What happens when a bank executive, an attorney and a CHOC vice president eat only food from a South County Outreach pantry? Answer: Nothing

At this point, I have written extensively about my mere brush against the fear of possibly facing poverty during the economic crash.

We struggled for two years while my husband looked for work and we took care of our twin babies best we could while managing a house we could no longer afford. We used government programs to supplement our meager income until we could afford to get off.

But what we never did? What we never did was face poverty itself. Yes, there are many in the middle class who are experiencing very scary changes in their lives. They are needing assistance, they are swallowing massive debt, they are forced to sell off their belongings, they can no longer afford the lifestyles they once had, even though those lifestyles may not have been anything close to resembling lavish to begin with.

They are like us. Scared of the very real possibility of poverty, but not poor. Not poor.

Those who actually experience poverty exist in a world that the 'new poor' have yet to have to deal with. My mother grew up in a world where if one of the children lost the week's paycheck, her entire family didn't eat that week. So many of my friends have to choose between keeping the lights on or feeding themselves. Moms go without meals so they can clothe their children.

That is poverty. And that is not what I experienced. And it is certainly not what three high-powered families experienced when they agreed to eat nothing but food from a local food bank for three whole days.

The rules were simple. No grocery shopping. They must eat what they get from the pantry only. Except not, because they could supplement with whatever food they already had in their pantry.

This, like all "I witnessed the other side for a week" stories, is disgusting to me.

First, the operators of the food bank talk about how lucky these families were that there was so much fresh produce that particular week. They said sometimes there's not nearly so much good food available.

Which means that those rich families took fresh food, a rare and hard to come by delicacy, from people who are actually hungry. Not for three days, or months, but as a life.

Second, three days of pantry food plus food they already have in their homes is not 'seeing how the other side lives'. It's a voyeuristic vacation, swathed in privilege and entitlement. It's insulting to see an article that starts out with spoiled milk and talks about a child asking her friends to pack extra crackers in her lunch and being worried that people will judge her for her different school lunches. It's insulting not because those things didn't happen, or don't happen on a regular basis for those who are truly in need. It's not insulting because of its attempt to raise awareness amid those doing better in their lives. It's insulting because taking the time to write about a few well-off families and their experiment with poverty for a few days makes a mockery of the very real struggles other people are going through day in and day out throughout their entire lives. As if this experience would make any difference at all.

You know what would have made a difference? If those families had pledged to donate money or time to the food bank they utilized for this event. If they had campaigned for better programs to help those truly in need rather than just sit back and say, 'wow, all those people are right! Poverty sucks.' then wiped their brows in relief over the knowledge that they were successful enough on their own to afford milk whenever they want or need it.

As it stands now, this is just another embarrassing experiment in classism.

The woman at the door

The girls and I had just gotten back from their capoeira practice and were settling down to read when the doorbell rang. The puppy made a break for it, running right into the young woman's flowered tennis shoes.

"Can you grab him?" I asked frantically, before even letting her say hello.

She obliged, and when I saw he was safe, I looked at her properly. She was  nearly a foot shorter than me, wearing pink and purple eye shadow, and clearly freezing. She started in on her solicitor's spiel, but before she could make out a sentence, I asked her inside.

There she tried to continue to sell us the $100 book and magazine subscriptions I couldn't afford, but kept interrupting herself to pet the dog or coo at the kids. She was a nice woman who didn't really believe in her cause, and I soon saw why.

She was on the ground floor of some sort of pyramid scheme, where they sell subscriptions for points not unlike the school fundraisers. Only instead of a bike at the end of the long point tunnel, there was the promise of not having to walk door-to-door for 12 hours a day, of moving up to training the poor souls who would have to do it next. She needed 22,000 points to get there. She had earned 22 the day she spoke to me, and it was edging on the last hour of her shift.

Making matters worse, it wasn't some gungho college student full of pipe dreams and lofty ideals and boot straps for miles. This particular organization makes it a point to enlist the work of those in dire need. Those living on the streets or unable to find any other work.

They make it sound like that island in Pinocchio, all sunshine and food and warm beds. And to some extent, it is. The sellers sleep in hotel beds each night and get $25 for food a day, even, the woman told me, when they didn't 'earn' it through their sales. For the most part, though, the proceeds from the magazine sales went toward that food stipend and the room and board, and the buses which carted these people away from home, away from any support they may have had. It comes out of their commission. Unless, of course, they meet quota. Which hardly anybody does.

She has two kids hundreds of miles from here, in Key West. She wants to go back, but if she leaves this 'job' she has to find her own way home with money she hasn't been able to earn. She's stuck here until she saves enough to get out. Will she ever?

No one likes cold callers, no one buys magazines, certainly not for double their retail value, and no one should be forced to walk the streets in the freezing dark for a commission they'll never be able to get. How much of an opportunity is this opportunity, really?

