December 27, 2011
Andrea’s post Are We Defined by Our Mistakes? touched some nerves at So Over Debt. Her personal life with being broke and professional experiences helping the impoverished and the reactions to her conclusions illustrates how complex the issues surrounding poverty. And every time it seems defined, there’s another rock to label.
There aren’t simple, easy, sound-byte answers. There isn’t even an easy list of questions. If ever there was an area in which we tended to chaos, this is it.
Yes, our choices make us who we are. But yes, our nature make us who we are. And yes, our surroundings and environment make us who we are. So yes, until our mettle is tested, we won’t discover who we are. The snake eats the tail. As much as I hate that image. All of those influences feed into one another, all of them overlap and intertwine and jostle for position.
*****
If ever we were emotional about money, I find that we are that much more reactive about the lack of it. And our neighbor’s lack of it. And his neighbor’s lack of it. Because no matter what politics you vote, no matter what religions you preach or practice, social inequality and ills touch us all. And it roots deeply, for some more deeply than others, for some more personally than others.
There’s what seems to be need to stifle compassion lest it be construed as weakness(?) in many reactions particularly for those who haven’t experienced it; someone else’s poverty is to be mocked lest it taint, spread or corrupt. Judge lest ye be included, I suppose. It is a fact that in the greater picture, the existence of poorness affects us all. It could be you, there, one whisper says. It’d better not be, roars another voice, I work hard, I don’t deserve that! It’s another version of “there but for the grace of God go I.” It’s another version of “Get away from me.” And so on.
And it could be your sister, your brother, your parents, your son, your daughter, your grandparents. Your friends, your cousins, your aunts or uncles. It could be anyone you know and love. And for every single one of those people who might be poor, we can search to find reasons why. Why this one succeeded and why that one did not, and eventually you may find patterns. There are, in fact, statistics and patterns – I’ve seen them, anecdotally, but I can’t for the life of me see how to put them together and draw a good analysis from which we can do better.
There’s also resentment, resentment that we work hard and have to keep doing so while others who are less well off are being helped along. Therein lies judgment. Therein lies the willingness to lay blame at others’ doors whether or not it makes sense. I’ve been guilty of this a time or two with my brother. I sincerely doubt that his newly bloomed mental issues were always the cause of his behaviors in the past and it’s still hard to move past that to a place where I can unreservedly do what I need to do. But that’s hardly productive and doesn’t get at the real issue. He needs help and with boundaries, I am capable of rendering basic assistance. It’s always easier said than done. But that’s the bottom line.
If there’s a complicated question to be asked – why him? Why not me? He was born with a myriad of talent, I, very very little. And raised in the same household with the same parents with the same educational benefits, except his was actually a little better. He had every bit as much privilege as I and yet here we are.
*****
But the story, my friends, the story isn’t over until it’s over. Deep in the fabric of this country, in its soul, is the foundational Horatio Alger archetype that we can all bootstrap our way from rags to riches will-he, nill-he, the American Dream, the dream that we can all one day become successful – whatever that means.
That too, drives much of the emotion and expectation, by the way. Why can’t you lift yourself up from the ashes? Well, sometimes, coming from someone who barely believes this in her own life but knows it really is true: sometimes you can’t. And you certainly can’t do it alone.
I do wholeheartedly know this: It’s sheer folly and hubris to believe we exist in a vacuum and can succeed and achieve wholly on our own. There is an enormous amount of effort and blood, sweat and tears that has to come from you when clawing your way up. But alone? Unlikely to the extreme.
Before there were helping hands, there were free internet forums and smart people setting up systems to make an extra dollar and sharing resources. Before there were scholarships, there were libraries with free books to borrow. Before there were blogger-friends, there were real friends who stood staunch in the breaches and supported me even when there was no personal gain or experience of what I was going through. Before I graduated college, there was at least a thousand hours of overtime. I had to do just about everything with my own hands, my own brain and my own breath and I had to sacrifice a lot to get there. But I had the support of a few good friends whether or no it made sense to them and I had one heck of a lot of resources provided by other people. There’s no way I’d ever say I did it all by myself.
