Episode 156: An Immigrant's Tale
/Show transcript:
Welcome to The Broad Experience, the show about women, the workplace, and success. I’m Ashley Milne-Tyte.
This time…coming to a new country …settling into the culture…and working within it…all that experience can help when the unexpected happens.
“I adapted pretty quickly, you know, this is my new circumstance and I have to figure out how to go forward from here. Obviously I look back, but I can't be tied to that because it's going to weigh me down.”
Coming up on The Broad Experience.
I first spotted Fernanda Santos’s name in the newspaper – this was more than five years ago now…she was reporting for the New York Times, and I used to read her stories from the US border with Mexico.
Today she teaches journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University, specifically, narrative writing and bilingual journalism – her first language is Portuguese. She also speaks English and Spanish.
“I think I've wanted to be something along the lines of a journalist since I was, as far back as I can remember. And the reason is that I have always loved to find out about other people's lives. I've always loved to ask questions and listen to their stories. And I've always loved to write. I come from a family of storytellers. I'm from Brazil originally, from a very special place in Brazil called Bahia, um, the state of Bahia, the city of Salvador, and my family has indigenous roots. So the idea of telling stories was, has always been very present in my life.”
Her dad grew up very poor but as a young man he got a job at a local bank and eventually he made a career as an economist. In the 80s his job transferred him and the whole family to Rio. Fernanda says she was a young teenager when she moved there…
“And really got to experience so much of the inequality that defines Brazil and became fascinated with the idea of actually learning about the lives of these people, so, you know, that's sort of what put me on this path that eventually brought me here to this country in 1998 to go to graduate school.”
In her twenties she was working for this business magazine…and she got to travel a lot in South America, which she loved. And that’s pretty much what brought her to the US to study – the love of going somewhere different, experiencing a different culture…
“I never came here with the idea of, of staying. That wasn't my plan really. I came so that I could go back to Brazil with a master's degree and say, ‘Hey, I went to the United States. I got a master's degree in journalism,’ and there's something to be said about going to graduate school in the United States in Brazil that goes a long way and so I had this grand plan. I'm just going to go back and work for my, for, for one of Rio's leading newspapers and I'm just going to be a reporter in the communities, in the favelas, like writing about the lives of these people who, you know, we see every day, we cross paths with every day, but whose lives we know very, very little about. Um, but, but then I never did. I never went back.”
After graduate school in Boston she found she qualified to stay in the US for another year through a specific work program… so she went to a job fair…there were jobs available at various local newspapers in Massachusetts…
“…and I was also interviewed by a man who, um, I sort of fell in love at first sight, which was very bizarre. I felt that it was totally inappropriate to be talking to someone and feeling inside my head. Like, I really would love to go out with this guy.”
It turned out the feeling was mutual…
“…because he had my resume, which had my phone number, which led him to call me and offer me an unpaid internship. And I said, I don't work for free.
AM-T: Good for you!
“Yeah. And I don't, and I tell everybody, don't, we are worth something. Even if it's to pick up, to make somebody's coffee and bring it to that person, you are giving that person more time to work on whatever it is that person is doing. Therefore you were giving that person the opportunity to make money, which means that your job is valuable. So I was actually very outraged. I don't remember in Brazil ever hearing anything about unpaid internships. And when I was offered that, I totally thought I was being exploited. Which of course, of course if you are working for free, you are being exploited. And he said, well, um, let me see what I can pay you. And so we started talking on the phone and the conversation went on for, I don't know, maybe an hour and he said, can I call you tomorrow?”
He did, after he got off work at 11p.m. and they talked till early the next morning. That was the beginning of a month of late-night calls. After 30 days, Fernanda told this guy, Mike, that she thought they should go out.
Meanwhile she landed a job at another local paper, not his – this job was in Springfield, Massachusetts. And she and Mike started dating. Then pretty quickly they moved in together. She says she had no idea what the culture of New England was like. She says the communities she reported on were very white, quite reserved, quite affluent. She says when she went to report on an event or meeting…
“People were very nice and respectful of me, but at the same time I always felt like I was the exotic plant in the room.”