She was wearing only a light sweater. The kind you'd wear to a Hampton tea party if it was going to be 65 degrees. It was below freezing, this day, even in Florida. I gave her some coffee and we talked for a while. She wasn't allowed to take donations, not the money itself or even turn it in for points. She could only sell the really high-priced magazines, and I couldn't afford them. I could have given her $20 without going in the red this month, but she wasn't allowed to take it.

She had another hour left to walk in the dark when she left us. On a whim, I reached into my coat closet and fetched her one of my older news television jackets. Meant to withstand the Connecticut winter, it would break the wind and keep her warm at least. She took it gratefully, putting it on immediately.

The whole scene made me feel odd. Should I have invited a stranger into my home with little kids around? Should I have spoken to her so frankly about her situation and how she had come to be there in front of them? Should I have given her $20 cash anyway? Was it okay that I gave her a coat? She hadn't asked for charity, she was simply trying to do her job. Had I made things better or worse for her with my skepticism, when I outright told her I thought they were taking advantage of her? Will she be okay? Will she make it home in time for her daughter's sixth birthday? Will she be able to get her a gift, which was her main goal with this magazine selling gig? Is giving people the sense and hope that they are moving forward enough validation for a system that seems to exploit rather than serve?

I don't know any of the answers. I just know that getting out of a world with no opportunities is nearly impossible, and even those trying their hardest may never be able to do it.

And I don't know what to do about that.

Growing Up Poor -- Guest Post

Today Kristen Duvall gives another poignant perspective on poverty. She grew up with it, and can speak to the judgment and its effects like no one else.

...

For most of my life, I've tried to hide where I came from. I see the type of hate and derision thrown toward people who are thought of as “poor” and I did everything in my power to pretend that wasn't me.

Growing up, people often tossed around insults to those on welfare, and I'd try to pretend it wasn't me they were making fun of. Early on in life, I learned to grit my teeth, look away and try to block out the cruelty. I know that the kids in my class were merely repeating the words their parents had said at home, that they logically had no idea what it was like for my family, but still... Every time someone made a jab about the lazy leeches living off of government assistance, they were talking about me. When people say, “Can't feed them, don't breed them,” they're talking about me. In my head, I was something to be despised simply because I was born into the family I was. I didn't ask for any of it.

I'm tired of hiding. I'm tired of being ashamed of a situation that I had no control over. I'm tired of friends posting memes bashing the poor, including the children of the poor, while they perpetuate the misconception that people like my family are lazy, good-for-nothing welfare queens.

Because they're not.

My family didn't just fall on hard times – their entire life has been filled with one ridiculous tragedy after another. While we hadn't always been poor, the problems my family encountered started early in my life. My dad was a Vietnam war veteran and worked hard until the day he died. But he died very young and left my mom a widow at the age of 30. She had no warning he would die on her, and when he passed, he left her with two daughters to care for. I was only three and a half at the time. She did everything she could for us, she worked very hard my entire life, but her health problems left her disabled and without a regular source of income at a young age.

Yet, she resisted filing for disability benefits for many years. It wasn't an easy choice for her, not something she took lightly. It took years of coaxing from family members to finally get her to apply.

When I say we were poor, I don't mean we didn't get name brand clothes or drove a used car. Oh no, we often went without water, and for most of my childhood, we didn't have heat. Our house was falling down around us because my mom couldn't afford the repairs needed to maintain it. We had holes in the floor big enough for me to fall through, and a well with a pump that constantly failed. Because we had no heat, our pipes would freeze in the winter meaning no water then too. Sure, it could have been worse, even for us. At least we had a roof over our heads – even if it was threatening to fall down on top of us.

But then things got worse.

A few years ago, my family lost everything when their house burned to the ground. Because of the issues with the house, my mom couldn't afford the insurance premiums, so when it was destroyed, they were left homeless. Had it not been for the kindness of strangers, I don't know what they'd have done.

To this very day, my mom, brother, and stepfather continue to live in the small, cramped RV that was gifted to them after they lost their house. It has no running water and no way to cook food other than a hot plate and a microwave – most nights, my mom eats nothing but canned green beans with ham seasoning. Despite it all, they're grateful to have a roof over their heads.

I'm not in a place where I can help them. I'm barely getting by on my own and living thousands of miles away. All I've ever wanted to do was help pull them out of poverty. I was the golden child, the first person in my family to graduate high school, much less college and then graduate school. I earned degrees in subjects I thought would be practical, that would help me earn the sort of income to allow me to help them. It wasn't what I enjoyed studying, but it wasn't about me. I needed a career that allowed me to make enough money to take care of them.

And I've failed. 