*****
People come here, my people came here, to live, to thrive, to make lives worth living. Not to fall to the depradations of political strife, corrupt government, grubbing out a living from the riverside or out in the jungle. Instead they faced a new world and its urban challenges of prejudice, language barriers, drugs, a corporate world rife with sheathed-claw politics, business conducted fairly or unfairly as the tempers befit the owners.
Should they be sketched, though, I suspect that the patterns of poverty would fall out similarly even accounting for personal choice and individual deviations. There are enough patterns over the generations that even my untrained eye can note them.
*****
Excerpts from what John Scalzi said:
Being poor is knowing you work as hard as anyone, anywhere.
Being poor is people surprised to discover you’re not actually stupid.
Being poor is people surprised to discover you’re not actually lazy.
Being poor is a six-hour wait in an emergency room with a sick child asleep on your lap.
Being poor is never buying anything someone else hasn’t bought first.
Being poor is knowing you’re being judged.
I could keep going down that list, nodding, but the even more compelling parts are the comments. This set, John’s response to a (particularly, I thought, smug and righteous) comment, and the bolded bit is my emphasis, that was in no way reflective of the tone of the thread sums up much of why I’m going on about this:
Kathy Shaidle writes:
“Instead of posting a semi-romanticized, heart-wrenching litany of the things poor people have to put up with when they’re too lazy and/or dumb to get their acts together like we did, why not write another post telling poor people how you went from poor to not-poor.”
Ms. Shaidle, as you may or may not know, I live in a small Ohio town, most of whose inhabitants can be described as the rural poor: They work on farms and they work as blue collar workers. Many of them are poor, because as I’m sure you know farming and rural blue collar work doesn’t pay particularly well.
Very few of these rural poor are lazy, Ms. Shaidle. In fact, they work as hard or harder than anyone I know. And while many of them are uneducated, uneducated is not the same as stupid. In all, these are good, honest, hard-working people. Perhaps you are comfortable classifying them, and other hard-working poor, as “too lazy and/or dumb to get their acts together.” I am not.
Conversely, I’ve worked in high-tech and publishing for much of my life, and as a consequence I’ve known lots of middle and upper class folk. Some of them are quite lazy and/or stupid — so many, in fact, that I am quite comfortable making the observation that dumb and lazy can’t possibly be the deciding factors in who is poor and who is not in this country, because if they were, I wouldn’t be stuck in a three-hour meeting with this idiotic schmuck who is about to dump all his work on me so he can get out to the golf course.
I think it’s a problem that people assume that all the poor are either dumb or lazy, because it’s false, and because it allows the not-poor to go, oh well, they had their chance, and they didn’t do anything with it. As I mentioned before earlier in the thread, lots of poor people are doing everything right to improve their situation, but they don’t have any wiggle room when things go wrong.
The fact that people seem so willing to write off the poor as dumb and lazy is of course why I wrote in the original essay:
Being poor is people surprised to discover you’re not actually stupid.
Being poor is people surprised to discover you’re not actually lazy.
“Much more helpful than all the guilty white liberal, pseudo-Russell Banks stuff, what?”
I don’t feel in the slightest bit guilty, and I’ve never read Russel Banks. Also, Ms. Shaidle, I write what I choose. Maybe at some point I will write a “how I did it” piece. However, at this particular moment in time, for various reasons, I think it’s helpful to note to the comfortable what the experience of being poor is, because oddly enough, sometimes it seems like they don’t understand it well, even some of them who have come up from it.
*****
I’ve been there. I’m still there, in my head. My parents were there. For periods in their lives, separately and together, they experienced a poorness the likes of which most, average, middle and upper-class Americans simply do not know. But the fact they had experienced a poorness even more staggeringly numbing, or at least my mom did, the period in the later years was easy by comparison. Physically, anyway. That’s the one thing you can really count on with poverty. Once the grit works under your skin, some bits of it will always stay.
