Someone said his Daddy skills were going to waste on a dog.
I asked if he meant the skills that enabled him to ignore the dancing, sniffing, persistent nudging at his elbow who was nearly perishing of thirst every night for a week at 2 am when we were having a slightly warm spell so that I was getting up instead?
Oh yes. Yes, those – well, apparently Daddy skills like feeding, diapering, taking them out to play, etc., are best practiced in the daytime. They also mean Best Sleep Ever.
Cue the biggest eyeroll of the century, please. I am not amused.
All kidding aside, we’re back on the subject. And with some other life changes going on, it warrants the consideration of whether or when this is something we’re going to do. Mostly me. I’m going to say, mostly me if he’s pawning off pregnancy and night duty. Plus, my blog. Nyeh nyeh. (Yes, we are totally mature.)
I’m more at peace with the ideas of kids eventually, all of my worries are not gone, of course, but I have accepted that they, in fact, are part of life and no, I can’t have my mom back to make this less scary.
It’s when I focus on the pregnancy bit that it all falls apart. There is just nothing appealing about it. Not just because I’ve only heard a million and one truth stories about it, but because for the first time in nearly twenty years, I’m starting to see a chance to repair my health and I’m thinking erm? Pregnancy? That … doesn’t so much sound like a step toward better. And healthier. And less broken. Kids are fun and fulfilling and all that but you know what else? They are hard work. They are responsibility, late nights, long days, lifting and hauling, racing after them, praying to anyone who will listen you can keep up with them this time, keeping them engaged and entertained, teaching them and oh-so-much. But that’s all after surviving a pregnancy, unbroken.
Lauren’s Insta-Grammy #6 triggered this sense that I’d be taking a long jump off a short cliff.
Not that her announcement post didn’t get me in the gut a bit too, but that was in a different, rueful laugh, oh-my-friend, my-suffering-pregnant-friend, let’s get chocolate because there’s a lot of time left on this clock and yes almost every mother I have known well IRL has told me that the GlowyPregnancy was a myth kind of way.
And her update post was simply: Yes. This needs to be a CHOICE. Because it’s too damn painful, difficult, sacrificial or much, at any given point not to be something you want for yourselves. And it’s not something I’ve seen most people regret when it was their active choice. In the long run.
It was this bit, from the first post that made me breathe deeply for a minute:
“Traveling and not feeling 100% always sucks, but we also had a lot of fun. I mostly felt guilty for not being my usual yes yes yes self. Having to leave events before they were finished, having to take breaks and rest in our hotel room during the day, having to start the days a little later than usual in order to pull it together. It all made me feel guilty. Not because other people were at all difficult about it, but because this weekend was about family, and even then I had to take time out just for me and that’s really difficult for me to assert or admit to.”
That description is so apt, and so incredibly familiar, that I wilted a little. I can generally take on the world in so many ways but this? Is me. And this is me on a normal day, much less on a travel day (-5), much less with the addition of family(-20), or the addition of family events (-30), forget the idea of having all the side effects of carrying a childling around in my belly.
My normal has been starting out the day, any day, always at less than 100%. Getting up takes 10%, getting ready takes 15%. Then it’s a 10-12 hour day ahead. Typically with no food, water or bathroom breaks. One if I’m lucky. Home to prep dinner or mewl weakly on the sofa for a while (60/40 which kind of day it’ll be), while PiC takes care of the evening necessities and dinner before collapse.
The imagination quails at the thought of taking a version of that and adding a new, totally unpredictable, factor to it.
There are certainly other plans on the horizon to deal with the insanity of my current life but the health and related energy issue piece when most people don’t really know or understand what’s “wrong” with me, especially when I’ve learned to hide it so well because:
Most people don’t need to know my “weakness”,
I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired, it’s nice to pretend I’m fine sometimes,
and frankly, I’m tired of hearing uninformed criticisms and advice from people who should know better,
and yet I still feel guilty or judged for taking the breaks I desperately need when I am around the people who, again, know and should understand (but don’t care).
That’s a different level of discomfort I’m now working through.
