Stocking the Pantry

If necessity is the mother of invention then poverty is the abusive alcoholic step-father that forces you to do whatever it takes to avoid a beating. Growing up poor provides me with a constant reminder that if I want to eat, have shelter, electricity, healthcare, and running water then I'd better get up and go to work. Having a family only intensifies this motivation. I don't want my kids to experience the same misery that I lived through when I was their age. The thought of my children being hungry, homeless, and sick is enough to get me out the door everyday.

My wife and I don't have the same point of reference when it comes to what gets us going every day because she grew up in the protective bubble of the middle class. Her parents both worked, owned their own home, and though far from wealthy, my wife and her brother were never made to go without. So, she doesn't understand what makes me go to work when I'm sick, exhausted, or decide to put off taking a vacation until there's a little more money in the bank. I'm glad she doesn't and I'll be fucked everyway to Tuesday before I let her and our kids experience what has motivated me throughout adulthood.

In contrast, I often struggle to understand how my wife can be so confident that things like food, clothes, and medical care will just be there. This certainty makes it easy to forget that for a lot of people the basic necessities of life are almost never a given and having enough is a constant worry. For example, she and my daughter love to go to thrift stores in search of unique or vintage clothes. Now, I have nothing against thrift stores or those who shop in them, but I FUCKING REFUSE to wear anything from a thrift store. My wife doesn't understand why and has even suggested that I'm a bit materialistic and maybe a smidgen elitist. Well, what she doesn't understand is that she chooses to buy clothes at thrift stores. If she or my daughter can't find something in a thrift store they can go to a department store and get what they want. I didn't have that extra option. It was find it at a thrift store, or go without. Besides, thrift stores today are a lot different than when I grew up. The thrift stores of my youth were places where those who lacked and who had no other choice could keep themselves clothed. As a result, the offerings were usually old, thread bare, horribly outdated, and rarely fit my slight, disabled frame. So, it's not a matter of being materialistic or elitist. It's a matter of avoiding memories where my poverty meant that I had to exist in clothes that were old, ill fitting, and provided yet another reason to be picked on by my classmates on the playground. Now, even though my clothes are always purchased new, I don't buy expensive designer duds. So, I may have only clothes that were bought new, but they're modest and practical. It is a compromise that I can live with.

It always cracks me up when my wife says that she has to go to the store because there's nothing in the house for dinner. Well, there's probably not a large variety of the lean meats, bread, fresh vegetables, and cake for desert available that her upbringing promised would always be there. So, upon entering the kitchen I can usually throw something together with what we have on hand. Left over chicken, a few tortillas (an inexpensive California food staple almost always found in our homes) and a bit of cheese becomes quesadillas. Some Spam (when did Spam become expensive?), a bit of onion, some bell pepper, a few eggs, and some left over boiled potatoes becomes a stir fry. Grind up some graham crackers, heat up some canned pie filling, combine and top with whipped cream and you've got desert. Growing up, a trip to the store was problematic because the walk to the store (no car and no money for gas anyway) coupled with the scant food stamps with which to purchase those few extra items needed for dinner meant you made due with what you had. As a result, dinner might be beans, rice, and a canned vegetable, or pancakes with government commodity peanut butter. Contrary to my wife's experience growing up, a trip to the store for porkchops wasn't usually something we could just do.

Now that you're probably good and depressed it is probably pretty clear why I get up every day. I refuse to let the twisted wreckage of my past shadow my family's present. Always going sucks, but going hungry sucks worse.