I know people judge. I know they assume. I hear it all the time. And there comes a time hearing shallow judgements, suggestions and assumptions leads to cutting off conversation about it completely which isn’t productive, but it is protective. Appearances to the contrary, I’m no naive child who doesn’t understand finances, the market economy or the basic idea that you get a job and hold it to make money to support a household. I’m experienced enough to know that in the game of life, whether there is margin for error or not, errors will happen and having zero margin (we call it cash flow, an emergency fund, or cash cushion) is just one part of the inexorable slide into debt and poverty. So to all the people who said, “Why doesn’t your dad just get a job as …” while he was taking care of Mom ….That was not the problem. It was one of many problems. But it was a solution in the morass of problems I was dealing with.
In this newly married life, I’m having to relearn how to open these conversational paths, slowly and painfully, pointing out the complexity of the issues to PiC because he’s never lived this life and frankly, I’ve guarded that side of my life from those in my life who had never experienced deprivation in their lives. And while explaining the situation that developed with my brother, I also had to explain county benefits and welfare, shadowed with the embarrassment of “this is life when you’re poor.” Bad enough poor, bad enough mental issues, we had to go and combine them.
Those nerves of mine had been exposed this holiday weekend as I visited home and caught the tail end of my brother storming at some dentist’s office over their treatment and I don’t know what. He muttered, stomped and threatened to call the corporate office.
What corporate office? You’re poor. You have no money, no insurance, so you’re using a county facility where the dental care has been notoriously poor, negligent even, and that’s the normal state of affairs there. Do you think they care? Because I could tell you they really don’t.
But there’s no telling him. He knows what he knows and when he’s waving his Sword of Righteousness there’s no telling him anything. Then he comes to me. Do I know what dentist he can go to? Do I know the number he can call? Because he was given a “fake” number to their “corporate office.” Because clearly I still live around here and can fix everything after he’s gone up a tree again, as usual.
I was silent. He maundered off after a minute.
See that? See the blaming? It’s still incredibly hard for me to let go of the rage he elicits by continuing in remarkably familiar behavioral patterns even with the revelatory knowledge that he’s not in his right mind, probably.
But it’s also incredibly hard for me to choose to suit up and get back into the cycle of poverty that he lives in because there’s so little I can do to break it. It’s going to be the county dentist unless I come up with cash, and a lot of it, to pay for his dental work. And then will he take care of his teeth? I don’t know. And will that prevent any accidents or just regular degeneration that happens even when you do take care of them? No. And will I then come up with more cash when he next needs it? How long can I keep that up? And what other medical issues can I support?
Knowing I’m going to fight an endless fight is draining before it even begins, and I’m not one to back down from any fight. I suspect that may be part of our society’s problem in learning how to deal with it. Because there’s no simple answer, because there’s no secret plan to fight poverty, because we can’t list ten action items and know that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, it’s debilitating and it’s distracting.
*****
I had a conversation with someone who’s been a second mother to me. He’d gone to their house and had a meltdown. At first I wanted to be furious that he exposed us that way but then I just breathed deeply. There’s absolutely nothing I can do about it. And I’m going to have to accept that this is the state of affairs. So we had a conversation. She’s convinced that he’s fried his brain on drugs. She’d had some professional experience in the area so I couldn’t say she was wrong; I haven’t been there, I literally couldn’t say what happened. She’s the staunchest conservative thinker I know, but even she agrees I should try to get him into therapy when I am able to deal with it.
That takes us back to the boundaries and the limits. He is my brother but I, too, have to do as much as I can and no more than is sensible for our lives. And because he’s poor, because we’re not rich or well off, because he’s legally an adult and because I can not push my new family to the brink to provide for him, I don’t think there’s going to be very much I can do. At least, not to my satisfaction or socially acceptable conclusion, anyway. By which I mean, somehow get him to be in therapy, on whatever medication he may require if any, and working to support himself, out of the house, on his own. He is going to have to be some combination of those things, but I can’t hold my breath that he’s going to become a fine upstanding citizen any time soon.