It doesn’t help having heard how I should “avoid becoming a burden” to others. I already knew not to lean on people anyway, that statement reminded me, again, that I am considered “less than” and that those who might naturally have been thought to offer support will not, in fact, be anywhere but in the Talking Head Category (and now, I hope, geographically very far away) if this proves a difficult journey.
I’m not the person to ask for help or support. I give it, and I take care of others. And if I can’t, then I simply go away, but the last thing I’m comfortable with is asking for assistance, having been so independent for so long. It’s a good thing my sense of self esteem is rather well established by now or these little but consistent zingers would be rather destructive.
Without borrowing trouble, I’m now preparing for the eventuality that in some people’s* eyes, any needs, anything that happens if we choose to do this, any problems, they will all be “my fault” and down to my “weakness.” As I write this, I realize that I can deal with that if I expect it and I will have some support from my own, even if just in spirit.
I hope for the best, that my imagination is more creative than reality should we commit to this, and plan to deal with whatever happens. As usual. Guilt be damned.
*Specific people. But I don’t feel like naming names, though it may make more sense why I’ve bothered addressing it at all if I did. Just not worth it.
It was a long road in getting there, and I thought I’d share some of the process.
Even though I had the advantage of knowing the job description when it went live, it was never a given that the job was mine. This was serious business. Sure, I could learn from someone else. But this was my team. And I wasn’t prepared to let someone else be my boss, other than Boss.
I considered this a strategic battle and I prepared as such.
Stage One: Signal of Intent
Once the job was created, my mind was ticking. There was never a moment to just sit back and think about it so I kept the back of my mind in high-analysis mode for weeks about what I had to shore up before the interview.
Then, of course, I went over my resume about ten more times before I was satisfied, and started crafting a cover letter.
I hate writing cover letters.
One of the benefits of my job for this situation has been hiring and hiring a lot. I’ve read well over a thousand resumes and cover letters, and helped other people with theirs. It didn’t make writing mine easy, critiquing is always easier because of the mental distance, but it was easier. Once completed, rewritten, burnished, and rewritten again, I asked the favor of the eyes of a few respected expert resume and cover letter readers for feedback. *Interestingly enough, I wasn’t comfortable submitting my cover and resume until I had already started working my way through some of the areas I knew were weaknesses or lacking. There had to be truth in advertising as an internal candidate.
Stage Two: We Have Contact – The Interview
It was unfortunate timing that the process coincided with my Mom’s passing. My Powerpoint was half done and largely unpolished, my plan was still putty and I had to pull it all together while trying to stay on top of work. Jobs may be easier to get when you have one but the process is pretty painful.
Still. Eye on the ball: my team. (I’m not possessive, oh no.)
Once the interviews were scheduled, the panel was set. I knew who my audience would be and what perspectives/departments/concerns might be represented in our conversations. From there, I tailored my presentation.
Honestly, despite carefully dressing (totally out of character for our culture, predictably earning me a few jibes), an excellent Powerpoint tailored to be inserted into each conversation with individuals rather than having them each sit through the same thing, I felt that my performance was inconsistent.
I was not in my best form that day (or any other day that month – holidays, new life, without Mom were basically hell). The most important person to sway on the panel was very insistent to sticking to a script and after a full day swapping gears between work and interviews, I simply didn’t keep framing the conversation as I should have.
It took about four days before I got past post-interview jitters and unnecessary recapping.
Stage Three: Immersion and Negotiations (pre and post offer)
Post-interview, I immediately immersed myself in salary negotiation and interview technique writings and videos. It didn’t matter if I wasn’t at that stage yet. I was still, in essence, at that stage. I needed to be in the right mindset. It was the next best thing to practice and to achieve a sense of control and calm.
As well, without practice, all of the following would feel impossible. It would feel “easier said than done.” I simply couldn’t leave anything to chance or hope, so analysis, strategic planning and more planning it was!
The interesting thing about negotiating with this particular organization and the people involved is that while they certainly don’t make it seem like the job itself will be rescinded simply for the asking, they have been less that open to negotiating itself. Or that initiating and continuing the process for more than a weak gesture means you’re “hard-nosed.” Nossiree. Know what I know?
