Partly Thawed
Partly Thawed
Your World Frightens and Confuses Me
We’ve been here for almost four (?!) months now. For a while, the other expats would ask me how we were settling in. These conversations almost always took place at the park near S—’s school, and I’d have one eye on her as I struggled to be sincere but lighthearted, funny but honest. What I really wanted to do was respond with the Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer monologue from SNL:
“I’m just a caveman...Your world frightens and confuses me...My primitive mind can’t grasp these concepts.”
Of course, a lot of my disorientation had to do with the pandemic. From my admittedly narrow point-of-view, people in the US and Japan have experienced this year quite differently. As of this writing, over half a million people in the US have died due to COVID-19: that’s 1,600 deaths per million people. In Japan, about eight thousand people have died, or 63 deaths per million. I read somewhere that when a person dies, they leave behind (on average) nine close connections. That means millions of US residents are in mourning due to COVID, a long shadow we can’t (and shouldn’t) escape.
And while changing behaviors to stop the spread has been difficult for people everywhere, it’s been well documented that mask-wearing has been particularly…challenging for people in the US, whereas people in Japan have long used masks to avoid spreading disease (among other reasons). And though both governments have fumbled the response in their own ways, when individuals aren’t squabbling over a basic tenet of personal hygiene, it removes at least one layer of conflict. All this is to say that while people in Japan have certainly experienced loss and hardship (and continue to do so), the few of us who have recently arrived from the US appear to be much more conflicted and distressed by the ordeal.
But my feeling like a caveperson—like a sloppy, floppy, fish-out-of-water—has other, more superficial reasons. In addition to questions about settling in, people will ask other seemingly innocuous questions: What did we do over the weekend? What are our plans for the school break? No one wants to hear about how I organized my daughter’s closet or caught up on the latest American television. And while what’s “safe” and “right” to do are still up for debate, one activity that is certainly acceptable is pulling one’s self together.
You might be familiar with the amazing fashion that comes out of Harajuku—loud, edgy, fun—but those aren't the outfits I see on a daily basis at the park. Instead, the mothers wear earth tones and subdued hues: long skirts, luxurious knits, and elegant wool coats. Nearly everything is oversized, but nothing is sloppy. In contrast, I wear my Seattle uniform of jeans, sneakers, and North Face. I know what you're thinking: Wow, Stephanie, you're wearing jeans? With like, an actual waistband? I know, I'm proud of me too.
But really, I'm not proud. I am a grown-ass woman in a cosmopolitan city, but I’ve become painfully aware, standing in that park, that I don’t look or feel the part.
How Did I Get Here?
It's at this point I hear David Byrne’s voice in my head:
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself, "Well... how did I get here?"
Now, I have neither wife nor automobile, and "apartment" replaces "house," but it’s close enough.
Living in a wealthy metropolis is not foreign to me. I began my adult life in New York, where I worked as a publicity assistant for a major book publisher. Though it wasn’t the most glamorous job (more The Devil Wears Macy’s than The Devil Wears Prada) it was glamour-adjacent. I read Gawker religiously and knew all the entertainment gossip. I didn’t party with Lindsay Lohan on a weeknight, but I sometimes went to Meatpacking on weekends. I didn’t have money for designer fashions (hello NYC on $33K a year!) but I bought cute clothes from stores that didn’t exist back home in the Midwest. And, let’s face it, it was easy to look good at twenty-two without much effort—though of course I neither realized nor appreciated that fact at the time.
My Time Among the Yinzers
For a while, I lived in the center of the universe. Then I moved to Pittsburgh. I’ve always enjoyed making fun of Pittsburgh, but I do it with fondness. I spent two-and-a-half formative years in that city, and love and admire many wonderful people who still live there. Graduate school brought me to Pitt, which meant I stayed in a lot to read, grade papers, and work on my MFA thesis. For those not in the know, "MFA" stands for "Mother Fucking Artist," which is how I drunkenly described it to a PhD candidate at a Halloween party. That was one of only a handful of parties I attended during that time, because my fellow tortured artists were introverted—and responsible. We had two dozen undergrads consistently waiting for feedback on their essays.
I began to live a life devoid of nightclubs and Page Six—and didn’t miss it one bit. For fun, I volunteered at the local animal shelter. I can still recall this beautiful couple who came in one day to adopt a kitten, and the fact that I remember them tells you a lot about the overall aesthetic of the people of the 'burgh. No, I kid! It was more so a reminder that models and actors could be found on every corner in New York, but were few and far between in the Rust Belt. In Pittsburgh, I felt no pressure to keep up any sort of appearance, and began experimenting with how long I could go between shampoos. In that period of my life there was probably one occasion when I showed up in full hair and makeup, and that was my wedding day.