Having to discuss this openly, in real life, made me realize – there really has to be a way to have these conversations with less shame and less blaming. There has to be a way we can productively find big or small solutions with some heft behind them. Certainly this situation as an example is complicated with the mental illness muddying the waters, but when do they ever run clear? Poverty encompasses this and many other encumbrances that could be managed tolerably in some circumstances, so while I haven’t got the answers, I do think it makes sense to embrace the complexity in the conversation.
This post was included in the Carnival of Personal Finance: Australia Edition.
November 5, 2011
My mom passed away suddenly. I’m shuttering the doors for a little while to deal.
PiC’s a rock and Doggle’s a spaz and we’re going to take care of my dad and vice versa.
October 25, 2011
As much work and as costly as Doggle has been in the totting up of his bills over the months, there are some pretty amazing things about this dog that makes me say it’s totally worth it. Also, I like to point out that if you really want to think about the costs, you have to think about the FULL picture, and that includes considering what kind of dog we could have gotten since we did get really lucky with the pup we brought home.
Remember, this big man was abandoned for at least a year before we brought him home, and we have no clue what his history was before that. He could have been a shivering wreck inside his head and ready to burst out with all kinds of crazy after we took him home, just hiding it behind a stoic face when we first met him. It’s not that dogs are duplicitous, it’s just that when they first meet you, all the nuances of their personality aren’t going to be evident. That was certainly true of Doggle. It took him about three months to come out from his shell entirely and show that he actually had a personality lurking underneath.
Happily, most of that livelier personality is more pleasant than not. There’re also some rather … limpet-like parts to his personality. It’s usually cute but … sometimes it’s not.
How Doggle Costs Money:
Oh Vet Bills (Medication/Supplements): Doggle has been to the vet every other month since he’s been with us. We’ve spent over a thousand dollars on his medical bills so far. *_*
Carpeting: His poor staggering legs don’t deal very well with the slippery floors so we’ve laid down new (to us) rugs. Thank you, Craigslist and Costco for relatively cost effective rugs and padded squishy mats.
Food: He just keeps on eating. And I’ve turned into a bit of a sucker about buying him a stock of treats. Yeah. I’m that dog mom. I never was before.
Car upgrade: But let’s be honest. It wasn’t like PiC hadn’t been looking for his car upgrade for several years.
How He Doesn’t Cost:
Furniture: He doesn’t mark on anything at home, thank goodness. He’s embarrassed us in places where other dogs have previously marked their territory as that lights up that little area in his brain that says “oh! I should pee here too!” But as our home has been unmarked, so it stays. Whew.
He also doesn’t chew, scratch or (mostly) climb. Occasionally he takes a freak into his head that maybe he should try to get on the sofa. Then he gets put in timeout.
Shoes/Bags/Socks/Clothes/Books/Small Items: He also doesn’t steal, chew or destroy any of these things.
People Food: He’s not allowed to have any. Not that that has diminished his interest in our cooking activities or eating at the table or anywhere else one whit. But he also doesn’t beg. He’s allowed to hang around and sniff within a certain limit.
Toys: He’s still not interested. He’s just starting to get the barest inkling of how to socially interact in play with other dogs or people. I’m trying to teach him and expose him to other big dogs because small dogs around here are frankly, brats, who mostly don’t want anything to do with him if they’re not being snappy, snippy, yappy and their owners just don’t socialize or train them out of those nasty behaviors. Bigger or younger dogs really like him, though, and that’s really nice.
Energy: 95% of the time, he has amazing indoor manners. Which is to say, he is incredibly quiet and mellow inside. If you’re hanging out, he’s hanging out. If you’re sleeping, he’s sleeping. If you’re cooking, he’s in the way. But he doesn’t bark, he doesn’t scratch, dig, growl, or generally freak out in any way.
2% of the time he has little freakouts where he goes into corners and huddles or has to be on the sofa which is a no-no. 3% of the time he is really really really happy you just got home or we’re going for a walk. That is a really manageable percentage, in my mind.