The people she was reporting on were as curious about her, as she was about them. She came to love the area, in part because Massachusetts was her husband’s home. It’s where she first learned about American life.
Still, she and Mike were ready to move to New York a few years later – they were married by now, and Fernanda landed a job at the New York Daily News, and eventually at the New York Times. She reported on New York City for several years, got promoted. Also during this time she and Mike had a daughter, Flora.
They loved city life, but they lived in a fairly small apartment in Queens – there was no outdoor space. So when she was offered another promotion - to be the Times’s bureau chief in Phoenix, Arizona…she said yes. There’d be more space for her daughter to run around, she’d have more autonomy…
“So we came to Arizona with that in mind, you know, it's gonna be a great opportunity for me professionally. I'll be in a border state. And that was long before the border was anything like what it is today. So I really got to experience also the borderlands for what it really is, this kind of third country. Um, not quite the United States, not quite Mexico with amazing people and rich culture.”
And they had a house – with a yard, and a pool, and wonderful views over the city…Mike was working as a consultant now, but spending a lot of time looking after Flora while Fernanda went off on assignment. She loved the variety of her job…but the hours could be punishing. She traveled a lot, spent a lot of weekends working, didn’t feel she could say no to any of this. It was just the job.
And then after five happy years in Arizona her bosses told her, her time was up – she had to come back to New York. Fernanda was the main earner in the household, had been for years now…and even though she worried about how unaffordable New York had become, she started looking for housing, worrying about schools, thinking about the commute.
One day she’s on a real estate app scrolling through apartment after apartment…
“And Mike looks at me and says, what's your purpose in life? And I said, what do you mean? And I was, I was actually quite mad at him because this is not a time to have an existential conversation, you know, it's like real life here we're talking about. And he said, no, I mean, this is really important. What's your purpose in life? And I said, well, you know, I just wanna be happy. I want to spend time with the people I love. I want to do something I love, I want to write more. I want to be a great example for my kid, but I want to be happy. I want to spend time with you guys. I'm always out. I'm always on the road. Even when I'm home, I'm not home ‘cause I'm working. And he said, well, then quit. Why do you have to go back to the New York Times? And I said, well, what am I going to do in Arizona? And he said, well, we'll figure it out.”
They were still thinking about it when a month or so later something landed in her lap – she got an informal job offer from the journalism school where she now works. She mulled it over, she hadn’t ever thought about teaching…and then, her paper announced it was offering buyouts. That was the final push. She took a buyout, said yes to the teaching job. She and her family embarked on a big summer adventure before she started the new job. Everything felt like it was falling into place.
But when they returned, things did not go as expected.
Fernanda, Mike and Flora had an amazing summer that year - they went to Hawaii, spent time riding horses at a dude ranch in Wyoming…they did things she and Mike had always wanted to do. Then it was time to go back to Phoenix, and get back to work.
“I started my new job in August, 2017. I really liked it. In September Mike started complaining about back pain and being that men don't have a lot of tolerance to pain I was like, you know, you probably pulled a muscle, take some Advil, three days, get some rest and you'll feel better. And he did.”
But the pain came back.
“And he started waking up in the middle of the night with pain and pacing around the house. And I remember hearing the flip flops, you know, the sound of the flip flops on the tile floor.”
He went to a doctor, the doctor told him it was a gastric complaint, gave him some medicine. But one day, he and Fernanda were working together at home when he said you know I think I need to go to the ER, this pain is really bad. Fernanda was about to go to a big meeting with her boss but she said please call me and tell me what happens. Later that day…
“And I got a call from him and he said, they found a mass in my pancreas, and they are going to have to, they want to admit me. And I said, okay, well, I'm on my way there.”
She asked the parents of Flora’s best friend to pick her up from her piano lesson and take her to their house.
“So I went to the hospital, obviously I was there with him. He was by then getting morphine. So he went from, I mean, being at home and I'm telling him to take Advil to being hospitalized and taking morphine. Mike was hospitalized September 29th. It was a Friday. On October 2nd, he was positively diagnosed with stage three advanced pancreatic cancer. On November 1st he died. From diagnosis to death, we only had 30 days.
