How Does One Dress to Buy Dragonfruit? True Stories of Expat Women in Asia

by Shannon Young

  On February 9th, we take the subway through the city. When we walk through the big glass doors, holding hands, I’m more nervous than I was on our wedding day.

  We’re led into the entrance hall, where there’s a giant stuffed panda slumped over on a bench in the waiting area. There are no kids around. It’s very quiet and orderly. Where is everyone? I think. We’re allowed into the playground behind the main building. My heart pounds in my chest. I’ve waited ten years to meet my son. What will he look like? Will he smile when he sees us? Laugh? Cry? Will he like me?

  A woman leads us down a hall and into a courtyard. Yuto is pointed out to us. He’s chubby and wears a dirty blue down jacket that makes him look even bigger. His hair is cut in a rice-bowl that sits above his red, ruddy cheeks. His pants are too big and rolled up to his ankles, and they seem filthy, too. We look at him and wave. He doesn’t smile. Instead, he runs the opposite direction and hides in the corner. He doesn’t want to have anything to do with us.

  Shogo and I exchange glances. Wordlessly, we agree. Who could blame him? He’s been down this path before. Why should he trust us?

  We don’t chase after him. Instead, we approach the other kids in the playground and start to play with them in sandbox, push them in the swings, play hide-and-go seek. Gradually, Yuto comes over to us, observing in a cautious way. His eyes are brown and the whites have small brown spots on them. I wonder if he’s sick.

  Soon our hour is up. He hasn’t approached us once.

  We go back to our car. Shogo reaches over and touches my hand. "Don’t worry. It’s going to be okay,” he says.

  Yuto is not what I imagined my child would be. I don’t know exactly what I imagined, but somehow, it’s not this. Some kind of joyful greeting, where he runs into my arms like a movie? Right. When has my life ever looked like that? I take a deep breath and try to put myself in his shoes. I’m sure I’m not the picture he had in mind for his mother, either. For one, I’m white. Foreign. American.

  This is not going to work, I know it, I think. How stupid of me to think I could even try. I try to stifle my tears, but the more I try to push them down, the more forcefully they arise. Is this grief? Is it okay to feel grief? Shouldn’t I feel happy, overjoyed now that we have a son after twelve years of marriage, half of it spent trying to start a family?

  I try to express all this to Shogo.

  "It’s okay. Just feel what you feel,” he says, squeezing my hand. He’s in it for the long run. To him, this is it. There’s no Plan B. He’s not uncomfortable with sadness, or with silence, or with any of it, it seems.

  I want to be strong like Shogo, a samurai. But I’m not. I’m an American girl from San Francisco, trying to understand how life has brought me here.

  Like The Lotus

  Like many women of my generation, especially those from broken families, I’ve been ambivalent about starting a family for so long that when I wake up and realize it is too late, it is, in fact, too late.

  But is it?

  Before I had a child, there were a few things I wanted. I wanted to have a strong, solid relationship. I wanted to establish my career. I wanted to see the world. I wanted to heal my relationship with my own father and mother. Last but not least, I wanted to find myself. I considered these prerequisites for having children. The items on this list weren’t frivolous. To me, those prerequisite steps would spell the success or failure of the endeavor.

  I’d seen my mother sacrifice her own needs, desires, and dreams to raise her children, and I’d seen the toll that had taken on all of us—when she was forty, she woke up and realized she didn’t know who she was. Granted, it was the seventies, and we lived in Berkeley, California—a hotbed of radicalism and social change. She’d done what most women of her generation did—had families, not careers—and when we were old enough to take care of ourselves, she decided it was time to take care of herself. I agreed, but the decision led to divorce. Watching her, I thought that starting a family would be something I’d do after I’d "gotten my shit together.” And I thought, as many do, that "if it’s meant to be, it will be.”

  For so long, I didn’t want to have a family of my own because I didn’t want to bring anyone into such a dysfunctional family. That feeling held me back for years. Then I met my husband, who loved me for who I was—Jewish neurosis and all.