Extra Baths and Carpet Cleaning: He only gets baths on our schedule which varies between every 3-6 weeks. We can do this because he doesn’t roll in the dirt, he doesn’t rub himself in gross stuff he finds on his walks, and while he might get himself a little in his poorly-aimed, old man spatter, he lets us wipe him down after every walk and wipe his paws as well. Docile as anything.
At the end of the day ….
I’m so glad we’ve got him. We have made a lot of adjustments. We factor him into the morning and evening routines to take the time to take him out twice a day, (but that’s all we have to do – we have neighbors who walk their yappers FIVE times a day!) We either travel with him by car, one of us stays home with him, or have to make arrangements for him. We mostly do the first two, though. I’m hopelessly attached. 😉
October 9, 2011
After some grumbles, I set myself to the task of filing PiC’s taxes yesterday.
I was annoyed at first because, well, it’s October. I’m a February Filer. Different philosophies. He had to wait for a Schedule to come in that didn’t arrive until September, so he had a reason but it still gets under my skin to be doing last year’s taxes at the point when I’m already thinking about next year’s.
Setting up the account was nearly impossible – I couldn’t get the page to accept a password. Fifteen minutes of error messages.
Finally, I got into TurboTax’s guts and we were off to the races.
Income
I had a whole pile of forms and shuffling through them, nothing was terribly complicated.
I did hate on Wells Fargo for a minute for sneakily combining a 1099-Div and a 1099-INT onto the same page, though – I like order and since I was inputting the forms by type, that interrupted my flow. And they had this whole “see Details” thing going on for a few boxes. You’d obediently flip to the Details section and it’d show you … nothing. THANKS.
(In my New Order, I’m banishing Wells Fargo. Especially since they were such a waste of time.)
Deductions
This was fun. {evil laughter} The know-it-all came out. I had a couple items in the pile from PiC, and then made out my laundry list of things I knew he should have deductions for that he’d missed.
His proof of charitable deductions were missing, for one thing. Property tax, mortgage interest totals, car registration.
And then upon review, I was mortally certain, without actually having seen his property tax bills during the year, the total he gave me was still too low and sent him back again for another look. Right-o, there was a supplemental tax bill he’d been dunned for, more than $1000, and had forgotten about. That put nearly $500 back in his refund.
Analysis and Completion
Clearly, he wasn’t taking the standard federal deduction.
I think his CPA was shortsighted for telling him to send in a chunk of additional tax money this year for state taxes, assuming he was going to owe just as much in 2010 as he owed in 2009. Did the CPA not consider that he was going to be paying a full year’s home interest and property taxes? That seriously affects your AGI! Think this through, my good fellow. When your state refund is twice and more what you paid in quarterly taxes … *smh* There was no real good reason to do that, is what I’m saying. He wasn’t in danger of an underpayment penalty at the end of 2009, and he wasn’t going to owe at the end of 2010 as much as he did the prior year.
Filing
I’d snagged him a fantastic prepaid code for both state and federal, saving him $140 on both filings. Did him one better than my own, I even had to pay for my state filing!
One Day, One File
It didn’t take the whole day, but we finished his taxes on the Saturday I started them. I had him review it with me at the end to make sure he understood everything that I did and all the notes I had. I’d initially complained that doing his taxes weren’t any fun but halfway through I was a liar because I was having fun again.
I could actually enjoy doing this for other people, now that I’ve gotten past my initial weirdness of not having the fully organized, spreadsheeted, noted, checklisted pile of forms to work from. Maybe I’m not quite ready for the shoebox of receipts thing but, you know, I could deal with the less organized anyway.
September 28, 2011
It was a family truism that when I finally had kids, “Grandma” was going to pay me back for every sin I committed as a youngun, even the ones I couldn’t remember, with 10% interest.