She was a widow at 44 years old.
“With a child who absolutely adored her father ‘cause he was her everything while I was out in the world reporting for the New York Times, never worrying about her because I knew she had everything she needed and more. He was a better mom than me. You know, he, he was very patient. Um, he loved to play. He would sit down and play with her. And, um, I'd have had a lot of time for that cause it was, I was so consumed with my work, you know, and so, um, I, you know, had to [Ashley: how old was Flora when she lost her dad?] Flora was eight, so she was old enough to understand what death means. She had been going to a Lutheran school. I'm not Lutheran and nor am I…I'm a very pan religious person. I believe in a higher power. And I call him God, but I don't care if you call him by another name or her. And I believe in saints. We're big Virgin Mary people in my family. So it was good that she had that religious grounding because it made things a little less difficult to explain that, you know, when you die, you go to heaven, you don't disappear.”
Mike died the day after Flora’s favorite day of the year – Halloween. Fernanda thinks he may have hung on until then because he didn’t want to spoil it for Flora. She’d gone out trick or treating that night, and she was still asleep on the morning of November 1st when her father died.
“I had to tell her something, right, the first thing she asked is, where's Daddy? And I said, Daddy went to heaven. And I told her that I saw the angel that came and picked him up and it was a little girl angel like her and wore glasses like she did and, and the angel carry him to heaven and, and he was now there. And uh, obviously she was very upset. And the first thing she told me was, the very first thing she was able to tell me was, if you get married again, I am never going to go to your wedding. I am not going to your wedding.”
Ashley: “Wow…”
“Yes. So I said, well Flora, Mommy's not really thinking about getting married again, but noted.”
Flora went back to school quickly, but Fernanda’s employer told her to take time off, and she did. She needed it.
“Both my employer and my colleagues were incredible. Um, I honestly did not expect to be so well-treated, uh, not because it was badly treated before, but because I had come from a mentality that, I was led to believe in the type of job that I did and working for the places I worked for and the people I worked for. That your job always comes first. And it's true that they never said that to me. And I may have completely made that up in my head, but people don't make things up out of thin air. Right? I always felt guilty about saying, I can't go tonight to this thing because it's my daughter's birthday party and I, you know, I'm kind of hosting people here, and I would feel horribly guilty.
Actually, my last Mother's Day card from Mike, I found it yesterday. I was cleaning the office. I'm trying little by little to organize the office and it said ‘Happy Mother's Day. You know, the best thing about you is that you put up with me, Happy Mother's Day. We miss you.’ And I must have been traveling somewhere right in the, in may, mother's day, 2017 and then I thought, I thought to myself, yes, I was in Naco, Arizona working on a video project with a video journalist who was seven months pregnant. And we were both spending our mother's day in…We stayed in this hotel in Bisbee and we were both there. She was about to become a mother for the first time. And I had my child with her father, and we were both working, and I didn't want that in my life anymore.
In the weeks after Mike’s death she stayed home – she spent a lot of time alone, she wrote, she looked at their finances…and she fielded questions about her future…
“I had a lot of people ask me, not, not now, not anymore, but in the weeks after my husband died, ‘are you going to go back to Brazil?’ As if my existence here was predicated on his existence, I was nothing without him. There was no purpose for me being here if he weren't here with me.”
AM-T: Yeah, that’s interesting.
“Yeah, and I moved here in 1998. Mike died in 2017 I had been here a long time. I had achieved more professional prominence than he did. I made more than he did. His treatment was paid for by the health plan that I, you know, that was part of my job. I mean, yet the question was not, you know, so what's your plan going forward? It was, are you going back to Brazil?”
Apart from anything else, she and Mike had a daughter – who is a mix of backgrounds from both sides, and very American…neither of them was going anywhere.
