It's been a strange week. Probably one of the weirdest. I can't really tell this story with email messages, so I'm going to have to revert to the old format and write a proper narrative. Then I'll figure out what to do next.
Where to begin? Last Tuesday, February 22nd, Annette returned from her miserable two-interview trip to Ohio and North Carolina. She came home and went to sleep, feeling ill, drained and exhausted. Wednesday, one week ago, Black Wednesday, dawned foul and rainy. I was scheduled to run hills with C, but decided to postpone the workout until afternoon in the hopes that the weather would clear. We expected that she would receive a call from Bowling Green later that day, offering her a tenure-track position in the history department. I was not pleased about this, as I did not relish the idea of leaving Berlin for the American Midwest.
After lunch, I set off for C's place near the Grunewald, planning to stop enroute for a little bike shopping. Near Yorckstraße I tried to pass another cyclist by changing from the bike path to the sidewalk, but I misjudged the height of the lip between lanes and crashed heavily on my right side. It was a stupid fall. I struggled to my feet, swore most foully, and set off again. Soon I realized that my hip was going need some time to heal, so I called and cancelled the workout and made my way home, not in the best of moods. I soon had good reason to forget about the torn cycling jacket that occupied my thoughts for the remainder of the afternoon.
As I sat around the apartment cursing, Annette left for an errand, then C came over and they ran together, then the three of us had dinner. At eight, Bowling Green called and offered Annette the job. I muttered and said bad words and gave everyone black looks. Shortly afterwards C left for swimming, happy to escape the poisonous climate.
Things were a little more tense than I realized. I was not yet privy to one important piece of information. Here is the exceedingly splenetic message that I wrote the next morning. Perhaps an astute reader can sense what's coming. I am writing around it, avoiding it but following its outline so closely that its shape is faintly discernable. I am angry.
Subject: the worst day in recent memory
Date: Thursday, February 24, 2000 11:44So, my life just took a turn for the worse.
Last night Frau Doktor Frau received an offer from Bowling Green State University, in the eponymous burg, a bustling town of 30,000 in scenic, mountainous northwestern Ohio. Why, it's only half an hour from Toledo! Clearly I have angered the gods. Badly. I may prefer a bullet between the eyes. Oh the hubris, thinking I could coast along, working half-time, enjoying life in one of the coolest cities on the planet. That smug smile is gone from my face. Wiped way the hell off my face.
She has just over a week to decide. Plan A - denial. Plan B - take the goddamn job and suffer. Plan C - desperately figure out a way to stay here a while longer and wait for a job somewhere less gruesome. The problem is, it's not a bad job - good money, 2/2 teaching load (quite rare) and research money. We could probably check out for the summer and go somewhere tolerable.
But suddenly I'm facing a life of featureless prairie, white picket fences, flags, Fourth of July parades, big-box retailers out by the interstate, dopey sincere white breeders rolling around in their shiny new minivans, wing-nut militias and shitty HMO-cabal health insurance. It's a world I want to subvert, smash and destroy, not join.
I suppose this is the price I have to pay for choosing not to have a career, for opting not to take any responsibility over the direction of my own life. I shouldn't be too unhappy, we'd have enough money that I could loaf along more or less indefinitely. One place is as good as the next for riding your bike, reading, watching TV and playing with the cat. Right? Wrong.
Oh well, there's still Charlotte to consider, where the local paper she thoughtfully brought back for me enthused: "Seven North Carolina death row inmates featured in new Benetton ad campaign!" Now that's what I call civic pride.
I am not in a good mood. Not in a good mood at all. I'm looking for a bus to fall under. (As if yesterday wasn't bad enough, I crashed on the bike path - hit a lip between lanes and lost control of the front wheel - and bruised my hip and had to skip training. Shit.)
God I'm in a foul mood. I had it too good here, too easy. And it's all going to end.
Next week I am going to buy the most expensive racing bike I can find. It may well be my last positive, enjoyable life-affirming act.
Oh, the pathos!
Cheerfully,
Scott
Is it not becoming obvious?
Not long after C left, with what appeared to be curiously unseemly haste, Annette smiled weakly and uttered the now-immortal words: "Your day is about to become complete."
Two stripes. Bingo. Positive.
Pregnant.
