I don’t want to be rich, not Mitt Romney Rich. I wouldn’t know how to handle all that money, I’d probably give it all away, not that that’s a bad thing. But that’s not my goal in life, to be Mitt Romney Rich. Actually my life goals have little to do with money really, though money would certainly help them on their way. This isn’t about life goals, this is just about life. This also isn’t about asking for anything. I wish I had the money to give to those who are in crisis, but we are not in crisis, at least not right now. This is just a rant.
I don’t want to be rich, and we have enough to get by, to keep from being homeless, to keep the lights on, and to keep from starving to death. I count my blessings for those things every day. We even have well fitting clothes, though I can’t take credit for that; those came thanks to a donor who decided that we needed them, that having one pair of shorts, one dress and one pair of pants that fit me (and some t-shirts and tanks) wasn’t enough. That gift was like Christmas in July and we’re grateful every day as we get dressed.
I don’t want to be rich, but I wish we didn’t have to balance between having milk and having bread by the end of the week. I wish I could make some of the really good, healthy recipes I see on TV without having to refigure the budget, or waiting until the next month when the food stamps come in. Not anything super expensive, but that corn soup on the Chew looked really good, and at about $1 a serving it should be in our price range. But first we need a blender and butter milk, and greek yogurt, and fresh corn and we spent our last $6 on bread and spaghetti sauce and a can of cat food. We have a box of stroganoff hamburger helper that we have to put off to next week because we don’t have 2 cups of milk, only about ¼ of a cup (which is why we bought the spaghetti sauce, we have pasta and hamburger).
I don’t want to be rich. But sometimes I wish I could give my kids a bit more. I wish I had a car and could load them up and take them to the beach, or to the free concerts downtown on Thursdays. Or that I could have gotten my daughter to the free week of Karate day camp she won last year, that we never used because, well, transportation costs money, the bus doesn’t go there and I can’t just walk there anymore. I wish I could take my daughter to the splash park and the playground on a whim instead of having to plan it out weeks ahead so we have the $2 a person to get in plus the $4 bus fare. Or girl scouts, or the science museum day camp. Heck, while we’re wishing, how about season passes to Disney or Wet-n-Wild, they’re not that far away really; though right now they may as well be in another State. It would take a couple of hours each way by bus to get there, and even then we’d probably end up walking the last three miles home because the bus to our house stops early.
I don’t want to be rich. But there are some days when no one really feels good, when Caedy’s tired from work, it’s 99 degrees outside and cooler than it is in the house, and it would be nice to have the option of just ordering a pizza for dinner instead of having to stand in the overheated kitchen and cook. It would be nice to be able to take the family to Olive Garden for lunch (all you can eat soup salad and bread sticks, yum), or even just go out for ice cream, or to see a movie.
I don’t want to be rich. But there are many days when I have regrets, regrets that I didn’t go to school earlier, regrets that I couldn’t keep up with managing my lungs well enough that they didn’t worsen. I regret that I’m not healthier, stronger, that I hadn’t been able to save more. But honestly I don’t know how I would have saved more. Because while we used to be slightly better off than we are now, we were never anywhere near middle class. We may have been more on the top of the poverty line instead of halfway down to nothing, but we still only ever had enough to ‘get by’. My adult life has only ever been shades of poor, though it didn’t always feel that way.
I don’t want to be rich. But I wish I could make those who were, even those who are middle class and in the position of being able to help those who are not, understand what it is like to live this way. There are a few who have been here, who do not forget, but I understand it is way too easy to do so. Much like the pain of child birth, the mind doesn’t like holding onto the pain of poverty. Some of them have the temerity of comparing their experience living off a trust fund while in college with being poor. They have literally no comprehension of what being poor means. Their minds can’t even wrap around the idea, any more than I can wrap mine around what it would be like to be rich. Because they can’t understand us, they fear us. Because they fear us, we fear them. Unlike us, they have power; both political and because they have money. Unlike us, they have the ability to act on their fears and make our lives more difficult, until we are ground into the dust.
I don’t want to be rich. I would like to be less poor.