Soap is cheap and water is free.
My mother's refrain echoed throughout my childhood. It was her reminder to us that living in a state of physical chaos and personal dishevelment just because we were without immediate means was unacceptable. It was her not so subtle way of saying that things like class and self-respect should never be dependent on possessions or money.
A child of the depression, she spent her growing years watching her parents scratch out a living. She and my father married, then spent many additional years struggling to feed and warm their growing brood. I was born into the tail end of their deep financial struggles. By the time I was a toddler, my dad was finally able to trade working three part time jobs for one full time with benefits. (My older siblings still admonish me for not having gone through the worst of it--living in a house with no finished walls and a stove that barely worked.)
Through all of it, my mother insisted that no matter our financial circumstance, we would always look our best, have a presentable home, and act like the "respectable brats" she knew us to be.
It was something I took to heart as I made my way in the world.
My first apartment was a studio that I (barely) furnished with two cast off twin mattresses, a table from Goodwill, and a pet mouse that eventually got squished by the neighbor's broom when it escaped through a half-inch crack under the front door. The only window looked out onto a brick wall. Rent was $100 per month with heat and water included, and it was mine.
I walked to my college classes through a park near a local landmark hotel built in the 1920's. I lived on baked potatoes, and Ramen noodles, and had to carry my laundry several blocks to a coin laundromat. I had a radio but no television, and a land line phone for local calls only. Afternoons, I would sit on the mattress, eating my noodles, and write short stories longhand. I would make plans, envisioning my future.
It was my first tangible foothold on the long climb into a my life's journey.
My mother never accepted charity. It was a point of pride with her. She would rather starve, and sometimes it felt like we were. (Saltines not being such a hearty after school snack.)
I, however, cannot accurately count the number of times I have relied on the kindnesses of others to get me through. A home cooked meal here, some hand me down clothes there, an unused bus pass. Splitting rent between two paychecks because I couldn't afford to pay all of it on the first of the month. A formerly straight A student, I had skipped so much school my senior year of high school, the principal gave me special approval to graduate.
My high school principal, like so many others throughout my life, made an investment in my future, and he did it without spending a cent. It was a lesson I carried with me into my own career as a department and branch manager. Keep focused on the person; look at the whole picture. Don't be too quick to judge a person's potential; sometimes it gets trapped under mispent energy, and needs a kindly break to reemerge.
Those early adult years taught me the gift of resourcefulness. I learned to guard money as a last resort, sometimes ignoring it completely for long stretches of time, because it is too easily squandered if used in desperation or exuberance; I would hide money from myself and others. In later years, when I had gained some affluence, more than once I experienced the tone of a relationship change, where money was involved, to one of expectation instead of sharing. It is an unhappy place, to be loved in terms of what you can give, instead of who you are.
Today is Thanksgiving in North America. Traditionally, it is the start of excessive holiday spending. While it can be exciting to spoil each other with gifts, money and the things it buys is truly the least important thing we can give each other. At best it is a representation of life's meaning; at worst, it is a replacement.
In a society of rampant consumerism, we need to remember that money is merely another resource; it is a tool. Like a tool, it can be given, borrowed, or loaned, but it should never replace what is important. Because unlike what is truly important, money can be regained.
Money is not contentment. It is not happiness. It is not time together. It is not kindness. Money is not trust. It is not love. And for that part of me that hears my mother's voice echoing in my brain: it's not keeping a presentable house or acting like the respectable brat she knows me to be.
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| Baby Maria's Christening, August 1968 |
Happy Thanksgiving 2017!
