poor enough
10/30 November 10, 2007

It�s shopping weekend--our family tradition of going grocery shopping for the shelter as our expression of thanksgiving.

I�d actually let it slip my mind this year--Spouse called me from work to ask if we were doing it this year, and I was sort of flummoxed. That it had slipped my mind, and that he was questioning whether or not we were doing it.

Of course we are. Even in the hardest times, we�ve always managed to do this. As Spouse says--you can always do something. I have pretty strong feelings on this subject, stemming from those years in my early 20s when we pretty much didn�t have a fucking thing.

I have been poor enough, at times in my life, to make the issue very personal to me. I have been, at various times in my life:

• Poor enough to live in my car.


• Poor enough to not have a car.


• Poor enough to wear my husband�s old, USAF-issue horn rims because I couldn�t afford any contacts or glasses of my own.


• Poor enough to fashion my own sanitary napkins out of rags, because we couldn�t afford to buy any.


• Poor enough to deliberately pick fights with my family, because that was easier than explaining I couldn�t afford to come home for Christmas--even without presents--again.


• Poor enough to wash my clothes in the only washer I could afford--a 1950�s Maytag wringer model--and hang them on clotheslines in my apartment dining room to dry.


• Poor enough to go without a telephone from 1986 to 1992.


• Poor enough to nearly die of pneumonia more than once because we couldn�t afford the doctor or the hospital and we didn�t have insurance.