This is business.
“When people with hiring authority think of winners, they think of people like them who live and breathe this business thing. They negotiate things as a matter of course: that is a major portion of the value they bring to the company. Volunteering a number when asked says the same thing to people with hiring authority that flunking FizzBuzz says to an engineer: this person may be a wonderful snowflake in other regards, but on the thing I care about, they’re catastrophically incompetent. It will also cause them to retroactively question competencies they’d previously credited you with.” Patrick of Kalzumeus, in his 7000 words on Salary Negotiations
My mindset: I represent my business interests in this negotiation and those interests are my life, my ability to make choices, my freedom. This is my family I’m negotiating for.
And if that isn’t enough, I absolutely acknowledge that as a woman, as a minority(somewhat, this is a slightly wibbly wobbly factor), and as a relatively young person, I apparently have the cards stacked against me, not to mention the dismissive attitudes that don’t come right out and say: it’s not that your work doesn’t merit the higher salary, but you’re just sort of too young so we don’t actually understand why you’re asking as you should be glad to have landed the job.
And to that I say: You’ve had the time and opportunity to observe extremely high quality, high powered work and know that I will bring even more value over the next period of time, and for that? Appropriate compensation is appropriate.
But at this point, it was a waiting game. I had been interviewed, other candidates would be interviewed, and a second round of interviews would commence for final candidates.
Our dear old Doggle, our canine companion of nearly a year, is now officially spoiled within a inch of his life. Nearly by us, mostly by our friends. Our friends lost their own beloved pet not too long ago and asked for the loan of Doggle when we traveled to fill their empty home for a little while, which we were glad to do as he looooves them.
We’ve now figured out why: the kids not only feed him treats hand over fist, he doesn’t just get a yard to romp in, he gets to sleep on the furniture! *cue heart attack*
We were texted a photo of him stretched out on the sofa, bookended by two excessively happy kidlings. Honestly. New meaning to Barcalounger.
Of course now that we’re home, he’s bored and aloof and his old bed is too small. And smooshed. And boring. And Pic, feeling the sting of mopey dejected dog, is ready to bribe Doggle with Yet Another Bed. That’s right, his third bed in less than a year.
Shall we recap?
He’s gotten in the last 11 months:
A new home. Two beds. Leashes and collars. A car. Two toys he really loves. All the health care he can stand (and then some). Oh, and endless food, love and affection, road trips to see extended family and friends who dote on him. And far too many treats from zany neighbor and kooky older people who can’t help themselves.
Next year, he’ll probably get a house with a yard full of grass we’ll have to water and mow for him.
Does anyone want to say it? No? Lucky dog!
Obviously, pretty tongue in cheek “resentment” here, he’s a lot of work wrapped up in an adorable fur coat and it’s equal parts love and sigh.
I’ve been enjoying the conversations over at Wandering Scientist on work life balance. As I teeter into my thirties, I’ve been examining some of the financial and professional choices I’ve made during this decade and reflecting on how effective those philosophies have been and whether they will continue to hold true for the upcoming decade. I suspect that life and money and career in my thirties will be just as interesting a trip, but beyond that? Well, so far I’ve been terrible at prognosticating so I’ll just leave it at that.
As for my twenties ….
These were absolutely the foundation years: completing the final years of undergrad, deciding to hold off on graduate school until I knew better what I wanted out of it, throwing myself into my career at full tilt while digging out of debt and then building up a nest egg. My approach to my career and my money was the same: more is better.
Philosophically, the natural, deeply ingrained, unthinking element was an intrinsic need to achieve something, a drive to have a discernable growth pattern, to do something that seemed tangible. I wanted to build a career, I wanted to have achieved something substantive.
The logical, considered, and reasoned plan was to aim for a position where my work-life balance wouldn’t be dictated by the company because I was highly placed enough where they didn’t care about niceties like when I showed up or how many hours I worked as long as the job was done well. Essentially, I wanted to achieve the ability to talk terms with the company I worked for as long as I was an employee.
