My wife and son are set to come home tomorrow. Not 100% confirmed, but the last problem is now fine apparently.
It will have been a total of five weeks at a hospital.
The realization that I could’ve spent the time I had alone better becomes apparent now. It was already apparent, but now I have a very busy day today (in the office for the most part), and then tomorrow too. All that emotional wah wah things are tough really got in the way.
Feelings and love for my wife and child were super strong in the last month, and I’m sure they’ll stay strong, but now coupled with a potentially constantly crying baby, a postpartum wife who may be quick to snap, and a (hopefully not too much) bewildered me.
As my company’s HR, it came the week I need to calculate everyone’s raises, bonuses and confirm the amount of residence tax everyone needs to pay, so I will be doing a little working from home, but only the bare minimum.
So it is go time. This is not a test. Time to shine.
In British Columbia, where I’m from, you are able to get a license from age 16. Most of my friends did, but I never did.
Around 17 or 18, I did get a Learner’s Permit, but I had a huge mental block about driving. Like with other things (that were equally silly), I thought it was too late for me, and the buses and SkyTrains were good anyways, and hey, maybe something about the environment too? I never got my license, and then at 21 I moved to Japan, where the trains were even better.
However, in my first marriage when I lived in Chiba, I constantly relied on my wife to drive us everywhere. I just took this for granted. Sometimes she got frustrated about it, and I was sorry, but it’s not like I could afford going to driving school, or that an English one was nearby. If I was better with money I could have though. When I look back at my mistakes in this marriage, not having a license was definitely one of them.
However, despite it not really being on my mind for most of the duration of our marriage, once we separated, one of the first things I did was spend a lot of money to get a Japanese driver’s license. I was comfortable enough to do it in Japanese this time, and I even did it so I could drive manual transmission (do we say standard? I’m never sure). The driving part at the driving school was easy, which is another story for sure, and the driving test at the driving center I failed 3 times I believe. I refused to take it in English, because I’m stubborn like that sometimes. I suppose this is also another story.
After that, I drove around a few times in the first year. I even used the highway once! However, I then became a paper driver for 5 or 6 years. If that’s a Japanese expression, it means that I had a license to drive, but I did not feel confident or that I had the actual ability to do so.
Once my wife was pregnant, we decided that it would be good to have a car. I decided to practice driving with my brother-in-law, and sometimes alone. I panicked quite a bit driving alone, as sometimes I just didn’t know what I was supposed to do, and was worried that I was being a nuisance to those around me.
The most stressful part was my small driveway on my small road. The road is three meters wide. To open my door in the driveway, I need to be about 15cm from the left side of the driveway. Furthermore, there is a telephone pole just ahead of the left side of the driveway, meaning I need to come in at an angle.
I went online and found a guy. I paid him 15,000 yen, and we drove around my block five or six times and went over how to best park.
The reason I took this step is because when I winged getting out of my parking spot with a car share car, I scraped the side of my house. I was so focused on not hitting the pole, I didn’t notice I hit my house on the other side, and when I did, I panicked more and kept driving a little. The guy told me how silly and stupid this all was, and was very convincing about this.
I now have specific ways I get in and out of my driveway. Getting in sometimes is still hard, because it feels like I’m driving diagonally into the wall, and my car beeps away. It works though.
The actual thing I wanted to bring up, or perhaps complain about and say woe is me a little about, is that our new car arrived a week before my wife went into labor. I was still super nervous about driving, but there really wasn’t any time for that. We drove to the hospital. I stayed as late as I could. I drove home on dark unfamiliar roads. I did it again. My wife moved to a different hospital. The drive became an hour each way. I sometimes took the train, and I sometimes drove.
I had expected I would get used to driving with my wife in the car, and us doing fun little short drives. However, I got used to it with the great uncertainty of what was happening with my wife instead.
One incredibly silly part of me had a huge mental block on getting gas for the first time. I had never gotten gas, and the idea for whatever reason frightened me. In the end, I called a local friend, and we got gas together. I made a million mistakes doing it, but someone was there, so it was fine. Now I can get gas a million times and will never have any mental block about it.
