Last Christmas, while I was visiting my brother, Rob, he
recounted an interview he had with a recruiter from Cornell University.
I only vaguely remember someone coming to our house. I
wasn’t allowed in the room, since it didn’t concern me, and it was something
important to my brother’s future. At the time, he was going to be a doctor.
Rob was a gymnast in high school, and was hoping for an
athletic scholarship so that he could afford the Ivy League university.
He told me how the man looked at him, at my parents, and at
the furniture in our home, as if he were afraid he might catch something.
“It was humiliating,” he told me.
The recruiter told him there weren’t any gymnastic
scholarships available, and that he’d never be able to afford the university.
It was as if this stranger thought Rob was crazy for even applying – despite
the fact that he was accepted academically.
Until that interview, Rob never knew we were poor.
Until that conversation last Christmas, I never knew we were poor growing up.
Weren’t we middle class? My dad wore a suit and tie to work,
and carried a briefcase, just like the middle class dads on TV at the time.
We attended Catholic school, where our parents had to pay
book fees each year for the workbooks that we wrote in, and in those days,
monthly fees to ride the school bus to and from school. In high school, my
parents paid tuition for my Catholic education.
I had a firm idea of poor. I had cousins who were poor.
We took very good care of our toys and bikes, as those
cousins depended on many of our hand-me-down toys from Santa. I even knew of
people who had to do without.
We lived in the suburbs – almost out in the country in those
days – in our own home, with a front lawn, and a backyard complete with
sandbox, swings, and a sliding board.
The poor relations lived in suburbs that were more like the
city, and their yard had few of the things ours did.
Yes, I had hand-me-down clothes from those same cousins,
just as the younger members of that family had from us. It was a huge family,
mostly girls, and half of them were older than I was.
But as I saw it, and was encouraged to believe, the
hand-me-downs were a supplement to my “regular” clothes. I had a dress coat and
a play coat, and a cousin’s dress coats became my school coat. Such luxury! How
many children could boast three winter coats at a time?
And while my actual middle-class friends sometimes couldn’t
come outside to play in the snow because all of their trousers were in the
wash, I had plenty, thanks to the bag of clothes from the cousins.
The extra clothes allowed me to develop my personal sense of
style. Getting a bag was a time of great excitement to see what new things were
waiting for me. If I didn’t like something, I could simply say it didn’t fit,
and it went back to the cousins the next time we visited.
When I went shopping with my mother, she would pick out
several items in her price range, and I was allowed to choose from these
selections. There were plenty to choose from, so I never felt any lack. She
even splurged and let me have a pair go-go boots when I was 10, my first pair
of boots not meant for the snow, and something my wealthier friends didn’t
have.
What I didn’t realize until I was a teen was that my parents
didn’t get new coats or much in the way of new clothes other than as Christmas
or birthday gifts while we were growing up.
The neighbors who showed off new coats and elegant clothes
were the same ones who went on vacations, drove brand new cars and had air
conditioning units in their bedroom windows. They were also the ones whose kids
might run out of trousers, and couldn’t go out in the snow as a consequence. I
actually felt sorry for their kids.
My “poor relations” weren’t the subject of pity, though.
While it’s true my mother used the pity argument that they didn’t have as much
as we did when trying to convince me to give up a beloved toy I no longer used,
the fact that they had to do without was simply a given, since their family was
so large. They were very cool people as far as I was concerned, and I loved visiting them.
I didn’t think of them as poor. They were simply the cousins
I knew best.
I loved staying at their house. It didn’t bother me that I
had to share a bed with a cousin. They had fun Friday nights where we
had ice cream or potato chips – in the living room, while watching TV –
something my parents didn’t do at our house.
And while I had a doll house that was the envy of friends
and cousins alike, I knew I had it because my dad was handy at woodworking.
He’d built it for me as a Christmas gift one year, and I have it still.
But my cousins had a wooden shoe holder that consisted of
eight square cubbies. They would take all the shoes out, put in doll house
furniture and people, and we’d use it as an apartment complex. I thought it was
so cool.
The fact that I had things they didn’t or newer things
wasn’t important. Lots of people had things I didn’t. That was life. Having
something simply meant you had something cool you could share with others: Like
my doll house or their shoe box apartment complex.
My cousins taught me how to play games I didn’t know. And what I think is the most important about them is that they are kind.
But I didn’t think of them as people to be pitied. And I
certainly didn’t think of my own family as poor.
I had other cousins who lived in posher homes with fancy,
albeit more sterile, accouterments. Those cousins couldn’t plop down just anywhere. And
they certainly never had ice cream or potato chips in the living room! They had
their designated area of existence and their parents had their evening
cocktails.
When I went away to
college, some people I met were horrified that my brothers shared a bedroom.
What’s wrong with that?
Most people I knew shared a room. The only reason I had my
own room was that I was the only girl. My brothers had their own beds, desks
and closets. And we only used our rooms to sleep in or to do homework.
Personally, I hated having to put up with a roommate in the
dorms because we spent so much more time in our dorm rooms. And some of the
roommates I had were absolute jerks.
As an adult, I make more money than my parents did, even
adjusting for inflation and changing times. But I went to college and they did
not. I work in health care, which is a higher paying job than what my father
did.
Does that make me look down on my parents?
It does not!
I have these things because my parents were determined to
give their children opportunities that, as second generation Americans growing
up in the Depression and living through World War II, they did not.
And some of the things I have that they didn’t are simply
what has become the norm now. True, I generally don’t have to make do, as they
did. And I am grateful.
It’s also true that I have some stuff I don’t really need.
But I’ve inherited from my parents the ethic of not getting things just to
accumulate them. While I may not need
all of the things I have, I do use them.
There’s really no point in having stuff unless you can share
it with others.
So, if I was poor growing up, I never felt it. Our parents
gave us every reason to be thankful for what we did have, and taught us to
recognize what was really important in life.
