Trying things twice

The little things and the big things

Uni fried rice at Night Market in Los Angeles (Noah Frank)

I used to have a collection of me-isms, when I was younger. These were little phrases that, while not necessarily entirely original, I felt defined who I was enough to use them regularly, in service of explaining myself and in place of something more clever or thoughtful. I’d like to think I’ve grown out of the practice, but the jury’s still out, I suppose.

One such expression was a truism that remains accurate, for the most part, about me today: I’ll try anything twice. It’s a good rule of thumb for many life experiences that don’t necessarily fill you with joy the first time around.

I still remember my first encounter with uni — the texturally suspicious, pungent, bright orange sea urchin that has crossed over from traditional Japanese dishes into other cultural cuisine in recent years — when a stranger at a sushi bar bought me (no older than five at the time) a piece. I was not a fan. It took a number of years for me to try it again. And while I still have to be in the mood for it, that mood definitely does exist in my adult life, where it didn’t at first blush.

Tastes change, both literally and figuratively, as we grow as people. A char on toast or a vegetable — once an unthinkably gross flavor — may strike an appeal. Movies that didn’t connect the first time around may suddenly resonate much more as we enter new stages in our lives. Dad jokes, once unthinkably corny, take on a new resonance.

There are, of course, exceptions to every rule. I will not, ever, go skydiving. I have no desire to engage in the activity in the first place, without ever getting to the risks. It’s great if you like it, but it’s not for me. That said, there are a good many activities I never thought I’d participate in that I’ve changed my mind about over the years, from making my own granola, to lifting weights, to living in Texas.

You can’t suddenly become spontaneous. Or, I don’t know, maybe you can — I can’t. And that’s OK. For me, it’s more important to be open-minded, not just to trying something I didn’t think I’d enjoy, but to being open to the possibility that even if I didn’t enjoy it on the first try, that I might gain value from a second effort.

The higher the stakes, the more that ethos is put to the test.

---

The following is a short story I wrote last winter. You may not be in a place to read it on a Friday morning, sitting at your desk, or wherever this finds you. You may not be in an emotional place to read it at all. It’s about trauma, but about one we don’t talk about enough as a culture, one shrouded in a shame it doesn’t deserve. I hope you do read it, though, as well as what follows. 

The Nespresso Store

We decided to go to the Nespresso store at the end of our errand run. From the catalog, it looks like a candy shop — literally, the rows lined with shiny, colorful pods filled with different flavors, like the glass cases of a French chocolatier. Saving it for last would be the reward for taking care of all our other adult duties.

They look like truffles, the lines of Intensos, “powerful roasted notes with strong and rich aromas,” according to the ad copy. There are the dark and mysterious Reviving Origins, the brightly hued Mild & Balanced, the dome-ier Alto pods, the golden-tinted Flavored line, even Limited Edition blends, with special swirls and markings. A world of beautiful possibilities.

This is the big concern of the day — which pods to get, and how many, as we plan our future. How many times a week will we want hot coffee at home, as opposed to from the cafe, or the slow transition to cold brew as the months warm up again. My wife had gotten exactly what she wanted for the holidays, the perfect model and color of coffee maker to fit her lifestyle.

She’s the planner, meticulously researching such things. I’ve always been much less concerned with the details, always terrified that things will never actually work out the way I’d hoped, and relieved on the occasions they actually did.

We only had one other errand to run before going to the Nespresso Store.

We knew the drill already, because we’d done it before: The undressing, the wand, the little black circle appearing on screen with the even smaller white object inside. But we’re not well-versed enough to understand what’s missing this time from the last, to be listening for the heartbeat that’s supposed to be there, but isn’t. It’s not until the nurse actually says so that the information can even begin to process.

And so it takes a moment. 

And then you’re being ushered back into a private room, so you don’t have to sit out in the waiting area as your brain scrambles to catch up.

And the doctor tells you how sorry she is and explains the three options, all awful, of the disposal of the failed ball of cells that was supposed to be your child.

And even if it’s not your fault, and you did nothing wrong, it doesn’t help to hear the doctor say that. They don’t know. Nobody really knows, if it was actually the sushi that you’re pretty sure it’s still fine to eat, or the Peloton rides that are supposed to be good for you, or any other little decision you’ve made along the way. It still feels like it must be your fault, one or the other of you, or your collective reproductive incapabilities.

And that provokes grief, I suppose. But what, really, are you even grieving?

And anyway, it’s not even really your grief to feel. It’s your wife who has had to prepare for the life she’ll never deliver and the physical and emotional pain of delivering that failure instead.

And it’s not like the pain of losing an actual child, one that you held in your arms and sang softly to at night and tricked into liking vegetables and taught how to throw a curveball. But it’s still something.