So now I can drive, after not being able to drive really for the last 25 years. Better late than never. I got over all those weird mental obstacles in my head. I still have a few regarding driving though really. I need to drive on the highway again. I always rely on my navi for everything. Parking close to cars makes me a little nervous. However, I will get over all these silly things, as I have gotten over past silly things.
And compared to my wife’s health and the birth of my son, none of it seems that important really
We didn’t have our hopes up yesterday, but there was a good chance we felt that my wife would have the all clear to leave the hospital.
She ultimately didn’t.
We ultimately did have our hopes up a little.
However, we rebounded back faster than in the past. There’s one final thing to overcome. It’s being more stubborn than it is for most people, but the doctor is trying his best, and she is safe in a hospital. She can hand over the baby to the nurses and get a good night’s sleep. We have done this for four weeks, we can do this a little longer.
When there hopefully is an end to this, I will read what I have wrote here about my wife’s hospital stay with interest.
Adulting is someone everyone does, but whenever I do it, I get the urge to climb onto rooftops and be like, “See! I’m an adult too!”
I have a guy coming by tomorrow to look at our floor and see if we can do some glass coating to make it look nicer and easier to wipe up messes. We should have done it when we bought the house five years ago, but better late than never. (Please note guy is gender neutral.)
Two other guys are coming to clean our washing machine, and to clean our “range hood” above our stove. The washing machine may be fine, but when I finally opened the filter things in it, and saw with shock and horror what I should be have been doing regularly, I thought it would be good to have a professional clean where it is known needs to be cleaned. One is on Saturday, and the other is next week. We should probably eventually buy a drum-style washing machine. I think that’s what people with kids do.
I forgot to take my new car in for its one month checkup last week. I didn’t exactly forget, but I didn’t go. So it’s now this week on Friday. The parking is a bit tight apparently. That gives this inexperienced driver anxiety.
Our property tax came for the year this month. With money I would usually put into savings, I’m going to just pay it all off. I didn’t do that last year, and I was then late on two payments due to being forgetful. I wonder if I wanted to naturalize if that would play a part in it all.
I got a small car loan for some reason (I thought I could get a better deal then, but I think I was likely misinformed), and that car loan couldn’t be taken out of my main savings bank account for some reason. Prestia isn’t liked I guess. When setting it up, I also had my regular SMBC bank card with me, so I set it up to be taken from there. I never use the card, so I want to put a bunch of money in there so I can forget about the loan for a few months.
I’ve received my son’s health insurance card, MyNumber card, and that paper from the city that states they will pay the remaining 30% of fees. (A translator would have a good name for it.) I’ll pay hospital bills today. I’m not sure what in hospital stays is not included in health insurance, but we will find out today.
“Studying Japanese” is something that can feel omnipresent as a foreigner living in Japan. I would think no matter how fluent you become, this does not really change.
I haven’t studied Japanese in many years. I play video games in Japanese. I talk to my wife in Japanese. As part of my job in HR, I talk to many external vendors and government offices in Japanese. However, I don’t really study Japanese.
Since I changed from working at a Japanese university to working as a foreign company, I have been using Japanese a lot less, but a lot more externally. However, as the only HR person in my company, for whatever reason I have been a lot less shy about my lack of natural fluency. When I worked in a Japanese university, most people’s Japanese was really quite mindful and well constructed. I don’t really find that is the case in my current situation.
What I am trying to say is that I use Japanese a lot in daily life, but I haven’t really been studying it, or trying to improve it. There are chances that what I am doing that works is incorrect, and everyone around me just gets used to it. Sometimes when I speak with people I haven’t met before about complex topics, they have a hard time understanding me. I of course blame them for their blatant racism and oppression of me, but perhaps if you’re not used to how I speak Japanese, then I am very hard to understand?
I got up early this morning, and instead of being mindless on the old phone, I decided to turn on the TV. (Amazing to be in a world where turning on the TV is seen as the non-mindless action!)
They were analyzing poems and tanka, which my dictionary tells me is a 31-mora Japanese poem. (I didn’t look up mora).
In this non-business world, where people are playing with language for the expression of something in the soul, as opposed to the functioning of administration or accumulation of capital, language (perhaps obviously) becomes very different.