Posing with the famous confluence of rivers in Pittsburgh.
Seattle Freeze
Soon after the wedding, N— and I moved to Seattle. Fair or not, it felt like a big step up from Pittsburgh: moving to a city with mountains and salt water and a thriving music scene. I never heeded the myriad criticisms the California and New York transplants leveled at the place; I was in love. So in love that I was blind to the fact that Seattle is pretty provincial in its own right, teetering there on the upper left corner of the United States. It’s gorgeous, and its citizens are well educated—but overwhelmingly, uncomfortably white. In Seattle, wealth takes the form of Teslas, performance fleece, and remodeled Craftsman homes.
In the Northwest I continued to inhabit the decidedly not-chic world of academia, moving from a large university to a humble community college—which I absolutely loved. And then I had a baby. Nothing takes you out of fashionable society and ties you to your home quite like a newborn. (Except, you know...) On the plus side, I made a lot of wonderful friends with my fellow prisoners-slash-parents. We went out in the world together a few times, but mostly sat around in each others' living rooms swapping sleep deprivation stories. People often talk about the “Seattle Freeze”: how it’s hard to make friends in the city, but I found that having either a kid or a dog goes a long way in making connections.
In Seattle, my life felt full, with work and child and friends to text and sometimes see. When single acquaintances complained about bars closing early—I realized I never noticed. When the New York transplants bemoaned that people never dressed up, I wondered why anyone would want to.
WTF is a Lip Kit
Here is the picture I am trying to paint: a journey away from New York, and from glamour (not to mention away from youth and beauty and vivacity). Sure, I kept up my fitness along the way. I tried to wear clothes that fit me well and looked decently put together. But I didn't shop very often. I don’t really like shopping because I hate fast fashion and what it embodies—poor working conditions for people, terrible consequences for the environment—but I also feel guilty spending money on higher-priced clothes. (I know, I’m a blast to hang out with!) I own only about a dozen pairs of shoes: sneakers and low-heeled boots. I have to think long and hard about the last time I wore high heels and why—I fear it may have been a friend's birthday party in late 2018.
Up until about a year ago, I had the skincare routine of a 60-year-old cis-het man. I rarely wear makeup, and I'm still not entirely sure how to do it, or what the fuck is included in a lip kit, or what setting spray does. (Is it like hair spray, but for your face? That seems intense.) I’m not above vanity, so I've recently started down that skincare rabbit hole, full of serums and potions and SPF I should have been applying a decade ago but didn't.
One day, while untangling a knot of costume jewelry that had been shipped with the rest of our belongings, I realized I could have given up and chucked the lot in the bin and it probably wouldn’t have mattered. Outside of my wedding ring, I don’t own jewelry of much value, and I forget when I gave up accessorizing, or if I ever even tried.
Another night, I pulled one of my old books off the shelf to read to my daughter. It was a picture book by Judith Viorst (of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day fame) called “Earrings!” and it’s all about a young girl wanting her ears pierced. My daughter, almost four, looked at me and asked, “Mama, what are earrings?”
I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess she doesn’t know what lipstick is either.
How Do You Do, Fellow Ladies?
So here I am: Tokyo 2021, pushing my daughter on the swing, my hair in a ponytail because I never seem to find time or reason to “do” it. The mother next to me, pushing her own child, has on a Dior sweater and sneakers, as well as a long tulle skirt, and her hair is beautifully curled. Maybe she’s not just another shufu (housewife) like me; maybe she’s a fashion buyer or magazine editor, and picked up her child straight from work. Maybe she’s the one who should feel ridiculous; I imagine it’s difficult to get park dust off of tulle.
Clearly, I’m an unfashionable gremlin in need of a makeover, and it’s been years since I've felt insecure in this particular way. (Consistently rocking the other insecurities though: professional, intellectual, et al.) There's more to say on this topic, including how I'm projecting my newfound self-consciousness onto my child—checking that “parental insecurities” box!—but this self-indulgent post has gone on long enough.
I'll end (for now) with the Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer sketch starring the late, great Phil Hartman. I realize my fellow Millennials may be unfamiliar with this clip if they didn’t have badass parents who let them stay up to ungodly hours when they were in elementary school.
(Watching it now, it's clear that the joke isn’t that he's neither "frightened" nor "confused," but a slick BMW-driving capitalist like the rest of them. Unsurprisingly the punchline was lost on seven-year-old me.)
