“Don’t pick up the phone.”
This is my mantra in my first year in Japan. It is too intimidating. It presents an impenetrable divide between me and the person on the other end called language and there seems to be no point. A while ago our language adviser found out that I was not answering the phone and I was in trouble. After all, I am in language school, I am supposed to be boldly confronting this wall of language.
Trouble is, like a rock climber with sweaty hands, I struggle to find a handhold. The footholds don’t match my feet and my progress seems unmeasurable. Whenever I do get a handhold it turns out it’s the wrong one. Or it doesn’t allow me to get a foothold too and then my teacher corrects me. As soon as she does I lose my grip and my confidence in the same moment. There just doesn’t seem to be a way forward to begin to climb that wall.
I used to be a daredevil, that, after all, is how I came to play both netball and the clarinet. I came close to representing my state in netball and my senior year at school was a blur of activity. As a child I had too much energy, so my mum sought to direct that into extra activities. It seemed to work, or maybe it drained me of spunk? Because I don’t feel like a daredevil anymore.
“Brrrrrring, brrrring . . . brrrrring, brrrrrring” Oh no!
“Brrrrrring, brrrring.”
“Ah hello?”
“Ohayogosaimasu, blah blah blah…” The rest was a blur. I presume they introduced themselves.
“Goshujin . . . blah blah blah . . . masu?” Ah, are they looking for my husband? He’s not here, otherwise he would have answered the phone. Um, how do I say, “Not here?”
“Ummmm. Gakko desu.” He’s at language school, how do I say that?
Silence
So I venture: “Arimasen.” Does that mean not here? No, maybe it means doesn’t exist? “Go ji desu.” I think I said five o’clock. That’s what time I think he’s coming home.
“Go ji kaerimasu?” He’s coming home at five?
“Ummm, hai.” Yes, am I agreeing to the right thing?
“Shitsu . . . blah blah blah.”
Click.
Sigh. Daredevil I am not. Surely there is a better way to live than this? But how can I admit to being defeated by a language? How can I continue to live in a land where I can’t even answer the phone and tell someone that my husband is out and won’t be back until 5 pm?
My problem is not only that I’m bad at learning language, I’m bad at quitting too. I can’t come up with a good enough reason to call it quits here. We spent a long time telling people how much Japanese needed Jesus, and that we were going to help. How could we just turn our backs on that? What would we tell everyone?
But secretly, I’m looking. I’m checking the internet for jobs in Australia. Oh how I dream of going back to a place where I can talk to anyone I like. To a place I can read. To a place where I’m not scared of the phone.
But I can’t admit it to my husband. He’s soaring away from me in language learning. He loves the challenge, I hate it. He’s climbing up that wall at a speed that is shocking to me.
“Brrring brrrring” Oh no, not again!
“Ah, hello?”
A familiar voice greeted me, “Hi, it’s me.” Phew, I sink to the floor, so weary of the fear.
“Hey darling, when will you be home? I just got a call from some unknown person who, I think, wanted to know.”
“I wonder what that was about? Maybe it’s our new table they’re going to deliver. I’m just leaving now, do you want anything from the store?”
“Just a new brain.”
“Ah, what?”
“Never mind. I think we need some milk and eggs.”
“Great, I’ll be home soon. Love you.”
“Love you too. Bye”
Click
Fantastic, just enough time to write an email to my best friend. I scurry over to the computer.
“Hi Sal,
I miss you!!!!!! I’m not doing well today. I just can’t stand it here. The phone rang today and I answered it, but I could barely understand a word that was spoken. I still don’t know who it was and why they called, or if I managed to communicate anything with them. How am I going to keep living like this?
The other day I went to the store and I put four milk bottles in my basket. The cashier took two away from me at the checkout and wouldn’t let me buy them. I’m not sure why. Then when I got home I tried to make dinner. I just felt so down that it was hard to get up the motivation to cook. I was making pizza on bread slices (no pizza bases here), but because our kitchen is so small first I had to wash and dry up all the dishes and put them away so that I’d have room to cut stuff up. I’d rushed out so fast this morning that I didn’t get to them and, presumably, Phil didn’t get to them either. Somehow doing all that just to get the space to chop up stuff for simple pizzas seemed like too much work. I ended up preparing everything on the dining room table in the other room. We ended up with a lot of washing up afterwards, but at least we got dinner.
Daniel's doing well at language, but they want him to be a church planter and he’s not so sure about that. Me, well I’ve got no idea what I’m doing here. How are we going to work in a church when I can’t even answer the phone?
Tell me I can come home? Help me find a way I can get out of this.
I miss you so much, can I have a virtual hug?
Love,
Tess.”
I heard a key in the front door and a blast of cold air rushed into the room. “Hi honey, I’m home.”
My greeting was less than enthusiastic; I’ve never been good at pretending I feel good when I don’t. “That was fast.”
As he shook the snow off his boots and hung up his coat he asked, “What’s for dinner?”
“Oh, I haven’t got that far yet. I was totally derailed by that phone conversation.”
“Hmph. I’m hungry.”
“Well, I’ll figure something out. Did you get the eggs? Is it okay if I scramble them?”
“I suppose so. Are you okay?”
“Yeeeees, maybe not.” My brave mask started to crumble. Heck, where’s the tissues?
“What’s up?”
“I really hate living here. I can’t even answer the phone without sounding like a complete fool. I’m stuck. I hate being so dependent on other people and not knowing what’s going on. I’m lonely too. When did I last have a good conversation over coffee with a girlfriend who’s known me more than a couple of months?” I paused as I blew my nose.
“Yes…”
“Well, too be honest I’ve been looking at jobs in Australia and there’s this really good sounding one in Dalby, not so far from my family.”
“Do you think that’s a good idea?”
“Well maybe this was all a mistake, maybe we misread the situation. Maybe we’re not meant to be missionaries?”
“But a lot of people have given money for us to do this. We spent so many months visiting churches telling them this was God’s calling for us. How can we just give up? What will we say to everyone?”
“Yeah, well I had that thought too. But how can I go on?”
“But what if I don’t want to go back to Australia?”
“Oh, well . . . “I pulled out a bowl and started breaking the eggs into it. “Um, I don’t know. I guess I’ll just have to keep trying?”
The next day we have a guest at the language school, Rose, a missionary from England who’s in her 50s and been in Japan since she was my age. Her talk is about looking after ourselves, how to “stay the course”.
Afterwards there is time for questions and before I could think I burst out with, “But what if it’s too hard? What if we can’t envisage ourselves staying until we’re 50?”
She looks at me and I know that she’d been where I am. She said, “You do it one day at a time. Can you last out today? Then do it. And tomorrow you ask yourself the same thing. That’s how I’m still here.”
“Does it get easier?” I blurt.
“Yes, in a way it does.”
At 5pm Daniel came home to a wife that was just a tiny bit happier.
He said, “Hi darling. How was your day?”
“A little better. I still made tons of mistakes in my classes and messed up at the pharmacy, but I think I can stay tomorrow.”
He looked puzzled, “What do you mean? Where are you going?”
“Oh, nowhere. Rose spoke at language school today, I’m sorry you couldn’t be there. She said just do this one day at a time. Don’t let your mind race ahead too far. I’m thinking that I can manage that, for now.”
He grabbed me in a hug, and I grabbed the tissues again.