It makes me think about all the shortcomings of my Japanese, and how having better Japanese can enrich my life so much. Not just in this poetic sense, but this obvious shortcoming allows me to understand more the shortcomings in talking with my wife, my Japanese at work, and in other instances where it is “good enough for a foreigner” for sure, but let’s not shit ourselves, more fulfillment and meaning can be had.
(Note for my longtime readers: my wife appears to be getting better all around, which is allowing thoughts to spill out of me.)
When reading Narnia to my unborn son (who is now born), there was one concept in particular that has really made an impression on me, and that I think about every day.
The magician himself (the selfish uncle) in The Magician’s Nephew could not hear the animals speaking in land of Narnia. This is because when we first heard them speaking, he assumed it was absolutely preposterous, and that there was no way an animal could possibly speak. Then, from there, slowly, it turned from refusing to believe that they could speak, to not actually being able to physically hear them speaking at all, and only being able to hear growls from them.
I believe the intended message here is about God and the religious world, and being unable to hear God anymore if you have refused to believe anything you see or hear has to do with him. (Excuse the small h, it is what I am comfortable with.)
However, it doesn’t have to just be about God, and I think it can be a general statement about being caught up in a way of thinking that other phenomena get ignored. To get all Kuhnian, it would be ignoring what our paradigm considers anomalies. (After writing this though, I am not sure how similar these two ideas are though, and I will be sticking with the Narnia one when in doubt.)
Anyways, regardless if it is about science or religion, the concept that there are things that make us physically unable to see or hear the Truth (excuse the big T) is something that I have been thinking about a lot.
I group it all under alienation, but I am not sure if this is Correct.
For example, alienation from reality due to not seeing the trees and the sky and the concrete outside your window, but only short form videos on your phone.
Or alienation from history and humanity due to have experienced so much fiction that history and humanity do not feel any heavier than any other story.
The idea from Narnia is that this isn’t a matter of just needing to look up from your phone, or from your TV show or video game, the idea is that even when you look up, you are no longer physically able to see the Truth.
As an aside dear Reader, I have alluded to it, but I am more comfortable with Truth than I am with God. Feel free to judge on that what you will.
I mention phones and TV shows, but it can be painted with a very wide brush by just saying “modern society” (too wide?). Are there Truths that modern society has influenced us into not being able to see? Is this why we go hiking and camping?
A sticking point in all this is that it is saying that there are some things that humans can consider as the Truth if unimpeded. A more Materialist (as in only the material world exists, not consumerist) approach would be there is only a combination of instinctual nature, and learned nurture. This approach is more comfortable for me, and it paints any human predisposed notions of Truth as perhaps a cognitive mix of instincts and societal norms.
This is where I always bring up Robert Pirsig’s Lila in my head, but I am not ready to go there yet, so I will leave these thoughts unfinished for now.
There were multiple things wrong with my wife after birth, and now there is only one left. This gives it the sounding of “getting better”, but it is still uncertain why this one thing is not getting better, and while we have various treatment options, they come with consequences (the main alternative means she cannot breastfeed).
I am in a good space, until I see my wife succumbing to the stress of it all, and then I become a bit of a wreck. In those instances, I don’t show that to my wife, as really, my only role in those situations is to be her rock (which I hope I am doing an okay job of), but call it codependency or whatever, but it takes an emotional toll on me.
The hospital has been great. My wife voices concerns of us not having enough time with our son, and they are bending all the rules for us. My son can now spend all day with my wife in her room. This sort of thing is normal in a maternity hospital, but not a university hospital that is primarily looking after babies who were born way too early. Nurses are okay with this on varying degrees, and it is a little frustrating when the nurse you deal with isn’t privy to the situation.
The change of our lives with my wife’s pregnancy was a gradual one (for me at least). She could not drink alcohol right away, and had morning sickness among other things, but stayed a home, continued to work, and we continued to live a modified version of our lives.
With the birth, and the subsequent (at least) monthlong hospital stay, it has been a less gradual change. My wife has changed in phenomenal ways. For me, the initial change of being on autopilot has subsided, and I am living like a bachelor with fluctuating degrees of hope. I don’t clean up messes right away. I haven’t jogged in a while. I try to focus on work. This didn’t work well one day when my wife was having a tough time, and now I’m thinking of working half days every day.