  *

  I met Shogo at a jazz bar in Yokohama where mutual friends had a gig. He was a poet and a martial artist, and we shared a love of literature and mind-body traditions. But I’d just come off a long relationship, and getting together with a Japanese man was as far from my mind as Timbuktu.

  One night I was sitting on the couch in my apartment, enjoying my independence yet bemoaning one too many bad dates set up by well-meaning friends. I’d positioned myself perfectly under the light of the single lamp in my tatami room and was reading Galway Kinnell’s poem "After Making Love We Hear Footsteps.”

  The phone rang, breaking the silence.

  It was Shogo, a month after our meeting at the jazz club, wanting to know if I wanted to see a movie with him.

  I liked him, and his gentle, wise manner drew me in. Still, doomsday thoughts arose from the recesses of my mind like bad Japlish T-shirts: Cross-cultural relationships are doomed to fail. A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.

  Whoa. Did I really say yes to this fresh-faced Japanese man in a polo shirt and sockless Dockers who liked Kundera and knew how to make a Hollandaise sauce? And why wasn’t he married at 33? Was he gay?

  "Just picky,” he said. And he hadn’t met a Japanese woman who "matched” him.

  Did I "match” him, I wondered? We were so different. He’s not my type. He’s not my race. He’s not my religion, though I hardly practice it myself. He’s not so many things.

  Maybe that’s okay, I realized. Because he was so many other things on my list of "perfect partner.” Patient, wise, independent, smart, and he called me on my shit. He was someone with whom I felt I could grow. And I could help him grow, too. It wasn’t long before he quietly swept me off my feet.

  A year later, we married.

  "Let’s enjoy being newly-wet,” he said. I didn’t correct him. It seemed like just the right word.

  He helped me see that because of the muddy waters I’d come up from, like the lotus, I could grow stronger, more resilient, and also more compassionate and vulnerable. Wasn’t it ironic that all the muck I’d tried to wash off was really fertilizer to create a richer soil? But I still had work to do before "starting a family” was on my radar.

  *

  Ten years go by. We try to have a child, and fail. I do a few Western treatments and many Eastern approaches, including acupuncture (Chinese style, dagger-like thick needles, not thin Japanese ones), Qi Gong, Chinese herbs, past-life regression, lymph drainage, and a host of other alternative therapies. I dive deep into yoga for healing. It helps me calm my mind and body. Even if I don’t get pregnant, I don’t get as stressed out about failing, and that’s progress.

  As time goes by, with no child on the horizon, I try not to get discouraged, to see the lesson, to build my relationship and community. It certainly isn’t the first test I’ve faced, and it won’t be the last.

  With Shogo’s help, I open a yoga studio in Tokyo, and even though I’m not yet a mother myself, I take heart in mothering others who come there to heal. I get a lot of practice being motherly. There are many like the tall, young Japanese kid who comes to try yoga for the first time. He’s stiff and nervous. We stretch, shake, sweat, and do partner yoga. He loosens up and laughs.

  After class, he comes up and takes me aside. He says he’s having emotional problems, and as he talks, surprisingly, he starts to cry. I give him a hug. He holds onto me for a long time and starts to sob like a baby. Hugging a stranger, and being emotional in this way is very unusual, especially in Japan, especially in front of the whole class. But it’s a good thing that he feels comfortable enough to release his fe
elings, or maybe he’s just so deeply distraught that he can’t close the floodgates. When he recovers enough to compose himself, he bows and thanks me, and says he’ll be back.

  I’m sure I’ll never see him again.

  I already feel like a mother.

  I think I can love anyone now.

  Hello

  One of the teachers at my yoga studio, a British woman named Em, occasionally reads tabloids like Hello and Us, which she gets from a teacher at the international school. When she’s done, she passes them on to me. It’s our preferred form of mindless entertainment, and I’m hooked on them, too.

