on what you want to focus on. And maybe also on what happens next.
No wonder we usually opt for a safe, superficial response like:
“Doing good, man. How bout you?”
And leave it at that.
In a series I wrote for tnocs last year, I tried to convey my personal experience with intercultural exchange in terms of the different layers that made up the experience.
I started with the typical dynamic of someone studying abroad, then moved to longer-lasting relationships with foreign students including my wife. For my closing chapter, I switched to a more painful layer of challenges that had emerged in our relationship over the years.
Because my aim for those entries was to focus on intercultural issues, I had to do some heavy filtering of my recollections, even for that deeper layer. Here I will try to convey yet one more layer of our lives together, one that almost never gets relayed to others when they ask us “How are you doing?”
It’s the layer that concerns our daughter.
Following my return from study in Tokyo in the spring of 2005, the two of us waited long-distance for several months before we could see each other again.
Then she came to study abroad in Philadelphia, and we got to act like a typical couple in love. At least until she had to return home.
During this time together, I was finishing my undergraduate degree, working part time, studying for the GRE, volunteering in a research lab for experience and recommendation letters, and applying for doctoral programs in psychology. She was deep into her undergraduate studies, taking classes in English and learning all about America and Philadelphia.
It was a busy time, full of anxious uncertainty. But it was also the honeymoon phase of our relationship. And that was lovely.
Not long after I accepted an offer to enter Penn State’s grad psychology program, I asked for her hand in marriage. We both agreed to wait for five or more years living apart, until I could sponsor a fiancée visa for her return.
It was a painful, crazy, and resolutely romantic decision to make.
I imagined the two of us telling this romantic story to others later in our lives, how we finally came together. And that image helped me actually endure those years apart.
What I did not imagine is that, shortly after leaving the US, my wife would let me know that she was pregnant with my child.
We had indeed been acting like typical young adults in love during our time together in Philly.
Including not always being careful with protection during sex. Just a few seconds worth of negligence, and our lives were ultimately changed forever.
Even so, we both agreed on one thing: that we were not ready to be parents at this early juncture. She had just left the US for Japan. I was finishing things up at my part-time job and was preparing to move to central Pennsylvania for five or more years in graduate school.
Our adult lives were just starting to take shape. How could we raise a child in such a state?
We didn’t want to push our resentments onto our child, like her parents had done to her. We wanted more stability, more time to prepare for such a heavy undertaking.
We agreed that getting an abortion was the best option to take. It made sense then, and it still does now.
But the best option was not by any means a good one.
We decided to go through with it.
To do so, we needed money. And we needed official written consent from both parents to permit the procedure, per Japanese law.
Having very little of my own money, I had to borrow a few hundred dollars from my brother and from a friend. In order to pay them back, I stayed on my part-time job for a little longer.
I worked ad hoc at Tower Records as well, as many hours as my old boss would give me.
I received the permission form in the mail from Japan, and I put my signature and thumbprint on the document to affirm my consent to the abortion. I sent the form and the money to Japan as soon as I could.
We also arranged for me to visit her in Japan right before I would leave for Penn State. There was no time to be there for the procedure itself, but I at least wanted to be there afterward. If only for a few days.
Whatever I could do to support my fiancée during this crisis, I did it. But what I could do was not nearly enough.
I was stuck halfway across the world from the problem at hand.
And so I took in what was reported to me after the fact, either by email or by Skype.
I could only wait, and hope for the best.
My fiancée emerged from the procedure physically fine, which was a blessing.
But that’s where the blessings had ended.
For starters, it turns out that she had gone to the clinic alone. She didn’t dare ask her family or even friends, for fear of what they might think. Abortion is legal in Japan, but people don’t talk about such matters with others. There is a heavy threat of judgment and shame for going against the natural order of things.
She got a taste of that shame from the doctor and the nurses at the clinic.
It’s required for women who want abortions to view the ultrasound of their developing baby before going through with it. She had to gaze at a blurry image of the life growing inside of her. A girl, she felt in her heart. And then she had to affirm that she wanted to terminate that life. The doctor looked at her with disgust, but started to prepare for the procedure. The nurses too looked at her with some mixture of pity and contempt as they readied her for the operation.
She went there all alone. She was browbeaten by her caretakers. She was violated, physically and mentally. She endured it all alone. And then she had to take a bus and a train back to her parents’ house. Groggy, grieving, ashamed, in pain.
And all alone.
Even now, almost twenty years later, my wife is haunted by that day.