“Just wait until you have kids of your own,” she would mutter after I’d upset her, the dire threat implicit enough. Sometimes she’d follow up with, “and if they’re not creative enough, I’ll tell them how you messed with me to start them off!”
She was going to get away with it, too, because she knew I wanted a career as much as she wanted grandkids. Since it wasn’t likely that I’d have a house-husband (though really, that’d be awesome), her babysitting availability was the best way to practically guarantee I’d be willing to take on that responsibility.
All joking aside, it was secretly a huge comfort to me knowing that my mom was fully committed to my future family and was excited about helping to care for them so that my spouse and I could work.
That was her dream plan for retirement: raising small children. Never let it be said that we understand how to relax in my family.
I had to, with much sadness, let go of that shared expectation and daydream some years ago when her health began its downward spiral. And I’ll always be a little sad that the person who bore the standard for me won’t be there in mind or body, though always in spirit, for my children if I have them.
It wouldn’t be safe or right for me to leave prospective children with my ailing mother in charge of them. Certainly she’d want to visit with them, but that would always have to be supervised. And so I haven’t really had the heart to think about that in a long while, until now.
In our culture, the idea that grandparents are available for long-term babysitting and practically take on the raising of the grandchildren is almost taken for granted. It’s doesn’t always happen in cases where grandparents were less nurturing or too busy or the math doesn’t work out. One set of grandparents to multiple sets of children and grandchildren requires a fair amount of logistics if everyone wants Grandma and Grandpa in residence.
But in general, there’s often a sense of expectation that first generation parents can rely on their parents for free childcare when the time comes to bring up the next generation. Some of that expectation is fostered by the prospective grandparents, some of it spins out of the understanding that “that’s how we do it.”
*************
I’ve recently started hearing a mismatch of expectations in families and started thinking about what the cultural and societal norms are now. If anything, my expectation was that more frequently, with the greater separation of families due to schools and jobs and kids moving further away, families would rely on technology to nuture relationships between generations. I also supposed that ethnic grandparents would be disappointed by parents who didn’t necessarily want their Traditional Parents rearing the grandkids.
Instead, I’m seeing a combination of adherence to the traditional grandparents-as-babysitters paradigm, as well as a parallel track where the new grandparents don’t necessarily want the caretaking or the raising of their grandkids. And the desire and trend toward more visitation-rights-only is more in line with what I’d expect from the American norm.
My maternal grandfather, for example, isn’t in the least bit interested in raising any of his seventeen grandchildren. He prefers to bide in peace and visit. His wife is all about the raising of them so she moves about, house to house, spending as much time as possible with the various nuclear families. One of my aunties helped raise her grandchildren for a period of time but because her idea of discipline (strict) wasn’t aligned with her kids’ (let them run rampant), she declined to continue babysitting the hooligans (my description, not hers) after they became too much for her to handle. As far as I know, the relevant family members found ways to manage their childcare without the grandparents in question.
My personal opinion is that if you have parents and family members who are willing to give of their time and energy to do your parenting, that’s an enormous gift. But that’s a gift and that’s their choice. At the end of the day, your children were your choice to have, and your responsibility.
Of late, I’ve been hearing statements that strike me as less than gracious even though I come from a culture that actually does “expect” grandparents to substitute for new parents. I’m hearing things that, perhaps especially as they begin to directly affect me and my health issues, are, I feel, less than considerate and it bothers me.
Stating “Well, the nanny learned how to do it!”, “it” being some part of the more specialized health care your child requires doesn’t sit right with me. In what ways does it make sense to suggest that a family member get equated with a trained-in-special-health-care, vetted, interviewed, and paid employee?
I can absolutely understand that parents want grandparents to be involved with the grandchildren, even highly involved. You certainly want that bond to form and for any other important people to be part of your kids’ lives. But if the grandparents aren’t comfortable with fulfilling all the needs, particularly any specific or special needs, of the kids, does it not cross a line to insist that they take on those responsibilities? What about other family members? Are they also asking for a babysitting assignment when they want to spend time with your kids, regardless of their feelings or capabilities in the matter?
