Why No Baby?
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I’m going to dive right into something very personal with you. My wife and I struggled mightily to have a child, so much so that we invoked the involvement of specialists of female torture called embryologists and other fancy names. Yes, we went down the in-vitro fertilization path, much to the dismay of our bank account and our general emotional health. This was as difficult a time in our lives as I think we could possibly stand.
In the midst of our fickle fertility foxtrot, we started to become a little more aware and a little more sensitive to our surroundings.
For years now, one of our favorite places to eat in our hometown is a Cantonese restaurant which we affectionately call “Sam’s” because that’s the name of the cook and co-owner. It has a more formal name, The New Peking Restaurant, but “Sam’s” is much more efficient among friends. His wife, Jessica, is the main waitress and hostess. They have a teenage daughter who occasionally works at the restaurant, as well as a toddler who makes occasional appearances.
Sam’s is housed in a ramshackle former single-family home on a busy street sandwiched in between an historic neighborhood featuring rows of early 1900’s craftsman-style homes and less savory quick-lube shops, car washes, and motels that rent by the week. The exterior is in desperate need of repair. The cedar shingle roof likely carried a thirty year guarantee about fifty years ago and the siding hasn’t seen a fresh coat of paint over a decade. The interior is eclectic with traditional Chinese décor flanked by things such as giant Heineken cardboard cutouts.
But the look and feel of Sam’s isn’t the draw, it’s the food and their wonderful personalities that bring you back. While I don’t know the story of Sam and Jessica, I can almost guarantee their real names are not Sam and Jessica. They likely migrated here as adults, evidenced by a still-present language barrier, but they definitely get by on the English they do know. Sam is roughly 5’ 6” and sinewy – he appears to have about 3% body fat – and he never stops smiling. He is always having fun with his customers, complete with a biting sense of humor. Upon each visit, you can be assured of a personal visit from Sam to your table. Chances are if you’ve been there a couple of times, he’ll even remember your name.
By now you’ve got to be wondering what the heck Sam’s has got to do with kids, babies, or fertility. Allow me to get to the point. For my wife and me, Sam’s became an ongoing painful joke of sorts – a microcosm of implicit and unknowing irreverence towards our plight. For years, Sam and Jessica would ask us the same questions, but what was always in good fun became fairly painful as we began learning the challenges we faced in creating offspring.
“Michael, Michael, how are you?” Sam asks enthusiastically.
“I’m well Sam, how are you?”
“Oh, good good!” he responds, eyes widening with excitement. “And you…you are looking so beautiful!” he says to my wife - a typical salutation we had become accustomed to.
“You have baby?” he asks.
“No, Sam – no baby.”
“ohhh…no baby? You like borrow my baby? Maybe you like and you have one?” he proposes.
We laugh, but of course, we had heard this sales pitch a dozen times by now.
Sam slides over towards my wife, gesturing towards me he says, “Why he give you no baby? He seem like good, strong husband – should give you baby!”
“Oh, maybe someday Sam.” She said.
Just tell him my boys are worthless and see what he does, I think to myself…
“Okay then, enjoy your dinner. Thank you for coming.”
Sam’s barbs were all in good fun, but if his Mongolian Beef dish wasn’t so good, I can’t say we would keep coming back for the punishment. As we recover with some tea, Jessica brings the traditional egg-flower soup for my wife and hot-and-sour soup for me.
“HI MIKE!.”
Jessica was as pleasant as could be, but if I could bestow two new characteristics on her, it would be a voice that was several octaves lower than her current dead-waking-shrill and that she would learn the definition of “inside voice.” But we loved her nonetheless.
“YOU HAVE BABY???”
Kill me, I think.
“no, no baby” I say.
“NO BABY? WHY NO BABY???”
Kill me, now…
“oh, we’ve got a dog that keeps us pretty busy,” I say.
“OKAY, ENJOY!!!”
How are you, do you have a baby, enjoy your meal. It was the same recipe each visit, whether we were dining in or taking out. As our struggle to procreate wore on, the “WHY NO BABY” mantra became a bit of comic relief every time we were reminded of our predicament by chance or by people too ignorant or insensitive to know better. It helped us find humor in what wasn’t funny at all.
In that way, Sam’s was really a blessing for us.
Delisyus says...
This won’t seem like a lot of comfort but it’s worse in the Philippines for people struggling with infertility because we’re just a really nosy lot… everywhere you go, whether it’s a relative or friend or new acquaintance, you will be asked that question… and if you say that you don’t have kids yet, you’d be asked if you didn’t want one and why wouldn’t you want one etc. etc.