  In one issue of Hello, there is an article about Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt planning to adopt a little boy from Vietnam named Pax. The article mentions a woman named Dr. Jane Aronson, who helps people with foreign adoptions. I get on the web and google her. She has two adopted children herself. I take a deep breath and email her asking for referrals, not expecting a reply. To my enormous surprise, she emails me right away (she is online at the same time!) with the names of two agencies who do international adoptions for people living abroad.

  I write her right back, thanking her for being there, for helping me, for hearing me, for acknowledging my existence. This is a busy woman, a famous woman, an amazing woman. Who am I to her? I tell her I’d given up hope of ever having kids, but she’s rekindled it in me. To my surprise, she emails me right back again. You will adopt. You will move on, she writes. I can feel the power in this woman through these seven simple words. I believe her. I sit at the computer and cry. I love this woman, though we’ve never met and probably never will, I think. Thank you, I write. Thank you. Someone has "gotten” me.

  Her faith gives me more faith. I soldier on. Shogo stays by my side. We celebrate our twelfth wedding anniversary. Seems we’re in it for the long haul.

  Adoption: First Step

  After that, another friend tells me of the government agency’s Child Guidance Center—Jido Sodan Jo. There are offices in each of Tokyo’s twenty-three wards. The CGC handles adoptions, though adoption is uncommon in Japan.

  There’s a long-standing stigma about adoption, a reluctance of birth parents or extended family to relinquish rights even when they cannot take care of a child. There are comparatively few healthy and young kids available. That year there are only 1,320 adoptions—less than half of those between unrelated children and parents. Compare this to the US, where there are approximately 127,000 annual adoptions and where 1.7 million households have an adopted child. Adoption in Japan is rare and difficult. I should give up. But I know my child is out there, and I’m determined to find him.

  We apply through the CGC, though the odds are daunting. The application asks questions like: Why do you want a child? What kind of upbringing and education would you give your child? What are the most important values you would share with a child? What about religion?

  Filling out the application is challenging, but it’s an opportunity to become very clear on what our values are and what kind of parents we see ourselves being. We talk about issues most parents don’t address until they come up, if then. It feels good to sort these things out in advance in a calm, organized way. Just the same, having these discussions pulls at my heartstrings.

  Will we ever get through the logistics and just get to be parents?

  Bloodlines

  Slowly and with caution, we tell our friends that we’re hoping to adopt. Partly it’s to ease the pain of the constant barrage of questions, such as "When are you having kids?” Or "Why don’t you have children yet?” But then we have to deal with more careless comments. People, it turns out, have strong opinions on adoption, especially people who have naturally born children. "Oh, we’d love to adopt too, someday,” or "We considered adoption, too,” and so on.

  One thing everyone agrees on is this: "Japan is a difficult country to adopt from.”

  Not only are there few children up for adoption, but it’s the only country in the world where you need to get the extended family’s approval for the process. Bloodlines are seen as all-important: one’s ancestors are one’s link to the past. The family registry, or koseki, goes back generations and lists each birth and marriage tying family to family. I remember that when we got married, keeping my own name had created a problem with the koseki.

  Once again, doubts start to flood my mind. If we succeed in this adoption, I’ll be bucking the system again. I know how difficult it is to raise a child, let alone one who is adopted in a country that is not particularly "open” to adoption. In Japan, most adoptions are kept secret. Some children don’t even find out until their parents die.

  So we brace ourselves and ask my father-in-law for permission. I find out, to my surprise, that his own father—Shogo’s grandfather—was adopted. His parents were samurai on one side, gangster on the other. My husband has them all in his ancestry—geisha, gangster, samurai, rickshaw driver. This assortment of characters pleases me, makes me feel less strange for my difference, more welcome. My father-in-law says yes.

  We’re already a rainbow family, he with his long hair and stay-at-home job, me with my red streaks and funky yoga studio, not to mention our strange pit-bull mutt and his family’s eccentric lineage. In a conservative neighborhood in a conservative country, we already stand out as freaks. Why try to fit in when we clearly can’t?

  Why not embrace our differences completely?