I began laughing. The timing was exquisite. I really had to admire it. My god is a capricious, whimsical god. I slid down the wall, still laughing. The day really couldn't get any worse, could it? It took a while before I stopped laughing, but fear not, I did.
The following afternoon we went to the doctor and confirmed the diagnosis. About six weeks was the estimate. With her exhausting travel schedule - three transatlantic trips in the last two months - it was easy to mistake certain symptoms, and also to date the Blessed Event. The doctor said that she had time to make a decision, though not too much time given German law, and that she should think about it for a while and come back when she knew what she wanted to do.
So, what happened next? I don't really know how much I should say. On Sunday afternoon we decided to go ahead. Then we made the phone call back to Vancouver, after which we were irrevocably committed.
Maybe I should just let the messages tell the story. Here are some selections from the past few days, beginning Sunday night, edited and re-arranged a little for the sake of clarity:
To friends:
look, I'm dealing, but I'm not ready for "wooooooo hooooooo!!" just yet, okay? please. (yes you can - I'm being sarcastic, amazingly. I thought it would be the first thing to go, but I was wrong, it's still there. thank goodness.)
I'll let Annette fill you in on the details, but the thing is, yes, she's pregnant, and after the worst four days of our life (okay, not the worst, but certainly the most difficult) it was a puff of white smoke that appeared in the Vatican chimney. (does that metaphor still work or has the current pope been around so long that everyone has forgotten?)
it's a steep price to pay for escaping Ohio, but probably worth it. actually it's not clear what will happen with the job but we'll almost certainly stay here until Christmas and there are good reasons to now look for at least a couple years worth of post-docs, which does not displease me. but I'm getting ahead of myself.
To Annette's parents:
I should be cleaning up and getting reorganized right now, the place looks like a bomb went off, but I'm exhausted. Needless to say, haven't slept well these past few days, and every time I try to take a nap, my eyes won't stay shut. So I'm a bit of a zombie. Oh well. What's a little mess? I'll pick it up tomorrow, or failing that Wednesday. There's no rush.
Uh, my parents are probably a lot of things right now, and while I'm sure that thrilled is one of them, I don't think it's made it to the top of the list just yet. I'd be willing to bet that speechless and dumbfounded are still ruling the charts. Mom hasn't called, so either she's in shock or the news wasn't big enough to justify trans-atlantic long-distance rates.
Annette seems to be feeling pretty good, more stunned than happy I'd say but that's understandable. Actually not that stunned. Like me, a mixture of cheerful resignation, dread and curiosity. I may be dead wrong on this, of course, but I suspect that what's about to happen only changes your life (in a negative sense) as much as you let it, and that apart from being a little smarter about scheduling and not getting as much sleep as you'd like, there's no reason why the fun has to end. We're certainly not going to start saving for the 3-bedroom rancher on the cul-de-sac and the dreaded minivan. Hell no. We'll keep on living in an apartment in the middle of Berlin and take the subway and bus everywhere and expect both sets of parents to fly over for extended babysitting vacations so that we can disappear into strange foreign places for a week or two. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Actually where we live is not settled, but I'm hoping we'll stay here for a few more years. I figure in the end you could still have a better time in Berlin with a kid than you could in Ohio without - so it wasn't such a bad deal from my perspective. Though I suppose "be careful what you wish for" is worth remembering.
To my parents:
I mean, really. 9 hours ahead. you can even call collect.
listen, thanks to the stock options, this likely won't cost you a dime.
we're cool with this, you know. I wouldn't say I'm "happy" in the simplest dictionary sense of the word, but apparently that's completely normal at this point. (Annette is.) I'm really doing quite well.
after Annette's mid-air explosion in December, life holds no terrors for me.
also, in another day or two Annette's folks will no longer be able to contain themselves and will call you and if you say you haven't called us they will think you are cold, unfeeling monsters. so call. eleven pm = eight am and we are definitely home at that hour of the morning.
