When Destiny Came Calling (緣起) Translator: An-Da

 

When Destiny Came Calling   (緣起)       Translator: An-Da

I met him by chance. Eight years of love drew me closer and closer to the altar and reception hall, but with rationality and courage locked in a tug-of-war all along the way.

Back then he was merely a low-paid teaching assistant at the university.  After marrying we lived in the faculty dormitory.  The two-story flat-roofed building was made of red brick, bordering a thicket of jade-toned bamboo, with a shallow brook trickling by the feet of the bamboo clusters.  We lived on the second floor.  Because the family downstairs enjoyed gardening, the backyard of our home was thick with lush vegetation, bringing me deep joy.  A grapevine grew on the corner of the building. Its slender vines and green leaves wove a cover for the frame of our north-facing window. Outside this window I hung a small wind chime on the eave beneath the roof. Every morning at the first glimmer of dawn, the grape vines and leaves had the appearance of a green wave undulating in reaction to the wind. The wind chimes also rang right on schedule: ding dong, ding dong, the crisp sounds penetrating into the remnants of my dreams that lingered while I had still not fully awoken, giving the young me the mistaken belief that my life would forever have this kind of poetic tenor. The vicissitudes and mundanity of reality would not get near me.

It felt like just a mild cold. With the sense of invulnerability imbued by youth, and aversion to medical fees, without much thought I bought a few packs of a popular brand of over-the-counter cold medicine and voraciously swallowed down the pills.  My condition worsened over the next few days.  I laid in bed with dizziness as if the world were spinning around me.  The smell of food brought an acidic taste to my mouth. I suffered this way for over two weeks.  Unable to bear this any longer, I reluctantly went to the clinic on the main street. The doctor asked about my symptoms and ran some routine tests, then with confidence said "It's not a cold or stomach issue, you should go see an OB-GYN."

I stalled and stalled but eventually dragged myself to the obstetrics hospital. After I endured a series of indignities, the doctor calmly said "You are pregnant." These few simple words struck my worried and anxious heart like a bolt of lightning coming down from clear skies, draining my hands and feet of all warmth.  We had been married for not even three months.  I had not had enough time to adapt to being a wife, and we were still getting used to living together, and now I had to immediately level up to being a mother? More frightening was the stark reality that our paltry savings would not be able to support a child coming so early.

The powers that be endowed my husband with an optimistic and carefree mindset. He is a firm believer that things will always work out in the end. "Every problem has a solution," he not only said often, but also lived his life by that principle. Of course he would invariably not come up with the solution until the very last minute, as if he felt that by solving the problem too early he would not be showing proper respect to the challenge the universe had arranged for him. Those days the competition on the university entrance exams had become extremely intense, and cram schools promising guaranteed success were propagating like rabbits. As a favor for a friend he once filled in to teach a chemistry review short course at one of these schools, and the response from the students was like a standing ovation in a packed theater.

Subsequently the school's general manager practically wore a hole in our home's front porch and wore out his lips trying to recruit my husband. He offered a big raise, special benefits, and more, but my husband paid him no mind. The manager then tried to enlist my help in getting through to my husband. But before I could even try, the man of our house emphatically refused, his head shaking like a pellet drum. His rationale seemed high-minded but also a bit idealistic: first, the cram school was too far away (at that time the poor teaching assistant's only means of transportation was a bicycle); second, he preferred to spend his precious time and energy acquiring knowledge and improving his English, rather than wasting it just to make a buck.

"But what will we do when the baby arrives?" I repeatedly asked him.

He always replied with his usual motto "We will figure it out when that time comes."

The days that followed were a tumultuous nightmare. The unborn child brought me layers upon layers of suffering in a multitude of forms. My tears flowed relentlessly like the cold late-autumn rain. We were so young then, and utterly unprepared psychologically. We were totally unaware that moodiness and fear are very typical during pregnancy. I felt he was inconsiderate, cold, and insensitive.  He thought I was weak and making trouble for no reason.  He said that the women back in his home village would be working in the fields even with a pregnant belly the size of a watermelon, and did not see childbirth as being any big deal. Unlike them I was emotional and fussy to no end.

Every attempt to sleep made me dizzy, and every attempt to eat made me nauseous; I felt like I vomited out nearly my entire stomach and intestines. After vomiting I would cry so hard I practically shredded my intestines. Our vows about "for better or worse" and "til death do us part" were gone with the wind. When I was feeling sorry for myself, I genuinely envied those in arranged marriages. Then when you felt sorry for yourself, at least you had someone else to blame. Your parents would let you complain, and then in turn they could blame the matchmaker and regret arranging the marriage in the first place. After a few more weeks of conflict and misery, we returned to knock on the door of the Ob-Gyn.