***
In Oil and Garlic’s post, A Precarious Balance, she discusses the ignored constraints in finding work-life balance when your income doesn’t stretch to buying flexibility and help. She lists a number of things that one can do to earn or achieve more flexibility from her perspective as a non-manager with a mid-level salary in a HCOLA. That combination probably describes a fair number of us who simply don’t have the ability to buy out of the choices that we have to manage to run households and feed mouths, day to day.
Meanwhile, she notes: At my company, those in manager positions and above enjoy a higher autonomy. They don’t have to ask permission to work from home. They also have the money for nanny and cleaning help, something that my household has paid for but at a great sacrifice (and only temporarily). They can still enjoy many luxuries like massages, travel and dining out. True, they have greater responsibilities, too, and they’ve earned it. But their solutions often aren’t applicable to those those in lower income brackets. In other words, they can buy some balance while many people don’t have that same privilege.
I very much agreed. Having worked many years in retail and other similarly low-wage environments while going to school, I’d observed very early on the vulnerabilities of being in the middle and lower tiers of any organization. One typically has less negotiating power in terms of responsibilities, is considered more expendable or is less valued as an asset to the company, and blends in with the rest of the equivalent employees holding the same role.
In that position, an individual’s power, and the choices one would like to make for oneself tend to lie in the advocacy and kindness of an immediate superior and his or her ability to persuade at least one or more rungs above if flexibility isn’t part of the company policy.
***
In the long-term, that was far too slim a reed for me to rest my life and my family’s lives on, particularly when I had the additional concern of a chronicillness for which there were no immediate prospects for improvement.
Superficially, need and circumstance dictated that I simply earn a living but I was compelled to steer my career trajectory as steeply as I could, as early as I could, while building a strong reputation in my chosen field. My theory was that should I be derailed for any length of time, for any reason, that reputation would serve to smooth my way.
Cloud, of Wandering Scientist confirms, whatever choice you make to take a break for family reasons after you’ve established yourself, you’re usually starting from a better place:
Once you have kids, you can decide whether or not you want or need to ease up on your career, but whatever you decide, it will be easier to keep your career viable if you have a strong reputation built in your earlier years. Whether you keep working or take a break, that reputation will serve you well. I think that one reason I haven’t suffered from much “working moms are slackers” bias in my own career is that I have a sterling reputation for productivity- and have maintained it. But we are also actively recruiting someone right now who is coming back after about 5 years off with young kids. We actually sought her out and asked her if she was ready to come back, on the basis of having been impressed with her work before she took the break.
Details will differ a bit across industries but the basis makes sense to me – someone who had a solid reputation before taking a break would have a leg up on someone who hadn’t established one.
***
My personal net worth has gone from -$50,000 in family debt to around $100,000 in assets over the course of nine years in addition to paying for all living expenses for a family of four. While it’s no great shakes, it’s certainly a fair start at a real financial basis with which to start a family.
I haven’t taken a break yet, and I don’t know if and when I (or we) will decide that it’s time to, but right now, I’m in a strong building phase of my career and striving for higher earning power. It’s only partly a joke that I’m trying to outearn PiC before the end of this year. That’s partly ego, and partly practicality. If I’m the higher earner, and we start a family, there’s a stronger case for him to stay home with the kids! 😉
In the end, my choices throughout my twenties were tailored to setting the scene and creating opportunities for freedom and better choices in the future.
It’s been a heck of a week. Not terrible but tiring. I finally caught up with my dad and found out that there have been multiple deaths in the family. It’s maybe a good thing that I didn’t know about them in time to attend the services as I would have felt obligated to attend. Instead, I’ve been focusing getting things done at home and exercising myself and Doggle.
Kind of overdid it though, between being emotionally overwrought thinking about Mom and seeking catharsis through cleaning. My hands and arms don’t appreciate the outlets that my brain seeks, which is really frustrating as physical activity is so good for the brain.