Any show or film with an OBGYN clinic that looks a certain way will trigger stress memories of the procedure.
She still lives with the grief and the guilt of the abortion, of the life that we opted to have taken from her.
And the fact that I was not there when she had to endure that nightmarish experience still haunts me. At a time when help was most crucial for her, I could not be there. I had never felt more helpless, and useless. And, in my own way, all alone.
I was able to visit her in Japan a few months later, and we went to a shrine together as some sort of ceremony for our deceased child. But there was no real closure. There wasn’t even much disclosure. It was all too raw.
Instead, we looked ahead to the future. We committed ourselves to our five-year plan for graduate school and a fiancée visa. And we intended to honor our daughter’s memory by raising a family when the time was right. That seemed to be enough.
Little did we know, the right time would be a long time coming.
My career in research required extensive training and development before I could settle down and start saving money.
I started undergraduate courses in 2001 and I got my first steady position in 2016, nearly fifteen years later. An awful long time to be in professional limbo.
And throughout my time moving around as a postdoctoral fellow, my newly immigrated wife had to come along for the ride.
She had to sacrifice her own career dreams for a while, until we settled in Virginia.
Then it took some time for her to assimilate into the culture and to find a job that was right for her.
If we could have continued living in Montreal after my postdoc there had ended, we likely would have tried for a baby sooner. But alas, we settled into one of the priciest areas in the US, where daycare is another month’s rent. For all of those reasons, it took many years for us to actually feel stable.
Still, despite our cautious dispositions and our special circumstances, we built up enough stability in our lives to take a chance on the prospect of parenthood.
We were ready to go down that road just a few months ago, in fact. My wife and I promised one another that we would try for a child for one year and see what happened. Whatever would be, would be.
We promised that we would try…so long as Donald Trump didn’t win the election, of course.
Well, we all know how that turned out.
How am I doing now, you ask?
Not great, to be honest.
I’m sure plenty of people still skate by with B.S. non-answers to that question even now, but it’s a lot harder to do so when you live so close to the lion’s den.
My work is now chaotic, and often demoralizing.
Additionally, like many other federal workers, my team has been deemed eligible to be converted into a fire-at-will political appointment.
We have filed for an exemption for solid reasons, but there is little faith that the administration actually cares about solid reasoning when it contradicts their will to power. We’ll see how it goes.
My wife works as an advisor for international students, so her job is full of new stressors and outrages as well.
Our visits to neighboring DC get more and more unnerving as the display of fascist occupation grows more and more blatant.
We’re trying to be positive despite it all, but things feel really bleak. And stressful to boot.
How is my wife doing?
She is trying to come to terms with the fact that she may never have a child.
She is fast approaching 40, when childbirth and development start to grow more difficult with age. Given my job situation and the chaos elsewhere—not to mention this administration’s cruel disregard for maternal health—we won’t be trying for a child any time soon.
But to never really try, to risk missing a biological deadline…that would be a major loss. Especially given our earlier choice with respect to our daughter.
My wife wants to right the scales somehow.
To balance out our decision to cut parenthood short with an earnest effort to have a baby now that we’re ready. At least try for one. But now she has to try to live with the possibility that it might not happen for her.
I don’t have to think about my own fertility, because men don’t have the same concerns that women do. I’ve never had a raging urge to have a child dominate my thoughts, as many women do.
And as horrified as I was to hear about my wife’s experience at the clinic years back:
I never had to live that experience.
She had to live it, and she has had to live with it for all these years.
“My body, my choice” is said to empower women, but sometimes it feels like a curse. Whatever choice is made, most of the weight of it falls on them.
How are we doing?
We’re doing as well as we can.
- We’re taking things day by day.
- We’re both seeing counselors to help process everything.
- We’re trying to be honest about the pain we’re feeling.
Not just from some new life chaos, but also the pain that stems from years past.
As for children, we will have to see what happens. We need to be realistic given our circumstances, but we shouldn’t needlessly give up hope either. Adoption may be another option to consider.
Whatever happens, we’re trying to properly grieve the daughter whose future we decided to cut short. We want to do her memory justice. This entry is one small effort in that respect.
Life is so much more than what can fit into the stories we tell about ourselves. Here is a layer of our lives that seldom gets mentioned, but it colors so much of what we do.
Our country has grown sick from its addiction to easy fictions over reality. Being open and honest about our life trials is one small way to resist that sickness.
And hopefully, by doing so, to eventually heal.
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