"What? You want to abort the pregnancy?" exclaimed the silver-haired doctor in reaction to our request. Pushing up his eyeglasses at the bridge, he looked us up and down. The humiliation from his glare made me forget momentarily that this pregnancy was not out of wedlock. I quickly stuttered out a justification: my husband earns little as a teaching assistant! He is dead set on studying abroad. And despite having a degree from a top university (as if the name of one's alma mater proved one's good character), I am in an unfamiliar place with nobody to rely upon, unable to find a job so far. So we are not financially stable…  " The elderly doctor cut me off by saying, "How about we do this... Write your parents for their input. If they have no objection, then come back and see me."

I summoned the courage to write the letter to my parents, and sent it by express delivery. The letter arrived in the middle of the night. My mother came to me on the first train of the morning. On entering our place, before even sitting down, wagging her finger at my forehead she gave me a good scolding, along with a reprimand from my 78-year-old grandmother

"You are not thinking clearly. You want to abort this pregnancy? By the time I was your age I had already birthed you and two more of your siblings! And have you any idea how long your grandmother has waited to become a great-grandma?" And so it came to pass that we kept the baby.

To allow my husband to focus on preparing for the qualifying exams for studying abroad, I moved back to the home in which I was raised, defying the traditional notion that after marriage a daughter belongs fully to her husband's family (so is a bad investment of her parents' efforts to raise her). My mother accompanied me to the prenatal exam. This very well-respected doctor said to my mother in Japanese: "Your future grandson is large, and your daughter's pelvis in on the smaller side, so the delivery will probably be difficult." I could understand Japanese, and the doctor's assessment shook me to the core. Through the days and nights that followed, the words echoed in my ears: difficult delivery…difficult delivery…  In a nightmare I saw a mangled infant, and myself on the delivery room table as a pallid, ice-cold body on the verge of death. Awoken by this horror, a cold sweat soaking my entire body, with the light of a bleak moon casting long shadows through the window, my feelings of helplessness and misery worsened.

For four days and nights I struggled through the labor pains from the slow contractions spaced five minutes apart that left me unable to sleep or eat. Through this I learned first-hand the meaning of true suffering, of an intensity that pierces through your heart and every bone in your body. Through this I realized that the more accurate term for a birthday should be "Mother's Suffering Day."  After I had expended every ounce of strength but failed to accelerate the contractions, the doctor proceeded with a C-section.  "Shua" went the scalpel cutting through flesh.  (For a long time afterwards I would have flashbacks about this sound, making me relive the moment of sharp pain followed by a tingling sensation through my entire body.) "Keng keng, qiang qiang" went the forceps and metal clamps as they closed. "Xi xi, suo suo" went the delivery table, rattling from the battle of wills between the doctor and the infant boy unable to exit the womb on his own. In my semi-conscious state this collection of ear-piercing sounds transformed into the soundtrack of a scene in which tides violently crashed into a massive rocky cliff on a hazy December day. After a crescendo of pain that hit me like an avalanche, an infant's vigorous cries filled every corner of the room, dissipating all my hallucinations and restoring a stillness, finally bringing this ordeal to a close.

Shadowy images of people flickered in the chaotic delivery room.  My borderline astigmatic eyes could barely make out the blood-soaked doctor, my anxious and exhausted mother, and, standing at my side, my husband with his head dripping with sweat, seeming not to know what know what to do with his hands and feet. The doctor presented to me the blood-covered newborn. While the baby cooed I saw a trickle of blood flowing from a small wound at the outside end of his left eyebrow. The doctor remarked that this cut is where the forceps clamped down. We were monumentally lucky that the spot was a bit slanted, otherwise the baby's left eye would have been crushed. A few years later, when the boy had come to love listening to stories, never tired of asking me to tell him his origin story. On some occasions before the end of the story he would run and grab a hand mirror, then scrutinize and poke at the small scar at the corner of his eye. I had no idea what thoughts were going through that little head of his.

After sleeping slept straight through the evening and night, I was roused awake by the sparkling June morning sun of southern Taiwan and the greenish radiance of the mountain outside the hospital window. A nurse pushed a stroller into the room and towards me. As I brought the child to my bosom, a wave of joy and awe washed over me. I had not realized that the incredible pain of rending apart your flesh to produce a life could lead to such intense happiness. The first time father, leaning in to examine his squirming son, at first stared blankly and looked confused. Then he quickly smiled at the boy, yearning to understand the mystery of the connection between him and this little thing that was just barely taking human form.

The child that 30 years prior we almost did not keep has not only grown up and completed his studies, last year he leveled up to becoming a father himself. His baby girl has a broad forehead, big and sparkling jet-black eyes, fair skin, and a deep dimple on her right cheek.  At first sight I knew I had encountered this cute baby before. Her broad forehead came from my father. The dimple was passed down from my mother's mother to my own mother, a marker now reaching the 5th generation of my family. I finally understood that our children are how our ancestors live on. In this baby girl's sounds, appearance, and smile, in these familiar eyes and facial structure, I could see the circle of life and the threads connecting the generations, bringing the past into the present and keeping the hallmarks of our family in circulation.