Posts for Perusal
Little Miss Moneybags and Peanut got their Life Insurance in order. PiC and I organized our life insurance along similar lines, though we will likely be having more conversations to get aligned as things change. At the time we sorted our insurance, he was well able to take care of any financial needs without my income. Without me, he would likely still work in this town and stay in this home. He would need some assistance for sorting things and Doggle, so I still carry insurance through work but both he and my dad would be beneficiaries of my life insurance because I don’t want him to be financially responsible for Dad’s healthcare and continuing care. (I still have to set up a trust for that.) If he’s gone, I couldn’t carry the costs for myself, this home and my Dad however long I had to support him, so I would need a fair amount of extra income from his insurance.
Eemusings on the Cost of Convenience: I’m pretty sure that I’m close to the same as eemusings. I hate spending money on convenience items like snacks when they’re not part of the grocery shop. But I will buy things as part of the shopping trip like chips, nuts, frozen foods for reheating on those nights when we don’t want or don’t have time to cook a full meal.
A Recipe
I have SingleMa‘s Pinterest obsession to thank for this one. She pinned this Crispy Honey Lemon Chicken recipe several weeks ago and the name (of course) stuck in my mind. I rather obsessively went back to hunt for it when trying to decide what to make for dinner and made it with some alterations to the recipe to suit my lazier cooking style and general preference for baked over fried (faster clean-up).
Original:
Crispy Honey Lemon Chicken
serves 4-6
Ingredients:
4 boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into pieces
1/4 cup olive oil + 3 tablespoons
3 tablespoons honey + more for dripping/drizzling
the juice of 2 large lemons
1 tablespoon fresh lemon zest + 2 teaspoons
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 cup all-purpose (or whole wheat) flour
2 tablespoons cornstarch
Directions:
In a bowl, combine 1/4 cup olive oil, 3 tablespoons honey, lemon juice, 1 tablespoon lemon zest, and a 1/4 teaspoon each of salt and pepper. Whisk ingredients together, then add chicken pieces to a ziplock bag and pour marinade over top. Let sit for 30 minutes – 2 hours.
When ready to make, add flour, cornstarch, 1 teaspoon lemon zest and the remaining salt and pepper to a large bowl. Mix well. Heat a large skillet on medium-high heat, and once it is very hot, add 1 tablespoons of olive oil. Coat chicken pieces in the flour mixture, then add to the skillet and cook until each side is golden brown, about 3-4 minutes per side. Remove and set chicken on a paper-towel covered plate. Cook remaining batches, adding more/less oil if needed. I used 3 tablespoons, but depending on how coated your chicken pieces are you may need a bit more.
Serve with rice and a few tablespoons of honey mixed with lemon zest for dipping.
Modified
Crispy Honey Lemon Chicken
serves 2 greedy-faces
Ingredients:
4-8 chicken drumsticks and/or thighs, bone-in
1/4 cup olive oil + 3 tablespoons
3 tablespoons honey + more for dripping/drizzling
the juice of 2 large lemons
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 cup all-purpose flour
Directions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cover a roasting pan with foil.
In a bowl, combine 1/4 cup olive oil, 3 tablespoons honey, lemon juice, and a 1/4 teaspoon each of salt and pepper. Whisk ingredients together, then add chicken pieces to a ziplock bag and pour marinade over top. Let sit for 30 minutes – 2 hours. (Or overnight.)
When ready to make, add flour and the remaining salt and pepper to a large bowl. Mix well. Coat chicken pieces in the flour mixture, then place pieces side by side in the roasting pan.
Bake for 20 minutes, turn, bake for another 10-15 minutes until done.
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.
Outside the courthouse, it was positively gorgeous. The sun was out, everyone arrived nearly at the same time, I was given two beautiful bouquets because two of my friends knew I wasn’t going to even think of flowers. And one was also turnabout for taking care of hers.
I spent some time with people in the parking lot as they gathered but I hid in the bosom of my surrogate family for a while. I wasn’t nervous, I just felt … surrounded for a minute. I needed quiet.
Then my parents arrived. And my blood pressure went up. My dear older friend who is bossy, domineering, mothering though childless, and knows how worried I was about Mom, came over and introduced herself, took Mom’s arm and I could breathe again. She’s wonderful precisely because she’s all those things. She’s a take charge personality I’ve come to love and trust and she helped with Mom the whole time we were waiting in line at the courthouse so that Dad could just be.