Every time one of my friends posts about how lazy and horrible the poor are, I still feel like they're talking about me. Like they're talking about my family. I grit my teeth and try to remind myself that they're not doing it on purpose and don't really mean me, but it still hurts. You see, my mom is a great person. Truly, she is. She's always volunteered for school events and around the community. She's given to charity even when she had very little to give. She raised me to be a strong, independent woman who knows that I'm not entitled to anything and that life is unfair sometimes. I've learned the value of a dollar, and you will never see me spending a hundred dollars on a purse or a pair of shoes, no matter how much money I make, because I realize what truly matters in this world. I know what it's like to go without basic necessities, and because of that, I never waste water or throw out perfectly good food. All thanks to my my past. All thanks to my mom.

So yes, it hurts me to see others – especially people I consider to be friends – bashing the poor. Bashing people like my mom. Sure, you might say, she's the outlier, an anomaly in an otherwise lazy group. But no, my friends, she's not. How do I know this? Because I've lived it. I've been deep into the bowels of poverty and lived to tell the tale. I've met people who may surprise you, I've heard their stories, I've lived their stories.

And guess what? Not all of these people are there because they're lazy. Bad things do sometimes happen to good people. But that's a fact we like to forget because it's less scary to imagine that these folks deserve everything they've had happen to them. It's comforting to forget that sometimes we lose jobs, our husbands die, or we're struck with a debilitating disability and our six months of savings can only go so far when faced with a catastrophe like that.

Believe it or not, being on welfare isn't fun. It's not a vacation. It's not easy living month to month, worrying about whether or not you'll be able to eat next week. It's no picnic in the park, trust me. Don't believe me? Try washing your hair in a bucket of cold water and tell me how you like it. Because I've been there. My family is still there as we speak, and they're not enjoying life.

While you're at it, why not spend a Midwestern winter without heat. Try to get to work with a car that doesn't start when the temperature drops below a certain point. Try saving up for emergencies when you make less than $300 a month and your rent is almost twice that. Try paying for childcare while working a minimum wage job and see that you're pretty much giving your babysitter your entire paycheck. 

And to top it all of, try dealing with the people who think you're lazy, that you have it easy, and make demeaning comments about every little thing you do.

No one likes wax beans, generic Kraft Dinner and apple "beverage" - Guest Post

This post comes from a good friend of mine, Ani Perrault. She wrote it years ago, and I read it then. I reread it every year. Why? It is, quite simply, the best thing I've ever seen on the internet.

...

We are midway through the holiday season, which for some is the good old American Thanksgiving, followed by Christmas, and others celebrate Hanukkah, Solstice or more traditionally these days what I like to call "Giftmas" which is some hybrid of the traditional Christmas and the over-commercialization that has come from a very spoiled, upper middle class perspective.

Guy's we are SPOILED.

Now I'm not going to get off on a tangent about helping the needy or the less fortunate because gosh darn does Christmas ever suck when you're eating spam out of a can with a plastic knife on Christmas Eve sharing a king can of cheap beer with the misses. Everyone who has ever been poor can tell you it sucks to be poor, and I am in general of the opinion that helping people in need is not something anyone deserves a pat on the back for.

Unless you are giving up your life and all of your wealth for a philanthropic cause a la Mother Theresa you aren't getting a cookie from me for giving the homeless guy some change.

And while I bring that up, let me elaborate on why I routinely give the homeless people in my neighborhood in the realm of $8-$20 when they ask me for spare change (I usually carry between 20-60 in change on my person so when I'm asked I reach in for a handful of coins, and because I am Canadian and we have our $1 and $2 coins this can often amount to a decent sum of money) the reason I stand by firmly for this, is while it's all good to donate your time and your money to a shelter or soup kitchen, what very few people in a position of privilege fail to understand is that those places fill up, they run out of food and they run out of space. Men are put lower on the list than women and children, and even if you are a man with a child, you aren't prioritized (in most places) ahead of women. Shelters are not a perfect solution. Neither are soup kitchens. A lot of these places refuse to serve people with addictions, and some even refuse to serve people who don't believe in the religion that is being preached at that mission.

And on a lighter note I am happy to give the guy pan handling outside of the liquor store my change, because even if he uses it to buy booze not a sandwich, his life has got to suck more than mine, after all I have somewhere warm to sleep, and a bottle of wine in my pantry and I don't need to rely on the sympathy of strangers to enjoy a beer. The way I look at it, the guy outside the liquor-mart has more reasons to want a drink than I do, by a long shot.

So this is my basic view on giving, I think it's something you should do in any capacity you can, be it spare change, donations to charity, time spent volunteering or canned goods for charity whenever and however you can.

It's just good old human kindness, if you can afford a cup of coffee you can afford to help out from time to time.

But that said, you need to consider how you help people. Of course there is going to be some self satisfaction from giving to someone who needs it. But you need to also consider what you are giving.

