September 15, 2010
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Falling is like this
My company has decided to collapse in on itself, much to the surprise of my coworkers, the Japanese salespeople, and the 300 or so factory workers.
Maybe it was more a surprise to us, an ocean away from all the water cooler gossip and dark rumors.
So after only 6 months I’m renewing the process of collecting myself, advertising myself, composing condensed versions of myself. I cringe at the gaps in time and experience on my resume, that the positions seem to be getting less impressive instead of more so as time has gone by. It is a bad thing to be here now, but then there are many things I cannot help.
I have given up a lot for love, but I have received much more in return and cannot complain. Every day I feel lucky, so lucky that I’m terrified of heavy objects falling from the sky and crushing my beloved before we’ve had the long, happy life together we’ve only just started living.
My husband loves Seinfeld and How I Met Your Mother. When I see him chuckling at a show I’ve nearly memorized I am full with happiness and pride at how much of America he has absorbed, and how fast. A year ago he was confused, often annoyed and almost entirely mute. Now I can bring him to a party and lose him in a crowd, knowing that he can find his way back to me.
This crisis doesn’t make me panic like everything did that year in Japan with him in legal limbo and me constantly on the phone with my consulate. Every trip to Shinagawa made me panic, and every relative deported or placed in detention chipped away at our already fragile sense of stability. The best part of our new life is that we’ve forgotten what it is to feel that helpless, too exhausted even to be angry.
Being poor is something we can deal with, gladly.
