You Won’t Understand Being ‘Poor’
When I was a child, my mother and I fell into welfare. She had tried for a while to make ends meet working full time as a hotel chambermaid. The hotel wasn’t on a bus route so every day she would walk me to school and then walk to the hotel, and then walk back to pick me up from the after-school program around 5pm. When we arrived at home she would fix dinner, often just for me because there wasn’t enough food for the both of us. Crackers with butter was the usual snack. I was to learn much later while speaking with friends who had also grown up poor that crackers were a common food item among the less-than-well-to-do.
Things were better for some years after. We moved to New England where my brother was born, and this is when we found ourselves on welfare. I was in middle school at the time. My mother couldn’t find a night job that would support us. We had a single big grocery trip at the beginning of every month when the cheque came in the mail. No bus route again, so we walked for 45 minutes in each direction, carrying all of the food by hand. Winters, which are fairly brutal in New England, were especially tough. We dealt with it though, because we had to and because that big grocery trip was the only time we could afford fresh fruit. If my mother was exhausted, as she often was, she’d “splurge” by spending some food stamps to hire the taxi service that waited outside the grocery store.
Most of the kids I went to school with had only one parent or a grandparent that took care of them. It was rare for anyone to have a car in their family. In some ways that made it easier. We didn’t compete against each other for who-had-what. Most of us were focused on what to do to get ahead. There was no financial net. No college fund. No one to lend us money to put down the security deposit for an apartment. We unknowingly had each other though. Most everyone around us was also poor.
I couldn’t imagine trying to live poor in Richmond. In the inner cities there were always a lot of poor children. Here, you’re often surrounded by wealth, or at least the pretense of wealth. There are different expectations. I hear kids talking about their iPads or the latest X-Box games. One middle-schooler recently told me he was getting a MacBook Pro, a $2500 item. Morning coffees from Starbucks are de rigeur for so many people here, including my own family, I admit. What is there for a child living in poverty to relate to?
My husband (who also grew up in a family who knew poverty) and I struggle to teach the value of food and simple material needs to our own children. They never go to bed hungry; they never see us argue over or feel the stresses of not having enough money for groceries. My son is never denied a cup of fresh milk because we don’t have enough for both him and his little sister. At worst, they’re told they have to wait until Friday when the local organic food delivery service brings more of some item. Our home, which originally made me feel very uncomfortable with its relative opulence–it’s considered an “average” house in Metro Vancouver–is the only home they’ve ever known. We do not cling to brand-name clothing or footwear. We teach them where food comes from, and what it takes to arrive at our table. We regularly take them to visit our extended families in China and the Dominican Republic, where they see what poverty really looks like. They will likely never personally know what it’s like to live ‘poor’.
I don’t have any grand solutions. I do know that no amount of explanation will every really convey what it’s like to grow up poor. The daily stresses weigh heavily on the parents and children alike. I do think each of us can do something to, at least, help ease the pressure a little:
- Donate healthy food regularly to the Food Bank
- Volunteer within your community
- Treat service workers and other minimum wage employees with respect. A simple acknowledgement of their work goes a long way.
- Tip the maid well. It’s very hard work.
by: Gretchen, RFSS
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Thank you for writing this, Gretchen. It reminded me a lot of my own childhood here in Ladner, a suburb of Vancouver (I’m 23 now). My parents were divorced and my mom worked full-time to raise my younger sister and I. My dad was on welfare and we visited him 2 twice a week and every other weekend.
My mom never neglected to feed us, but we definitely didn’t have the most nutritious meals, and she was often too busy with work to make something ‘extravagant’ (I remember a lot of meatloaf and spaghetti). I wore a lot of hand-me-downs from my cousin and family friends, and when I got something new, it was rarely a name-brand. Most other children at school were better off, it seemed, since they at least had both parents still together providing for them.
At my dad’s place I remember going the whole weekend without eating. Yet, for some reason, our two German shepherds always had food in their bowls. I loved the rare times when we’d visit my paternal-grandma’s before going over to our dad’s house, because she’d often send us home with goodies to eat. Like you, I thought the best ‘splurge’ was my dad calling a cab so that we didn’t have to carry the groceries all the way home.
My current partner comes from a very well-off family, and he has told me that he really doesn’t understand at all what being poor is like. I don’t have my own children, but I do often wonder what it would be like to teach them about poverty. One of the biggest lessons I learned from my dad was when he took my sister and I to Main and Hastings on the bus to see how drugs and alcohol affect people and can put you into poverty. He told us that: “It’s really important to see how other people live” and I think that really put things into perspective for me.