Everyone has been to some event or benefit where they were asked to bring in a can of food for the food bank. and what do people usually donate, a random can from their pantry, often something they're unlikely to eat, canned ham, spam, wax beans, white rice, generic mac n cheese.

Let me derail this into a story about my own experiences receiving charity.

Once upon a time there was a 22 year old recently separated mother of two children ages 13 months and 3 years respectively. I had left my husband 6 months prior and was having trouble getting on my feet. My girls and I shared a very small one bedroom apartment, we had a very tight budget, I had no skills and an ex who didn't pay support, and really I had no idea how I was going to take care of us. So because I needed all of the support I could get I had joined a church a few months before I moved out on my own and had grown quite close to some of the people I attended "small group" (bible study group held Friday night) with. There was this lovely woman whom for the sake of this story I will call "E" who had 3 sons ranging from ages 13 to 5 and all of them were going to a very prestigious private Christian school. Their father was a former minister who now taught at a school and "E" herself was a teacher as well. They were a lovely family and did so much to make me feel welcome and supported and included in the church.

I was volunteering in the nursery at the church one Sunday about 6 weeks before Christmas when a woman comes into to the nursery dressed in her Sunday best with her toddler and drops her off, she chats a few minutes with the other women and then notices the hampers in the back room full of canned goods and she asks quite incredulously "what are those for?" and one of the other women in the room replies they're food hampers for the less fortunate for Christmas. And this woman is completely shocked, she replied "well surely NO ONE at THIS church would be that poor! I mean we don't live in poverty in this country, that only happens in Ethiopia and other places like that" this dialogue continued for awhile and I tried to hide my combined embarrassment and annoyance with her lack of tact and understanding, I had known plenty of people growing up who'd needed the assistance of a food bank and knew first hand how hard it was to make ends meet, if it hadn't been for credit cards I'd have been lined up at the food bank every week myself at that point (and eventually, they took away my credit cards and I was but that didn't come until later). Eventually the woman left and I tried to shake off the discomfort her remarks had caused me and put it out of my mind.

About a week before Christmas my dear friend "E" from church called me up and asked if she could stop by for coffee later in the day. Now to say I wasn't exactly at my best with my Charlie Brown falling down Christmas-tree and tiny apartment that had been thoroughly destroyed by two toddlers would have been an understatement, but because I adored "E" and wanted her to like me and somehow approve of me I of course invited her over for coffee, and spent 8 consecutive HOURS cleaning my house so that it would be up to her (and more over my perception of her) standards. So at around 8 at night I get a knock on the door and open it to find, much to my surprise that "E" and her three boys have arm fulls of boxes of things for myself and the girls. There is an entire box of wrapped gifts for the girls, and a few things wrapped for me, and three large boxes of canned goods and food bank food. "E" and her boys put the things on my kitchen table and beam proudly she turns to me and says "we were so happy to be able to deliver the Christmas hamper to you and the girls, we felt it was so very much in the spirit of the Church, Merry Christmas Ani!" and they beamed with the satisfaction of having done their good deed for the day, and with that she quickly ushered her boys out of my apartment, without so much as having take off her coat and went home to her perfect clean house in the suburbs with her perfect family for their perfect Christmas, complete with the lesson of helping the less fortunate.

Now, I was completely stunned, I mean I knew I wasn't doing well financially but I certainly wasn't destitute and I'd never thought of myself as "in need of charity assistance" and I most certainly hadn't signed up to receive a Christmas hamper. In fact I'd always been a very proud person and determined to "make it on my own" I really felt that the "surprise gifts" would have been put to better use donated to someone else. But there I was, in the middle of my first Christmas as a single mom, with two very little girls, surrounded by boxes of Generic Mac and Cheese, Apple Beverage (not juice, apple beverage, which is 90% water with some high fructose corn syrup and apple flavour) about a dozen tins of wax beans, a box of half mouldy Christmas oranges, two loaves of mouldy bread and about a dozen cans of spam.

I cried. In fact, I wept. For the most part it was food I couldn't imagine feeding to my children or eating myself, and a good percentage of it was expired (and for the perishables, was spoiled) and in general it was not quality food.

Now I am familiar with the phrasing "beggars can't be choosers" and you know that's true and maybe my lack of gratitude was due to the fact that I hadn't asked to receive a Christmas hamper from the Church, and that I was in a difficult place to begin with emotionally that year, I didn't want to feel like someone's "feel good" project or that I was in need of saving, I wanted to be successful, or at least to feel like the people that I thought cared about me had faith in my ability to get through and survive and come out on top.

But my very long end point to this little story is that it's important to be mindful when you give, yes this is a season for giving, and that should extend beyond "what can I buy my loved ones" into "how can I help or make a difference" and whether I believe you should do that year round ( and I do) isn't so much the point. I suppose my overly convoluted point here is that in the spirit of giving you also need to be mindful of the gift.