We never have that kind of help and it was a huge boon that morning. Mom was doing particularly well that morning, too, which was amazing. She had trouble remembering names, and faces, but she didn’t have any real outbursts early in the day. She wasn’t overtired or overwrought.
As it turned out, we waited in the wrong line for 20 minutes because it wasn’t clear which one to be in, and I felt a bit of a silly arse because I’d looked them over to check! That made us late for our appointment. As the minutes ticked off, my blood pressure started shooting up. PiC was remarkably calm at that point, saying it was fine, we’d just go elsewhere if they didn’t take us but that made me feel even worse. The thought of dragging our 20 plus group back of beyond because I’d screwed up the lines?? Augh!!
Luckily they had our judge stick around for this last one and made it happen.
Of course, she was in a tearing hurry. She started off, with her poufy hair, looking over her ’70s shaded glasses, “in the middle of someone else’s shift, so we have to do this expeditiously.” So expeditiously it was done. The ceremony could not have lasted more than three minutes. Blink or breathe too hard and you missed it. She wasn’t rude but I think she still upset one of our friends for coming right out with the whole “let’s move along” speech. He felt it really wasn’t necessary. (I was amused.) It was not the worst thing ever, I was worried a long ceremony would have me in tears and I hate crying in front of people but we didn’t realize that at least one of our guests had been downstairs and hadn’t come back in time!
PiC was grinning madly throughout.
The judge granted us about 2.5 seconds to take photos in the room and then sent us out to the front of the courthouse for any pictures we wanted. And those took too long – I was starving! I know, sentimental. I do regret not getting a good photo with my surrogate family in the fuss of everyone bossing everyone else for the photos and then getting antsy for lunch, but I’ll have a do-over.
We had a lovely lunch with the group, sans my parents, lots of photos were taken. The absolute necessity of following the A Practical Wedding’s How to Write a Perfect Toast was underlined. There’s a picture that I’m hoping wasn’t captured on anyone else’s camera that shows my face at a moment that I’ll just call “sentimentality” to anyone else. PiC and I had a talk later about this. I’m not letting the memory fester but it also may not happen again at Round Two.
On a related note, I have no doubt thousands of photos were taken, in fact, which frightens me no end. Living in an age where photos are just … everywhere. EVERYWHERE. Augh!
Traffic to and fro, of course, this having been in LA. But after all was said and done, we got home to visit with family briefly, and then went to feed me again. My lunch salad was sad and I was starving again. Stuffed full of sushi, we made our final guest drop-off and collapsed at our crappy hotel room just before midnight. (I reserved my annoyance for a letter to the Doubletree after we got back.)
We. Were. Married.
You know, it wasn’t perfect. It was full of hustle and bustle and “are you serious with boutonnieres too-big, boutonnieres too-heavy, boutonnieres won’t-stay? Because non-essential stress, kids. NON ESSENTIAL. Skipped it for a reason. Also, you bring it, you fix it.” (I fixed it.)
For all that we crushed this wedding into a time capsule we still caught other people’s expectations, other people’s imposed “necessities”, other people’s baggage. We were also lavished with other people’s love and joy and silliness and loyalty and steadiness. (And cute little tiny baby feet! So many babies.) We still played our roles of fixer upper, mediator, organizer, event planner, picker uppers. Because that’s who we are. That’s what we do. And that’s “who” our wedding was. It was good. It was better than perfect, it was us. Low-key, casual, almost-normal. And PiC was stupid-happy. I really liked that.
It was good.
***
Next spring, we’ll host a food thing of some kind where everyone we care about, including long distance friends who didn’t get the chance to make it and were sad not to have been offered the chance, will be given plenty of warning. I don’t want to miss the opportunity to see them and spend time with them. But it won’t be a pressure cooker of an event. It’s just going to be a gathering of loved ones. And I guess we could get around to having some rings by then, if we wanted to. There’s also going to be the fancy dress, since it got altered already!
But for a bigger thing? I’m asking a couple of my girls to help out. I’m not dealing with any more stupid flower pinning emergencies. 😉