To my clearly irritated (but in a good-natured way) brother-in-law:
you'll appreciate this: regarding the stock options: "the fucking money wasn't in the bank one fucking week and look what happens" - thus proving my theory that financial security is a *bad* idea. I'm still buying my new racing bike, however. maybe others get the big lecture about life insurance, savings plans and a bigger house within an hour of the pee-test, but we march to the beat of a different drummer.
remember, debt is the best contraceptive
To the friends that Annette visited in Washington during the interview trip:
Well, impressed though you may be by your daughter's power to inspire maternal impulses, I imagine you weren't aware that she could work ONE MONTH RETROACTIVELY!
In other words, guess who had a bun in the oven during her visit?
...
[Regarding sleeplessness]
Uh, no shit. Actually we've known about this little mess since Wednesday, when Annette broke the news just after receiving the job offer from Bowling Green. After having already crashed my bike that afternoon, I thought that things couldn't get any worse. But no. We didn't really finish coping with the situation until Sunday. That's a very long time. I slept quite well during those days, as I was mostly hiding under a blanket on the couch in the living room, drinking all the wine left over from the party. However, eventually, and I'll spare you the gory details, I emerged into the light, and the parents were telephoned later that day. Which is precisely the point at which I stopped sleeping, which is why I am now totally fucking exhausted.
[Regarding returning to Vancouver in time for D-Day]
Nope. Staying here. Will fly parents and relatives in and out on bi-weekly shifts, like offshore oil-rig workers. That will be the price of access. It would be a hassle getting the health insurance going again now that we're officially non-resident (a major tax concern with my stock options) and besides, there are continuity-of-care issues and whatnot. And it would be boring and stressful, fly in and have family flutter around waiting. We'll see. We have friends here who can pass along used shit. Besides, how much can it cost? Poor people do it all the time.
[Regarding staying in Berlin for a while]
Maybe we're crazy, but we tend to think that Europe is a better place to be a parent. Maybe not a child, but certainly a parent. In our rather strange, infrequent and highly abstract discussions of this issue in the past, I said I could almost see doing it here, but not in the US. Think about it. You don't need a car - public transit actually works and accommodates child-bearing vehicles. Families live in dense cities with parks close at hand - no hideous suburbs. Child care is cheap and plentiful. Most of all, people aren't so fucking paranoid all the time. You can let them play outside without armed guards and a radio-tracking implant and you won't be arrested for negligence. I'm probably exaggerating the differences, but things just seem way more relaxed on this side of the pond. That I could cope with. Not the loons who drive their kids two blocks to school and then sit in a traffic jam waiting to pull up to the gate, which happens pretty much everywhere in Vancouver now.
[Regarding the cat]
Unlike me, she was actually curious and not threatened when friends brought their baby over a while back. Even sniffed at it. You just have a disturbed cat.
To my beloved and disbelieving former sidekick:
Anyway, a question for you. Are you still planning a trip to Tunisia this summer? I'm asking because it might make life very difficult for you if we were to come, once the missus gets a look at Annette, who by that point will be about six months pregnant.
Boy, I sure snuck that one past, didn't I? Boy, that last sentence sure has two meanings, I now realize.
On the other hand, I have a sneaking suspicion that your new Jetta was part of some larger bargain (though you may not realize it yet) and that you will soon be in the same predicament yourself.
Anyway, this news is not for general distribution, at least not yet. Even from half a world away, I can only stand being laughed at by a small number of people at one time. It was not an easy thing to come to terms with, particularly at this exact point in our lives, though I think I'll actually be pretty happy once I get over being completely fucking stunned. But somehow I feel the need to share this with a few people, the ones that I really care about, and you can proudly count yourself among them.
To another friend:
existential horror, trust me. but I'm surprisingly cool with it. after death or exile, it began to look pretty good in comparison. actually it's not that bad. though I don' t expect it will change my low opinion of infants - boring and disgusting, like highly unrewarding pets. the interesting stuff might come later.
That's the extent of the correspondence.
The reaction has varied from thrilled (Annette's family) to stunned, persistent silence (my family) to comical disbelief (a certain friend). Annette went back to the doctor yesterday and gave him the thumbs up and received the little binder with all the relevant info (in Germany, everything comes in a binder). We have a printout of the ultrasound but I am not going to post it here. Get a grip. But I'll happily mail a digital photo to anyone who thinks I'm joking.