So do me a favour, and next time you attend a function where people ask for a donation for charity don't reach for the minute rice or the wax beans that you know you're not going to eat, don't find the unlabeled can at the back of the cupboard, reach for your favourite tin of soup, or a jug of real juice or some healthy pasta, or the really yummy tomato sauce that you picked up three jars of on sale last week and consider how much MORE receiving that kind of generosity will mean to someone who does need the help, who can't always afford the real Kraft Dinner and who might want to feel that instead of getting a hand out from someone who wants to feel good about themselves, they are receiving a gift in the spirit of kindness and compassion.

And such is my two cents on helping those in need.







 

What It Truly Means to Be Poor, and How We Get There - Guest Post

I've been following the stories of the woman who wrote a Huffington Post comment about what it means to be poor from afar. I first read an expose of her, and shared it, not having done much research. The expose has holes, and lots of problems of its own, including harsh judgments that are not necessarily truth, but conjecture. The woman's own story touched many hearts, won many dollars, and in turn, when the possibility of it being fake came out, turned many people off in anger. A close friend of mine has written a response to this back-and-forth. At first it looks like a derailment of the original woman, but it is not. Poor is poor (or so they tell me. The closest I got to it was 2008 when I had to go on Medicaid and WIC to feed and get medical care for my infants who were born prematurely right as the economy crashed, we were unable to pay for our now-underwater house, and my husband lost his job. Fewer than two years later, we were back on our feet, thank God, and these days, I do shit like make cookies to Christmas carols. This is not my story, but it is a story of many.)


 ...

You’ve read it by now. Everyone has, I think. It’s received national and even international coverage. A woman, who may or may not have struggled monetarily in life at one point, fabricated a heart-wrenching scene of what it’s like to live at and below the poverty level, down to rationalizing how it affected her decisions to eat, sleep, smoke, raise her children, and steer her life. It was poignant and well written, and it touched on a number of good points.

See, there were giveaways in that little essay that niggled at me, though. Things that niggled at a lot of other people, too. The connotation that poverty is always dirty, framed in a way that is recycled from the mouths of those who have really never been inside it, right down to the same language. Then there was the colorful diatribe about the roaches, and their little toothpick stakes, where she impaled them (by hand,) like victims of Vlad the Impaler. I live in the South, folks. If you’ve never been, we have a special brand of demon roach commonly called the Palmetto Bug. They’re big, they fly, and they’re fucking terrifying. More so than anything, they are in ALL HOUSES IN ALL THE PLACES, and they’re FAST. No chance in hell you’re going to sit on your floor with some toothpicks and impale those bitches. They will dart or fly across the room before you have a chance to ready your spear, and then they will laugh at you.

I was hurt when her hoax was brought to light. I was outraged. I felt for her; she was “one of us.” She was trudging through the shit like the rest of us, she was part of this brotherhood of hard knocks and occasional hopelessness. Or at least, she led us believe she was. But instead, she was privileged more than most, with a wealthy family, a boarding school early education, and a career in politics that started at a young age. She defended herself by saying that her essay was misunderstood, that those reading it saw what they wanted or needed to see, that they were obtuse. And she defended the outpouring of support that she soaked up, both monetary and emotionally, by iterating once more that people chose to act based on how they interpreted it. It was no fault of her own, but she was certainly not going to turn down any “help” anyone wanted to offer.

Well, folks, I want to do you a favor. I want to paint you a real picture of working poverty. I want to show you what poor decisions get made every day and why, and I want you to understand that this time, it’s real. Because I’m NOT doing this for pity, support, or donations, this will remain completely anonymous. The writer is a known blogger and guest blogger, but I choose to keep my identity well hidden, because more than anything, I want to show you what it’s like to live a day in the life. Shit like names and ages and a gender here or there have been altered. Really, I don’t want you to know who I am.

So, how does one end up poor? Or working poor, in my case? Well, I’ll tell you. It started young. I had young parents that struggled to make a life for their kids. For a long time, we bounced from shit hole to shit hole, always just evading eviction, while I pretended to not notice that there were days when dinner was spaghetti with canned sauce for days in a row, pretending not to see the terror and the sadness in our parents’ eyes when they laughed off our requests for trips to theme parks or for ponies or new bikes with the excuses of “That’s an awfully big request, let’s save it for an awfully big occasion.” (I was the oldest by seven and nine years, respectively.) I knew they wanted nothing more to do those things for us. I knew they simply couldn’t. I knew that they didn’t want to work from dawn to dark to try and make ends meet, I knew they’d rather be home with us, but I also knew that as much as they supported us, it was crucial that I support them, too. So I smiled back, and made light of the worries that trickled down my way. They tried desperately to shield me from it, but I was precocious and observant. If nothing else, it helped shield the littles; I could reinforce the ruse so that they, at least, didn’t have to have any inkling of how bad things really were.