I drove to the hospital yesterday for the first time in over a week, and it did take some getting used to again. I still have hangups when driving. I prefer to park not close to other cars. I can get flustered if I’m going somewhere for the first time. I am hyper aware of the cars around me, and wonder if they think I’m going too slow, or am doing something else strange.
There is still uncertainty, and there are still some painful feelings, but when I am with my wife and son, there is only joy, and it is a joy I have never felt before.
I am here to support my wife and love my son. I wish I could focus more on my mental wellbeing. As I have mentioned before, this is beneficial to all involved, but it is hard to do.
I hope my wife can continue to breastfeed and her final issue will go away soon.
The other day my wife’s doctor was talking about situations for leaving the hospital, and unfortunately it looks like two requirements aren’t met.
My wife told me this as we were in the baby room looking after our son, in a very calming soothing voice so as not to disturb him.
I’m sure all new fathers feel this way, but I just could not believe how she transformed into this amazing, mature mother. Calmly telling me what was happening while giving our son all the love and attention he needs, as well as all the milk and diaper changes that he needs. (I am now trained and ready to give milk and change diapers on my visits.)
She is with our son for many hours a day, and I have only been really able to visit once a week for about an hour or so at a time, so her connection is obviously much stronger, but her behavior truly inspired me calm down and just do what needs to be done in the situation. (In the old fashioned times, we may have said “be a man”.)
I will be working a full week next week, and will be focusing on work as much as it requires. I’ve been taking some time off, but if my wife is still in the hospital with our son, I need to focus on what gives us the ability to have a good life, and ensure that I do a very good job of it. The more vacation days I use now, the less I can use when my wife and son are back at home. I must provide.
My rush to have our house clean was good, but there is no longer a rush, and I need to figure out how to fundamentally make our house clean and a good place for a baby. Floor coating is 5 years too late, but still a good idea. We have rooms that haven’t been properly organized ever, and this is the time that it can be done.
Lastly, I need to stop with the Uber Eats comfort food. This is the perfect time to increase the amount of savings we can do each month.
The time for hyper focusing on emotions and all that feels like it is over, and further processing should be done through constructive actions that lead to making our lives better.
My wife is getting better, but things can always get worse again.
Things getting better doesn’t mean everything is getting better, or everything will get better enough to come home anytime soon. We don’t know.
However, things are getting better.
With such uncertainty, the normalcy created is a one day at a time normalcy.
My favorite part of the day is seeing my wife. When we text back and forth, I don’t ask her for updates on her health or all these things, but keep the conversation about lighter things. When we meet, we can discuss all those details face to face as we hold hands and enjoy each other’s company.
I’ve went back to work, and that keeps my mind out of negative thoughts, which is great, and also people have been very kind to me. At first I was worried about having lots of questions about if my wife is okay, and while that is kind of the people, it is tiring to have to say something. The trick is to just from the very beginning give people no need to worry.
“My wife needs to be in the hospital a little while longer, and so I’ll work in the meantime. Nothing to worry about.”
Finished. This sort of thing happens all the time.
When you’re less emotionally invested, it’s easy to think that, and when hindsight proves you right, you can subconsciously go “just as I thought”. Nice and neat.
And when things didn’t happen as you planned, and something unfortunate happens, you can go “oh wow, I really didn’t expect that”. Then you can continue about your day, and maybe even add a minute or two of solemn reflection on life.
I am emotionally invested though, and so I need to take things one day at a time, and enjoy the time with my wife
As we take it one day at a time, we wait for the doctors to be able to say “we think you’ll be able to go home at this time.”
We no longer ask though, because if things are unsure, what can they really say? “We need to wait and see”. We are currently waiting and seeing. We understand this.
I can’t see my son so much, but my wife goes to him 5 or 6 times a day for an hour long each time. They are forming a great bond. She also gets to sleep a full night each night, which is lucky. Things aren’t all bad.
Hoping for the best.
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To end on a tangent, and something more infused with the pure kindness of people: while many people in my office congratulated me on the birth of my son (and on my haircut, I have cut off 30cm of hair), one colleague felt is absolutely necessary that he shake my hand, and he had the most pure happy smile on his face when he did it. He was just so incredibly happy for me. I could be jealous at how nice of a person he is.