So how did we get from Wednesday to Sunday? It was not easy. I think it probably was the most difficult thing I've ever done. I'm not sure that there's any purpose reconstructing all the steps, the bends and kinks in the road. We completed the circle: there were times when we found ourselves each arguing the position previously held by the other. In the end I decided that there was no other option that would not destroy my relationship with Annette, and I love her too much to let that happen. At first I thought that I would only be able to hang on until dumb instinct kicked in, but now I'm beginning to see some positives. It will certainly be interesting.
Vita just howled from the other room. I made Annette get up and go see what's wrong. Practice, I told her.
Thursday, Friday and Saturday were black days, days of incomprehension and despair, days of struggle. I felt myself moving towards wanting this to happen, but would always pull back at the last second. I know that Annette's mental state was not so different from my own. She put no pressure on me, only told me what she was feeling and left me to come to terms with it in my own way. I did not leave the house during this period - I was afraid to be out on the street. Somehow I could not confront the idea that the world would not appear alien and unfamiliar, that the universe would be substantially unchanged.
By Sunday morning my mood had lifted a little. Right from the beginning, I had seen ways in which this could work, but I could not make the final step. After breakfast Annette persuaded me to join her for a walk along the canal. It was a beautiful early spring day, warm, sunny. People were out walking, crocuses were poking out of the grass. Life, bloody godawful life, was all around me. Fe-fucking-cundity, I muttered to her laughing response. Resistance appeared increasingly futile. A few hours later, leaving the Tiergarten flea market with a small consolation purchase, I took the gum out of my mouth and tossed it into the gutter and said: "Oh, fuck it. What's the use? Do you really want to do this?" "Yes." "Okay, then." We took the S-Bahn to Friedrichstraße and sat in a café for a while and eventually made our way home in the late afternoon sunshine.
If Sunday had been wet and cold, this story might have a different ending. Probably not, it just might have needed an extra chapter or two.
One more piece of correspondence should be included here - Annette writing to her older sister yesterday morning:
Thanks very much for your wishes. They touched us both. Scott asked to dictate his response, because he didn't want to risk ruining my computer with the waterworks. (I'm warning you now, sit back or you'll short out your keyboard.) He said that when things were really difficult, Sarah nudged him along in the right direction. He doesn't know whether to blame her or thank her, but in the end I think I know what he'll do. That girl has some kind of power. It is still with us.
If we have a daughter, the middle name is already chosen.
And so we decided. The Rest Of My Life begins now. I'm glad it was a decision, a positive decision. I really don't think we could have done anything else, but because we forced ourselves to endure this miserably painful process, we are more secure in the knowledge that we are on the right course. This is an investment that will probably guarantee my future sanity. We are not simply reacting to an event, accepting a fait accompli. It might never have happened without this rather colossal accident, but nevertheless I am at peace with it.
Sometimes things don't seem real - "Did yesterday really happen?" I asked Annette when I woke up on Monday - and sometimes I don't know why this is such a big deal. My innate arrogance really helps in these situations. Millions of idiots do this every day without necessarily fucking it up, why should I have any huge problems? But recent events caution me against hubris.
Perhaps it's a little early to be making a general announcement, but I don't really care. What fate has given, it could easily take away. Or, depending on how you see it, what fate has taken away, it could easily restore. It would not be the end of the world. Except that I don't think I'd be able to return to my former recalcitrance. That battle is over. I always said that if this happened, I'd be able to deal with it and I'd probably learn be happy, but that I didn't necessarily want to change, to become that person. But now I'm not sure I want to stay the person I am. This is the one thing that could save me from myself.
Back to more practical matters. Annette feels great, only the tiniest queasiness every now and then. She's treating this as an excuse to get more exercise, not less. Running (after some careful research) and yoga (strengthen that back while you still have time) and other things. I feel a curious protective instinct towards her, nothing more than you'd expect from a reliable old Labrador really. But for now I'm happy to have some semblance of normality return to my life, if only for a few short months. Yesterday we cleaned the apartment, which suffered greatly during our week of trial, and I've begun training again. Just over two weeks until the camp in Mallorca.
I really don't think this will turn us into a couple of suburban idiots. I really don't. I think I will still be able to use "breeder" as a pejorative term, but only more selectively.
On Friday, Annette must respond to Bowling Green. God. We're almost too exhausted to face another decision. I'll save that one for another entry. I think I've done enough damage today.