At one point, finally, they made it out of the rut. They bought a nice house, upgraded to cars that worked. Took jobs that didn’t have them working themselves to the bone, where they could spend evenings making dinner and doing yard work, going to our extra-curricular activities that they could finally afford. I knew poverty at a young age and for many years, but we had moved beyond that.

So how, then, do you go from being an average, now-upper-middle class family, to a single mother living in that very same house, where you’ve all become working poor in spite of multiple incomes and at least two people with promising, bordering on prestigious careers?

Well, I’ll tell you how. It’s a secret now, so don’t go blasting it around everywhere. Are you ready? Here it is: Shit. Fucking. Happens.

I made it through high school, and due to a self-destructive and rebellious streak, I decided fuck college. I was going to do as many drugs and fuck as many people as I could. I blew through job opportunity after job opportunity, some of which would see me today working in very, very cushy research positions with my education paid for, because I got bored easily and was really convinced I was bullet proof.

I found that even though I bounced back and forth between being on my own and my parents support, I could do okay for myself.

Then came baby.

Alright, alright…that happens. I had unending support from my family, and at that point, we were still doing okay. They hadn’t made it to the jobs they have today, and my mother was furthering more her own education. Things were tight; my siblings were in high school at that point, and while we had to budget, we made ends meet. I took odd jobs here and there, and for the most part, got to stay home to raise my baby.

Still not poor. Still not experiencing poverty.

Then shit happened again. That education my mother was furthering? Her degree left her floundering in a temporarily saturated market, when the economy was falling in a tailspin down the toilet. My father, with his cushy job with tenure? Yeah, that whole market and economy thing struck his sector pretty hard, too.

At about this point, my teenage sibling, during a very exciting senior year, made me an aunt.

So picture this. A husband and wife. Three children, one of whom is an adult, the other two are teens. A two year old grandbaby, and another grandbaby on the way. Oh, and now joining our cozy abode is the other newest addition to the family, the daughter in law.

That’s when things became reminiscent of my childhood.

Enter me becoming very, very ill. I could not work. I could not pay my portion of anything. I was in and out of the hospital. I had tried to go back to school, and that effort was decimated. It’s hard to go to class when you’re possibly dying here and there.

Enter another couple of years of fluctuation. Second child and second grandbaby and daughter in law move out, enjoying their “wedded bliss” and their go at being self-sustaining adults.

At this point, in spite of having a roof over my head, I was personally at the poverty level. My own bills were going unpaid, some of them with dollar figures in the hundred thousands because I spent many of those hospitalizations uninsured. My ability to provide for my child was severely limited. My parents helped, of course, but there’s only so much money to go around. Jobs were hard to come by for anyone anywhere, and no matter what, being an adult means that even if people think you have a free ride, there’s no fucking free ride.

Well, back to the family dynamic. Darling sibling goes through a messy divorce. Back home again, where BAM. My nephew, who had always been special needs health wise, has his health spiral out of control. My child’s special needs rear their ugly heads. Suddenly, an entire family who was holding their own, albeit with a very tight budget, suddenly meets the poverty level once more. My sibling could not work, as he was caring for his gravely ill child. I could not work, as I was caring for a gravely ill me, and my child who was suddenly higher maintenance. My youngest sibling was struggling to make sure that her future remained bright.

I had to bite the bullet. Welfare. I had been on WIC, that kind of went without saying. But now the monsters of food assistance and Medicaid had to be confronted for everyone’s wellbeing.

And that worked for a while. It was the band-aid we needed to get through it. Well, it was truly just a band-aid.

I soon found the love of a man who turned out to be a literally homicidal psychopath, and like in every love story, I got pregnant. BAM. Shit has happened again. Back with the ‘rents. Now the body count is: Two parents, two adult children with two-almost-three grandchildren, and one almost-adult child who is still determined to beat the odds and make something out of her life.

Ohai, welfare. Nice to see you again.

Do you see where this is going? Can you see the pattern? Nobody fucking wants this. Nobody wants this to be their lives. It can happen to anybody. It can happen to those who plan best, it can happen to those who are stupidly convinced they’re bullet proof.

And the poor choices? Well, yeah. We do fucking make those. Because when it comes down to it and you are working any job you can get at any shift, just to make sure that the lights don’t get shut off, or there’s gas in the car to get the kids to school, and doctor appointments, and keep diapers on their asses and clothes on their backs and shoes on everyones’ feet, you say fuck it and you do what you have to do to keep living. You DO smoke those cigarettes to give you just a couple hours more energy. You DO indulge in those bottles of Three Buck Chuck wine, just to find some escape. Your foods are processed because they’re cheap, and if you’re smart, you manage to supplement with the freshest you can afford, but damned if that’s possible all the time. And you sure as hell aren’t buying organic. Trader Joe’s? HAHAHAHAHA. More like Save-A-Lot and the farmer’s market.