And now you have to tell the small cadre of people you told the promising news to and deliver them their own, special disappointment and heartbreak.

And, sure, they’re your closest friends and family members, the ones who you’re pretty sure love you unconditionally. But you still have to tell them, because you burdened them with the same tenuous good news in the first place. And while they probably will still continue to love you unconditionally, while several of them have even gone through the same loss, they’ll always know and remember this loss for you.

And at least you know you’re even capable of starting this process, which already makes you more fortunate than a lot of people.

And there’s no real additional risk of this happening again, according to the doctor, just because it happened this time.

And that’s good to know, but this also gives you a second chance to rethink all the things you’ve thought about before, about what kind of world you’d be bringing a new life into. About a tenuous democracy teetering on the brink of collapse. About a world warming and dying from our own inability and refusal to do what needs to be done to stop it.

And maybe even if you do put all those fears aside again and decide once again to join mankind’s march into the future, it still won’t take. Now you know, if you didn’t already before, how much of it, of everything, is out of your hands, no matter how meticulously you plan every detail.

We didn’t make it to the Nespresso Store. Like the Bloomingdale’s in which it resides, it feels like the kind of place for people richer and more grand than us, the kinds in magazines with the perfect hair and loving families. Like the rest of the plebes, maybe we’ll just order from the catalog. Or maybe someday, the next time we run errands across town, or on a different trip somewhere down the line, we’ll actually get to go inside.

---

I’d considered — and reconsidered, and reconsidered — exactly when to write and publish this. The deadline I’d settled on in my brain was the 20-week ultrasound, the one in which you learn, for the first time, whether your baby-to-be may have any major, possibly fatal birth defects. You have to pick some time to tell your friends and family that you’re expecting, despite all the many things that might still go wrong.

That was yesterday. Everything looks as good as could be expected. If it hadn’t, we may have been confronted with a truly awful decision to make. We are lucky and thankful that wasn’t the case.

We are also incredibly fortunate to live in a place that has not gone out of its way to impose laws that those who draft them often barely understand which threaten the health and safety of women. But even that may not matter soon, if we don’t pass national protections for women’s healthcare.

You may have seen that, this week in Texas, a federal judge is set to rule on whether to restrict access to one of the two drugs used to induce a medical abortion. That drug, mifepristone, is used in more than half of the abortions in our country and its restriction would impact tens of millions of women. There’s no reason to believe that, if this ruling overthrows the FDA’s approval for this drug, that other options wouldn’t be targeted next by the groups that have spent a generation making this their mission.

We live in a country in which people support a woman’s right to make her own decisions about having an abortion in most or all cases by a 61-37 margin. An identical 61 percent supported an effort to make this law via the Women’s Health Protection Act, according to this 2021 poll. While there is a ceiling to any issue’s level of support, I can’t help but think those numbers might be even higher if everyone understood the many reasons women need these drugs, even when they don’t want to have an abortion.

Miscarriage doesn’t end with that emotionally traumatic doctor’s visit. When my wife miscarried, she was given three different options for resolving her medical situation. She could take misoprostol, the second of the aforementioned pills. She could undergo a medical suction procedure. Or she could wait and see if her body managed to resolve the situation on its own. None of these are things anyone wants to have to do. They only get worse later in unviable pregnancies.

She chose the first option; despite several days of discomfort, it didn’t work. Rather than risk her physical health by allowing decomposing tissue to continue to sit inside of her, which can take weeks and potentially cause complications, she made the decision to have the medical procedure. Even after the emotional trauma of miscarriage, complicated by the multifaceted frustrations of not being able to resolve the situation, she still had to be driven to the hospital across town, through a snowstorm, to be sedated and undergo surgery.

It is possible that she would have been alright without it. It is insane that, depending on where she lives in this increasingly retrograde country, she may not have had that option.

---

We’re not out of the woods yet, but then again, we’ll never really be. That 20-week deadline itself is an illusion.

Because that’s the thing about kids, even before they’re real, actual kids, breathing air, there is no such thing as a finish line. We’re conditioned — tricked, really — into thinking there is, in some way, whether societally or as some measure of survival instinct. We compartmentalize these little milestones into boxes to keep from getting overwhelmed by the enormity of it all. Once you commit to having a child, you’re embarking on a lifelong endeavor, no matter what lies ahead.

And despite all the generally positive signs, the doctor flagged one thing for a future visit. Her legs, while still in the normal range, are a little on the short side. Maybe it’s something to worry about; maybe it’s just the natural expression of the fact that both her parents also have short legs; maybe she won’t be good at or enjoy running, or jumping, or kicking, or cycling, or playing soccer.

Even if she doesn’t at first, maybe she’ll grow into it.