"I was labeled for delivery to the palace, but the stork dropped me by accident (or by habit) on this poor farm family," my sister said, and we laughed. Hard.
Our family had no money. Now that I've seen my parents' tax returns I know that for many years they had less than no money. It wasn't until Mom went back to teaching, after most of us kids were gone from home, that they began to pull out of debt, to have a tad to put in savings. Or give away. When they had a little of something, they were very generous.
"Oh, everyone was poor then," those who are some years ahead of us say. But that wasn't true for us. We were growing up after the depression when the economy was sturdy, if not robust, and I wasn't aware of other kids in my class at school who wore shoes with holes in them. Sometimes I was made to be ashamed of that, even by teachers.
Money buys a lot of creature comforts, and there are problems that just disappear if there's some money to throw at them. I recognized that fact gradually and deeply as I grew into conscious recognition of same and different. I haven't forgotten, will never forget, that money buys real and important things. I also learned and haven't forgotten that we earn our money by contributing what society values enough to pay for. I learned there is no magical substitute for hard work, for being reliable, for carrying responsibility.
In spite of financial poverty, our parents provided. They had eighty acres which supported cows and chickens, so we had milk, eggs, and meat in abstemious portions. We had an apple orchard and an oxhart cherry tree, sour cherries too, and a huge garden. (We swallowed our complaints about the accompanying work because complaining wasn't allowed, but it surely wasn't all joy.) We had strawberries, raspberries and grapes each in their season. In November we butchered and the dried meat, and all summer we canned, canned, canned. The cellar, by September, had shelf after shelf of beautiful, sealed jars of food. We had a creek running through the meadow just below the house with a swimming hole and sand bars as good as a beach. Chicken feed came in cloth bags, and Mom sewed.
Pop and Mom lived by hard work. They also lived by spirit, by intentional optimism, laughter and faith. They maintained for themselves-- and included us children (Mother never allowed the word kids, kids are baby goats, she always said) as we came along-- maintained a daily worship period that started with Bible reading, included some silent prayer time, and ended with Pop's spoken prayer. No skipping. Never. Because of circumstances beyond their control, my parents and we, their family, were judged and found wanting by our community. Nevertheless, my parents sought with deepest sincerity to find the blessings from the Sermon on the Mount, to live by the commandments, to follow the two essentials that Jesus laid out, that is, "Love the Lord your God, and your neighbor as yourself."
Mom knew how to laugh. Sometimes when she was thwarted, when something went terribly wrong, I could see in her face the struggle between despair and anger and laughter. Usually laughter won, bubbling up and spilling out of her, lifting us all.
We bought little and wasted less. We had enough. We had few closets, but those closets were not full, in spite of the fact that we didn't throw things out. We didn't have much; we had everything we needed.
We had both next to nothing and also the best of everything in the world.