My second child was born very, very, very sick. I kept that baby alive through sheer willpower, or so the specialists all tell me. There will be lasting effects from it, and she has a neurological disorder that brings its own can of worms. This is something that, if I had a good job, or a husband who had a job, or even had a family that was slightly less strapped, wouldn’t be that big of a deal.

This is a child who cannot go to day care. This is a child whose dietary needs for the first two years were the cost equivalent of feeding the entire family beforehand. That, combined with her brother’s progressing special needs (and also special diet, and medication needs,) means that we had finally come full circle and hit Rock. Fucking. Bottom.

Veering away from the entirety of my family for a moment, let me show you what this means for me. Just me. This means that my days are spent shuttling back and forth between specialist appointments for both children, and multi-hour, multi-day therapy sessions for one child. Trying desperately to potty train, trying desperately to communicate. Learning sign language and turning around and teaching it. Never leaving her with a stranger, because there’s no way for her to tell me “Mommy, someone is hurting me.” Monitoring another child for behavior changes and seizures. Finally finding a job where I can pick my own hours, move my schedule as needed within limitations, and get paid a wage that even if it were me alone I wouldn’t be able to live off of. It means special diets that are expensive, it means medications that cannot be missed, no matter whether or not I have the money to buy them. It means begging friends for help, praying that nothing goes wrong with food stamp and Medicaid re-certifications, and always, always, always wondering where the next dollar is going to come from.  It means spending a few precious hours with both kids in the afternoons before I go to work, where I get off at midnight, come home and take care of as many things as possible, crash for a few hours of restless sleep, and begin it all over again.

Once upon a time, I dreamt of being a perpetual student. All I wanted to do was study and learn. Sometimes I decided I wanted to do veterinary research. Once, I dreamed of pioneering studies on HIV/AIDS.

I have not even finished a full semester of community college. All thoughts of getting a “real” job are pipe dreams, because when you have a child who does not speak, you cannot simply put them in day care, no matter how free it is, because like I said a moment ago, there is no way for them to tell you “Mommy, someone is hurting me.”

This. Is. Poverty. This is not being a welfare queen. This is not being lazy. This is desperately wanting something more, and never being able to get a step ahead to achieve it.

So where does this leave my entire family at this point? Well, my nephew is doing much better. My sibling got a very promising job with a company that paid well and offered benefits. He found a woman he loves, and they were set to move out and begin anew. Until that company folded. And another baby is on the way.

There are nine of us in this house right now. There will be ten in a few short weeks. Some of us are healthy, some of us are not. Some of us are special needs, some of us are trying our damndest to make it out and succeed. Two full-time careers, one part time job with not even a half-living wage, and one quarter-time job in retail in a college town. There is Medicaid all around, and foodstamps to supplement.  $340 to try and feed a household of ten. It is not uncommon for us to go a few days without phone service, or a night without electricity, because medication needs to be bought, or the price of the supplements for one kiddo or the other has gone up due to high demand and low production. It’s not uncommon for vehicles to go unrepaired because fixing them would be the difference between having a car to drive and eating for two weeks.

This is poverty, people.

We’re not dirty. We don’t impale roaches and lament over crooked teeth that cause us to be passed over for clerical positions or spots in restaurants as wait staff. We paste smiles on our faces and we make ends meet. We swallow our pride and ask friends for money to buy milk and bread when pay day is three days ahead of us and we’ve fallen just that short, and we pray that this friend won’t do what the last did and look you in the eye and tell you no, that they think that you’re just using them when you could surely be doing more to help yourself, or you should surely have someone else to turn to, even if you’ve made sure every time you’ve had to ask that you’ve been vigilant about paying them back with speed and some other small token of gratitude.

 We hide the fact that the power is out from our neighbors, and we hide the fact that this is the third night of spaghetti. We make sure our young children, the second generation, goes through life never ever coming close to comprehending that we had to exchange doing some bookkeeping so that they could go on that field trip, or in my case, in my very lowest moment, pity-fucking so that there were dry diapers for the baby who, because she was so sick, needed to be changed every five minutes or else the diarrhea would eat at her flesh and leave her burned and bleeding.

They will never know that there was a blow job traded for that trip to the pharmacy to pick up their medications.

The rest of the family will never know about that time that there was a motel room with ropes and a gag, and a crowd of cameras, and the blood and the bruises for weeks, just so I could make sure that there was food to go around for everybody, not just the kids, and gas money for us to wake up and start it all over, again and again.

