Chance

A story of resilience, choice, and the awakening to a life filled with justice.

As children, we become the greatest observers. We see patterns, we sense change and most of all we feel. We can’t comprehend the answers to most of these observations, so they become a mystery that is forever engrained into our memories. Chance was that mystery for me until I built up the courage to ask.

Tacoma, WA June 2013

A small blue urn, beige with a single droplet of darker blue paint splashed on the face of the ceramic piece. My late great uncle and famous Japanese ceramic artist, Akio Takamori, sculpted and painted this urn. The dark droplet stained on the front meant something to him.

“There’s no perfection in anything,” he would say.

I’d admire this urn with such curiosity as to what could fit inside. It was after a few months of this burning curiosity that I noticed something else- something so small if you didn’t seek for its beauty you would have missed it. A single white card the height of a grown-up thumb with the smallest footprint I had ever seen. Below the print, “Chance: May 28, 2001,” was written in gold letters. It attracted me with this energy I simply cannot name, just like the urn did. A certain gravity came with these objects, a certain blueness. But the footprint struck a chord in me that built up my courage to ask.

“Mama, who’s Chance?”

Her fingers tensed up as she French braided my hair. She took a minute breathing very slowly. I figured she was gathering her thoughts. This was hard for her to talk about.

“About six years ago your dad and I were so excited to find out we were going to start a family. Everything was going smoothly. I’d go in for my checkups every month or so. It was at 13 weeks that things started to shift. I got really sick.”

“Did you get the flu?”

“No, baby, it was a different kind of sick. The doctors found tumors in me while I was pregnant.”

“Were you scared? Scared for your baby?”

“I was frightened, but I was put on bed rest so that nothing bad would happen. I stopped working, I stopped going anywhere and all I could do was sit in bed. Somehow it became exhausting. I lived like this until 20 weeks when my body got really confused and went into labor.”

“Is labor what made you have a baby?”

“Exactly. I started getting contractions but knew it was way too soon for baby Chance to be born. Your dad rushed me to the hospital–we really didn’t know what was going to happen. I fought so hard for 20 weeks to try and make this pregnancy work, but it was a shits show from the beginning. Excuse my language.”

She finished braiding my scalp and started on the section of hair hanging by my shoulders.

“My body was trying to tell me I had a choice, which is so important to listen to when you’re life and future are in danger. The doctors told me that there was a procedure I could go through called D & C which is considered a late-term abortion. Do you know what an abortion is, Ruby?”

“No, is it scary?”

“It is very scary, but it also is what kept me alive. I made a choice to go through with the procedure that accelerated Chance’s birth knowing that she would not be able to survive.”

—

This conversation I had with my mother was such a fundamental part of my being for every day after that I lived and breathed American air. I’d step foot into public grounds and look at women differently. Although I would never know what they have or haven’t gone through I’d observe how they carried themselves through public–with a distinct confidence that made me feel weirdly safe. That may have been why I mistakenly ran up and hugged so many women in the grocery store because I thought they were my mom–the energy they gave off had this warmth to it that radiated the same safety my mom provided me. What I also came to figure out is that most of these women that I observed out in the world had wounds just like my mom. And the older I got the more stories I would hear. Yet still, they carried themselves with this safe presence that I continued to gravitate towards. The true turning point in my understanding of the gravity of the wounds that women live in the United States took a few years. I was coming of age, freshly fourteen, and read a headline in the New York Times that I simply couldn’t understand.

“Roe V. Wade Overturned.” Not a single word I could understand, but I looked around the room and saw the color fleshed out of my aunt’s usually tanned face. Tears streaming down her sharp cheeks. Fear in her glossy eyes. My mom, right across from her, is the same. The sharp fear in the air is palpable and it feels like a spinning ball entering my body that I cannot control. I had no idea what this meant, but to the two wounded women in the room, I could see that it stabbed them right in the chest. Once I understood the impact of this headline, I yet again remembered the conversation I had with my mom as a little girl as she braided my hair. And that’s when it all changed. Now I understood why she was so scared. This was the first time that politics hit close to home for me. What would have happened to her if she made that choice without the protection of Roe V. Wade? Anger infused into my blood, I needed to do something. I felt like screaming.

Austin, TX June 2022

“Fuck Greg Abbot! Fuck Greg Abbot! Fuck Greg Abbot!” I heard echo off the buildings in downtown Austin. We had just finished our barbecue lunch and were heading back home. The heat was unbearable, everyone was losing steam. As we drove closer and closer to the capitol building even more people seemed to be swarming. What was going on?

“Can we get out of the car?” I exclaimed.

My brother slammed his head back into the neckrest of his seat and closed his eyes in a very unsettling manner. His body language is painfully obvious.

“Ok, well, Ari you don’t have to come. Just drop us off,” my Mom added.

We hopped out of the car and a chill swept down from my head to the bottom of my feet. Maybe it was because of the harshness of the heat or what I saw in front of me. Thousands of people weaved through each street, marching. Chanting. Crying. Sweating. I had to be a part of this. My anger from earlier that morning pulled me to this protest. We walk amongst mostly women with signs that are deeply disturbing. One sign illustrated a clothes hanger in a dark red marker, below saying “Fine I’ll do it myself.” Another,

“keep laws out of our uterus.” I observed the anger and fear in each of their eyes and yet again, I felt safe among them. Everyone there had a story to tell about womanhood and wanted it to be heard. That was when I realized this was so much bigger than the stories of my family's women. I had grown up with the stories of my grandma and her core beliefs in feminism and my mom's strength in making her own choice braided into my being. Now, I witnessed thousands of women expressing their stories. It felt so human. It felt so pure. It felt so beautiful. It was hands down the most empowering moment of my entire life. First aid helpers sprinted down the boulevard through the side streets throwing out water bottles and having us catch them. Soon our steps became shorter until we came to a stop. Everyone stopped, crowding an entire square outside of the capitol building. Shouting continued until people started lying down. I felt the concrete beneath me and my fingers sizzled. How were they laying down on this? The crowd’s shouting turned to murmurs and then to absolute silence. Not a single word, yet it still felt so loud. I was completely and utterly overwhelmed by the silence.

Tokyo, Japan November 2024

I mourn today for my country. The weight of my tears dripped into my hands as I thought about one thing. Women. My grandma, my mom, and my future daughter. A generation of women whose fiery passion for equality and social justice will forever be aflame. When I heard the news about a felon elected into office who goes against everything that I believe down to my bones I felt completely and utterly defeated. I called the one person who infused her passion for justice and strength into me, my mom. She told me,

“You are not powerless. What you can do is breathe in hope for the future and exhale your crippling fear.” So I did just so. I exhale my fear that my future daughter can not make a life-changing choice for herself to protect her body. I exhale my fear for her future when men in politics make choices that violate her freedoms and dent her dignity. I exhale my fear that my mom will have to witness me, her baby, go through what she went through without choice.

Next year I will be moving to a state that has completely banned access to safe abortion care and has proven to completely disregard women’s rights. This is a scary time for me and at first, I was completely drawn away from the idea of moving there, as any logical liberal-minded 18-year-old girl would, but then I realized something. I can’t live in fear. The very act of living in fear and escaping the wounds of our country gives into the systems that are breaking us down. If we all live in fear, then who will be there to show our strength and our resilience? I need to be there to be a part of the fight. I need to be there to stand amongst the women who don’t have the liberties I do to stand up and leave. I need to be there for the little girls whose futures are at stake. I need to be there for my mom who has instilled her values of compassion, choice, and justice in me from the moment she started braiding my hair.