Another cross-post -
Aug. 10th, 2006 01:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kyburgBecause if you thought I'd ever forget, you'd be wrong.
Nearly thirty years ago I was a single mother of three. Since getting child support orders enforced was damn near impossible I applied for and qualified to receive food stamps.
I would take the three kids (by bus) to the grocery. I had a list of what I needed to buy to feed them for the next 2-4 days, that being the limit I could carry by myself and still manage the kids. I knew, to the penny, how much I could spend.
I would shop, check out and count my change. My food was bought with the change.
One day a cashier sneered at me for being so ‘dis-organized’ I always came through the line twice. I lost it. I told him, at some length and with considerable volume, what my reason for coming through his line twice each trip was and ended up sobbing.
In the utter silence that followed an older woman stepped forward and began putting items on the belt; fresh fruit, chicken, bakery bread, band aids, and shampoo. She looked at the man behind her.
“What you got in there this child and her babies can’t afford? Thank your Maker and ante up. I’ll drive her home, don’t be shy about it bein’ too much. All of you, lookin’ down your noses at her, what you got she can’t afford? Try sparin’ a little somethin’ besides a nasty look.”
I ended up taking home nearly two hundred dollars in food and sundry items. I cried all the way home, while she drove. My kids ate grapes out of the bag like they were candy. I tried to tell her thank you and she shook her head.
“Just you promise me you won’t ever forget what that felt like, to have somone look nasty at you for bein’ poor. I kept that promise myself today. You keep it in your turn.”
--
I'm the third of four children raised by one parent, after my father accidentally killed himself before I seven years old.
Mom got her nursing credentials during WWII. She went back to school, renewed her nursing license and went back to work. She was lucky. So were we.
I grew up wearing anyone's hand-me downs that fit, came home from school to find the power turned off (gas, electric or both) and I stepped inside clothing stores twice a year. Once at back to school (and some years, not even then) and perhaps before summer began. Toy stores? Not at all. We would truck into Fedco in San Bernardino, and since Mom had tapped out the checking account (I don't know how, buying food d'ya think?), we often went home without anything because they wouldn't approve her checks anymore.
Mom had a job. She didn't qualify for any assistance. There was SSI and VA benefits, which probably kept a car in the garage. Barely.
My sister felt deprived; I just found ways around it. I've been complimented on my ability to "think outside the box." Frankly, every time I went to the box it was empty; why would I keep trying to work with an empty box?
The first two got scholarships, by the time I got there, most of them were gone. (Thank you, Reagan.) But we do have a doctorate, three master degrees and four bachelor degrees among the four of us. We drove cars that were only jettisoned when they caught fire or froze in place and wouldn't move any more. I've lived in some pretty "interesting" places, lemme tellya.
Complain? Well, you could, I guess. Wouldn't have changed anything. It was what it was.
..
People wonder why I pick up the check so much. And pass my good luck with shoes along.
It's not much. But when you have nothing - the little things nobody cares about can mean so much if somebody thinks of it.
Nearly thirty years ago I was a single mother of three. Since getting child support orders enforced was damn near impossible I applied for and qualified to receive food stamps.
I would take the three kids (by bus) to the grocery. I had a list of what I needed to buy to feed them for the next 2-4 days, that being the limit I could carry by myself and still manage the kids. I knew, to the penny, how much I could spend.
I would shop, check out and count my change. My food was bought with the change.
One day a cashier sneered at me for being so ‘dis-organized’ I always came through the line twice. I lost it. I told him, at some length and with considerable volume, what my reason for coming through his line twice each trip was and ended up sobbing.
In the utter silence that followed an older woman stepped forward and began putting items on the belt; fresh fruit, chicken, bakery bread, band aids, and shampoo. She looked at the man behind her.
“What you got in there this child and her babies can’t afford? Thank your Maker and ante up. I’ll drive her home, don’t be shy about it bein’ too much. All of you, lookin’ down your noses at her, what you got she can’t afford? Try sparin’ a little somethin’ besides a nasty look.”
I ended up taking home nearly two hundred dollars in food and sundry items. I cried all the way home, while she drove. My kids ate grapes out of the bag like they were candy. I tried to tell her thank you and she shook her head.
“Just you promise me you won’t ever forget what that felt like, to have somone look nasty at you for bein’ poor. I kept that promise myself today. You keep it in your turn.”
--
I'm the third of four children raised by one parent, after my father accidentally killed himself before I seven years old.
Mom got her nursing credentials during WWII. She went back to school, renewed her nursing license and went back to work. She was lucky. So were we.
I grew up wearing anyone's hand-me downs that fit, came home from school to find the power turned off (gas, electric or both) and I stepped inside clothing stores twice a year. Once at back to school (and some years, not even then) and perhaps before summer began. Toy stores? Not at all. We would truck into Fedco in San Bernardino, and since Mom had tapped out the checking account (I don't know how, buying food d'ya think?), we often went home without anything because they wouldn't approve her checks anymore.
Mom had a job. She didn't qualify for any assistance. There was SSI and VA benefits, which probably kept a car in the garage. Barely.
My sister felt deprived; I just found ways around it. I've been complimented on my ability to "think outside the box." Frankly, every time I went to the box it was empty; why would I keep trying to work with an empty box?
The first two got scholarships, by the time I got there, most of them were gone. (Thank you, Reagan.) But we do have a doctorate, three master degrees and four bachelor degrees among the four of us. We drove cars that were only jettisoned when they caught fire or froze in place and wouldn't move any more. I've lived in some pretty "interesting" places, lemme tellya.
Complain? Well, you could, I guess. Wouldn't have changed anything. It was what it was.
..
People wonder why I pick up the check so much. And pass my good luck with shoes along.
It's not much. But when you have nothing - the little things nobody cares about can mean so much if somebody thinks of it.