Poverty is not waxing poetic about burning the candle at both ends and lamenting that you don’t cook because you’re afraid that it will make things that are already dirty even more so. Poverty is dealing with it silently, never letting them see you cry, scrubbing the counters until they gleam. Why? Because when nothing else in your life shines, at least that fucking vinegar and baking soda will get the coffee stain out of the grout and remind you that something, somewhere, somehow, can be under your control, and you can make that one part of your life where everything else seems tainted and dirty, covered with despair and worry, finally come clean.

When you’re poor, it’s not your house or your clothes that are dirty. You don’t have poor hygiene. It’s your soul that becomes covered in filth, because that despair and that terror of never knowing what’s coming next, that desperation to climb out of the pit and never finding a foot hold…it all leaves a layer of grime that just builds up. No amount of showering in scalding hot water seems to ever make it go away.

If you’ve read this far, I congratulate you. It can’t have been an easy read. It sure as shit wasn’t an easy write. Please, if you take nothing else away from this, just…be thankful, and think twice about someone you might otherwise write off as “obviously not having it that bad.” Sometimes we become true masters of disguise.

 

"Are There No Prisons? Are There No Work Houses?"

I live in Florida. Coming from New England, there has been a lot of adjustment, politically, religiously and otherwise for me, as I've learned to keep my mouth shut. I've never felt at such odds with my new state, however, than now. Now that they've passed a law requiring drug testing for potential welfare recipients.

Governor Rick Scott says it is "unfair for Florida taxpayers to subsidize drug addiction." His solution, of course, is to require those recipients to wait in line at designated areas, sit in a room with other people in the same situation waiting possibly hours for their name to be called so that they can urinate in a cup in front of someone as that person watches their every move. Then they get to wait for their results to come back. If they're "clean", they'll get their money back for the test. If they test positive for drugs, they are forced to front the money.

This, in my opinion, is a classist invasion of privacy that humilates those who are forced to ask their government for help. Supposedly helping the taxpayers, the $15 for each test that comes back negative will come out of the tax pool. But that's not going to be a problem, right? Because of all the money we'll save by refusing to help those in need because they also have an addiction. And what about those who test positive? They pay for their own tests. Because they can afford it. Right.  Even if the test comes back clean, when are those people going to get their $15 back? If they're applying for government assistance programs, they probably cannot afford to go without that $15 for any length of time.

I just can't wrap my mind around making poor people pay for a fairly expensive test out of their own pockets. "Oh, hey! You can't afford food! Maybe we'll help you, but first lend us fifteen bucks. We'll give it back to you at some point, we promise! If you qualify."

The potential recipients are not to bring their children to the test sites. So, not only do they need to magically come up with money they clearly do not have, they also have to arrange for childcare for that time period. Something I'm sure is really easy for them to coordinate and afford. What of those recipients that work? They'll need to take time off from their jobs, costing them more money.

What really gets me is that this affects people applying for the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. For needy families. So drug-addicted parents must have their innocent children pay for their mistakes? Their families don't deserve help because they have an addiction? Babies shouldn't get fed as punishment for the adults in their lives making what the government has decided is a mistake?

No, Gov. Scott has provided for this. Once the parent fails the test, he or she can designate another drug-free adult to apply for the help on their family's behalf. Of course, this presumes that the failing parents have access to a trusted drug-free adult to take the test for them. Which I'm guessing some of them probably don't.

Another problem with this law's intent is that Gov. Scott says "we want to give people an incentive to not use drugs."

Oh, okay. Because people using drugs can easily break from the habit. The only reason they're not doing so is because the government is giving them a few bucks here and there to buy bread and milk for their kids, or shelter their little ones from the elements.  Wait, are these things even connected? Do what you want with your government programs, I can't stop you, but don't wax idealistically at me as you hammer down the poor in this state with such a cynical law. I'm just saying, I'm pretty sure for at least some of these people, if they could stop using drugs, they would. Probably for their families. Not for your money.

Why don't poor people stop using drugs? Rehabilitation costs thousands of dollars. Thousands of dollars that these people do not have. Some of them don't have any support system to speak of at all. Instead of using tax-payer money to systematically test people to deem them worthy of our assistance, why don't we help fund the sorely lacking rehabilitation options for those without livable income?

We can't just push drug users to the side because of their habit. Their reliance on substances should not imply that they are not good enough for our support, for our thoughts, and for our help. They often need the most help of all.

This measure does not create jobs, it does not improve the economy and it does not help the poor in our state in this disastrous economical crisis. It does give a booming business to the walk-in clinic organization that Gov. Scott co-founded. Because, really, I'd rather my money go to a drug-testing corporation than to those in need.

Here is an article with more information: http://articles.cnn.com/2011-06-01/politics/florida.welfare.drug.testing_1_drug-testing-drug-screening-tanf?_s=PM:POLITICS


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