  Low Priority

  Our application is approved. I’m overjoyed, and a bit surprised. Could our dream finally be coming true? Soon, the interviews and home visits begin. We remain optimistic, though the CGC prioritizes according to age and we are very low priority. I am forty-four and Shogo is forty-eight.

  We attend an all-day lecture with fifty other couples who are hoping to adopt—and those are only applicants for this season. There are hundreds of others who have previously applied and are waiting. I try not to think about this as we prepare to visit Nazareth House, an orphanage in Takadanobaba, a university town where I used to shop at The Blue Parrot, one of Tokyo’s best English bookstores.

  Before our trip, we go to Kiddieland—a bustling three-story toy shop in ultra-trendy Harajuku with lots of Disney, Hello Kitty, and other big-brand characters shouting out to be purchased. The shop is a cacophony of bells, whistles, motors, and mechanized voices. It gives me a headache. I buy finger puppets, the most low-tech thing there. I’m surprised the shop even has them. We plan to bring them to the orphanage. It’s something inconspicious and quiet.

  We listen to a lecture on life in the orphanage, and how the kids there get accustomed to institutional ways and are different from kids who grow up in "normal” families. I wonder about these potential adoptive parents. Each of them has a journey, a story like ours. Some are way younger than us, dressed in hip clothes, and appear to be in their twenties. Others are older, more conservative. Many, like us, seem to be in long-term marriages. I can tell by the way they relate, hopeful but wary. They’ve been on a long journey.

  We wait until the kids finish eating lunch. When the meal is over, the kids play in the playground. The staff lets the prospective parents in for ten minutes, all as a group. While some approach the children confidently, others are hesitant, moving slowly towards the children, with a mixture of hope and fear.

  I step back and look at myself from the child’s point of view. I see what they see. We are strangers. We are strange. I’d be scared too.

  It’s a revelation to see their faces. Waiting. Wanting. Just like us.

  An oversize boy runs around terrorizing the others. Another boy, who appears to be half Japanese and half Middle Eastern, won’t stop crying.

  I think: Could I love him? Could he be my child some day?

  And if I was his mom, could he love me back?

  The Baby Box

  In November, the CGC calls and says there’s a girl available for adoption. Are we interested? We say yes. They say they will get back to us, but they also
say they are considering six other couples for the same girl. And there is a priority list.

  Three weeks go by and nothing happens. Shogo calls the orphanage, and they say the girl has been placed with another family.

  Would they have called us to tell us?

  We’re definitely on our own here, and it’s unknown territory. I’m not very good with uncertainty. I’m getting better; I’ve had to. But still, it’s not my favorite place to be.

  In December, the CGC calls about a boy. They ask if we are interested in adopting him. We say yes, They say they will get back to us. They don’t.

  We wait some more.

  I ask Shogo to call them, and he does. They say they have placed the child with another family.

  Many younger couples are waiting to adopt. By now, my fierce optimism has begun to wane.

  Perpetual Yes

  January brings a new year. We go to our neighborhood temple and ring the bell one hundred and eight times, one for every earthly desire. I have at least that many. I still want to have a child. I still feel its soul out there, calling me. Why can’t I find it?

  A few more telephone calls come from the CGC, telling us there’s another child available and asking if we are interested, only to have no further contact.

  I have to do something proactive. I am fiercely committed to living my dreams. If I’m not, who else will be? I ask myself: Am I going to live the life I want to live, how I want to live it? Or am I forever going to be living by others’ dictates, rules, and limitations? Not when I can avoid it, I decide. I make Shogo call the orphanage. I insist that he tell them to stop calling us every month to ask if we are interested in a different child.

  "Tell them to put a perpetual ‘yes’ on our file, okay? Tell them that whatever child they have available, we are interested.”

  "Whatever child?” he repeats.

  "Yes. Whatever child,” I say firmly.

  I want to say things like "It isn’t fair” and "Why us?” but I already know the answers to those questions—that there are no answers. This is our fate, our journey, our path. There is nothing to do but trust, and let go.