And for the health and proper care of your child: when should you simply know better than to ask if that is the case?
Again, I come from a cultural place where it’s normal to just assume that Grandma and/or Grandpa can and will help out. Or will help out any way that they’re capable. So I would normally understand that, but at the same time, I come from a personal place where you take care of your own to the best of your ability first, so being taken for granted as free labor, particularly when my energy is so dear, strikes a few nerves. It’s hard for me not to feel like I’m judging when I’m asking these questions but it seems rather inconsiderate. And even if it weren’t me being taken for granted, I think my head would still be tilted forty five degrees to one side, wondering.
While I do, on occasion, happily help certain friends with their kids, I’m either asked or offering a set amount of assistance within my abilities and energy levels. They aren’t taking for granted that I’ll be available, and they’re making sure that they’re not putting me out or expending all my energy, or putting me in a difficult position by planning all their activities first and asking me last so that I feel guilty for ruining their plans if I have to say no.
I’m not a fan of this trend but I wonder if I’m the only one who sees this sort of thing.
::: Is there a prevalent assumption that family are fair game as childcare providers or is that coming from a dissonance when one of two parties doesn’t want to participate in the traditional exchange?
::: Am I overcomplicating the question? Is it just that there’s an assumption that it’s your familial duty to babysit if you are childless, no matter who you are, unless you’re a professed baby-hater like one of my girlfriends? (She’s my example because while chatting with her, she pointed out that no one in their right mind would ask her to ‘sit, she’s made it plain she hates babies. She tolerates children.)
September 19, 2011
There were so many great and interesting comments left on my post about whether or not to have children that I had trouble responding to enough of them in the comments. I appreciated everyone’s thoughts on their personal situations and decision-making.
I also had second, third and several other thoughts about whether or not to discuss one particular theme of the comments further, partly because there was a reason I left out some important, relevant information out: I didn’t necessarily want that to be the center of the post and I tend to leave that subject under wraps.
But it was an underlying theme of the comments because I left it out and it is relevant to the conversation because it’s a huge part of my life even if I do try to pretend that it’s not. Like it or no, the physical limitation aspect of my life is a factor in every decision I make, every minute of every day. And it’s not like I haven’t mentioned it once or twice before, so I’m not sure why I still instinctively try to sweep it under the rug like it’s not a big deal.
So, comments first:
@thecelt, you made me laugh out loud. PRECISELY. There IS no “kinda-kid” out there. So I want to know for sure. If I’m doing this, I’m committing!
@Sense: From the Mixed up Files was an absolute favorite. Definitely fed the runaway fantasies. 😉
@MovingEast: I actually think through those cliches without feeling like they’re cliches… they are true. I see new parents experiencing the wonder of new kids in their lives and I love it. And I see the decisions they have to make and learn from that too. It’s not that I don’t think they’re worth it once you choose it, in the abstract.
@nicoleandmaggie: He will have to be more than half the parent, I think, and that’s what I worry about. It’s got to be something we’re both willing to sacrifice for because I suspect (see below) it’s going to be excruciating in the beginning for me and then a huge commitment with most of the burden shifting to him. Emotionally, I may have a lot of trouble with that. For me. (Selfishly. Whatever. Again, see below.)
@oilandgarlic: No judgement on anyone else but I definitely want to know now because I don’t want to start in my mid-30’s. For me, I feel like that would be waiting too long because of how my health has progressed.
*****
On the point where PiC and I have to talk this out: we do, when it comes to making the final decision.
I do only speak for myself on this blog and frequently leave his thoughts out of it because he doesn’t have any desire to be present here. (I’ve asked.) But that’s not to say he doesn’t know my concerns and worries, and he understands them. The evolution of my feelings on the subject hasn’t been a secret to him.
He’s not terribly concerned about our different feelings on the matter, we’ll figure it out together, he’s always known that we’ve been coming at this from different personal experiences.