Something else she heard a lot in those days, both from colleagues and on social media – was the comment, you’re so strong. It took her by surprise a bit. She says she did accept help from people in the wake of Mike’s death, it wasn’t like she was doing everything on her own…but…
“I also have always been someone who had to adapt to new things and new situations. I left my country, I came here, I had to adapt. You know, I moved within the United States. I moved to different places, I covered different communities. I would go from one community to another, completely different on the same day sometimes. So it's, it requires, journalism trained me for this because it requires this constant adaptability. So when it came time to adapt to this new life, I'm not going to say that it was easy. It's not easy still. I miss my husband every day, but I adapted pretty quickly, you know, this is my new circumstance and I have to figure out how to go forward from here. You know, obviously I look back, but I can't be tied to that because it's going to weigh me down. And I think that people just didn't expect that kind of reaction. So I would get from them all the time. You're so strong. Gosh, you're so strong.”
She wasn’t fitting into their ideas of what a grieving widow should look like although she certainly was grieving. Fernanda says before she met Mike she was someone who’d say, I’m never going to get married – why do women need to get married? She hated the societal pressure that’s put on women to marry. And as she told Flora right after Mike died, meeting someone was far from her mind.
But gradually she spent less time at home, more time out in the world…
“Mike and I used to go to a gym together. Uh, obviously, I'm sure people who have gone through a loss will understand that it became very difficult for me to go to that gym, because of the memories. But about a year or so after his death, I decided to go back, because it's very convenient and costs $10 a month.”
And this guy approaches her on one of her visits – he’s a salesman for the gym, he was asking if she’d like to sign up for a personal training package.
“So he came to me and I was very rude to him telling him that I was not interested. And I wasn't interested because I didn't have money. My budget had no room for personal training. But he was incredibly caring and sweet and I felt bad about being rude to him. So, you know, a week or so later, I apologized and I explained to him that I was a widow and I had a child and I had to be very careful about my money.”
This man, Clint, he was kind and solicitous…and they began spending time together…
“…and we just struck up this friendship that, you know, evolved into companionship. And that's when I realized that I didn't need a man, but I wanted company. I wanted company in my life.”
They went out for a while, Clint met Flora, then Fernanda suddenly pulled back, she felt it was all going too fast…then, on Flora’s advice, she reconsidered. And today, the three of them live together, in the house Mike and Fernanda bought when they moved to Phoenix.
“And Mike is very much present. You know, I'm looking at a picture of him right now. There are pictures of him all over the house. We talk about him all the time. And I think one of the things that most endeared me to Clint was the fact that he never, never has never attempted to compete with Mike or to occupy the space that was his, you know, he is creating his own space. So it's, you know, it's a really special thing to be able to come to a place where you love someone deeply. You miss that person every moment of your existence, yet you love someone else too. And maybe that's what being strong means, you know, if that's what being strong means, I want to be that kind of strong.”
When I approached Fernanda to come on the show it was right after I’d read an article of hers in the New York Times about her new family life; and in it she said Clint had lost his job at the gym back in March, right after the lockdown in Arizona started. But she wasn’t worried.
“It's only hard to be the breadwinner, the one who supports the home. If you expected something different. If you were raised as a woman expecting that one day you would marry a man who would give you a quote unquote, good life. I never expected that. I always worked for everything I have and I love my job. I love teaching, I love to write, I continue to write…the day to day load, I can handle it, you know, so Clint's unemployment, we can handle it. We're working on it. He's applying for jobs. He had a job interview yesterday. He might soon be hired, but maybe not. Who knows, but you know, we're in this together. And what better place to be as the world changes so profoundly than with people who love you and whom you love, you know, and weathering the storm together.”
And I just found out Clint did get that job. He’s still in sales but instead of gym memberships and personal training packages he is selling…baking ingredients to donut shops, bakeries, and restaurants.
Thanks to Fernanda Santos for being my guest on this show. I have some photos of Fernanda and her family – you’ll find those and links to some of her articles under this episode at The Broad Experience.com.
That’s The Broad Experience for this time. If you like the show and haven’t given it a review on Apple Podcasts I’d love it if you could – reviews help independent shows like mine find new listeners.
I’m Ashley Milne-Tyte. Thanks for listening. See you next time.