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I live with something that’s long mimicked rheumatoid arthritis (or lupus) and fibromyalgia. It’s neither of the first two so far as tests are concerned, but most of the symptoms match up. It started out affecting just a few areas, umpteen years ago, but now it’s everywhere, and any combination of joints and muscles are usually at some level of pain akin to holding an open flame against that muscle or joint every single day.
I spent over fifteen years trying to get a diagnosis and the conclusion is only that I have chronic pain, which isn’t a diagnosis. It’s only a conclusion and defines my experience: pain that doesn’t stop, that has lasted over six months, and doesn’t necessarily have a definitive origin. Stress, being tired, lack of sleep all exacerbate the pain and pain causes all three in a feedback loop. Awesome. That was still better than the many years of idiot doctors telling me that it wasn’t possible for me to be feeling the kind of pain that I was feeling.
When it flares, I can be out of commission for hours, days, or weeks at a time. At the beginning of any flare, I won’t know what the damage will be or how long it’ll last. Stress of the emotional or physical sort can start a flare. Energy is severely limited. There are days typing on a keyboard, lifting a pen, or using a knife and a fork requires too much effort. I have to be incredibly selective about how much activity I commit to because if I push myself too hard these days? Too much of anything can cause fatigue and pain that effectively destroys my ability to functions for days thereafter.
If you haven’t read it, the Spoon Theory describes the way someone living with this sort of thing has to rework life strategies. And the Bloggess summed up how you feel during/after a flare pretty well.
So you might better understand my reluctance to head right into motherhood on the basis of physical limitations. It’s more than just an age thing, it’s more than just a “normal” reluctance. I’m starting from the knowledge that not only do I not have my once-vaunted capacity to power through any and all challenges anymore, I have to be very careful that I don’t step into, essentially, a lifelong landmine. Bringing life into this world is a serious business and the last thing I want to do is make a hash of it because I don’t have it in me to carry through.
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One way to make this work is to be financially stable enough to afford child care. A lot of it. I don’t feel right about not raising my own children, but I’m not foolish enough to think that I could do a lot of the physical stuff on my own anymore. If we were earning enough that one of us could stay home with the kids, and also had some help with the kids to make up for my part, that could be one way to handle the situation.
Alternatively, I don’t have to bear our children. Instead, we could do what I’ve always wanted to do: adopt. That comes with its own risks, challenges and expenses but that’s an option I’ve always loved and saves at least the physical burden of pregnancy.
I’ve been concerned about that because, though childless, I help others with their kids a lot, and it wipes me out. Every. Single. Time. That tells me that I’m not prepared for the physical challenges of pregnancy. And as recounted by many many friends in stark honesty? The fatigue, the internal upheaval, the damage to the body? I am not prepared for that.
Ultimately, we have a lot to discuss and decide.
September 15, 2011
Driving into work on Tuesday morning, I rang up ING Direct to see if we/PiC could take advantage of their Mortgage Blowout.
Their teaser rate was a 5-year fixed for 2.55% (2.606% APR).
They were also offering:
* Rate Renewal feature – If you qualify, you can relock your rate and extend your fixed rate period for another 5 years at the Easy Orange rate offered at that time – all for one payment which is equal to 2 of your bi-weekly payments (maximum payment of $5,000).
* No points or hidden fees
* Free bi-weekly payments – Pay down your mortgage faster with an extra payment each year.
We did a brief rundown on the building itself, the loan, and the most recently assessed value of the property. It turns out that our/his loan to value ratio is still at 75% and ING is requiring a 65% LTV ratio so the highest loan they would offer at the moment is still $70k less than what we’d need to fully refi the loan.
For a crazy, crazy moment I seriously considered throwing some cash at the loan to make it happen but that only lasted a split second. My old anti-debt Pay-It-DOWN instincts rearing up. You know how that goes.
We’ll pass for now but I’ll be keeping an eye on the whole mortgage situation now that we’re getting closer to merging finances and therefore getting closer to putting me in charge.
*ahem*
But c’mon. We all know that I’m going to be the CFO of this family even if I am learning to share.