Cookerati

When we were younger, we were poor and did without. I don’t think we considered ourselves poor, but looking back you can see it. The worst point was when my dad was working in one state, while the rest of us, my mom and six kids were in another state 500 miles away. My dad was driving away once after a week vacation spent at home with the family. We told my mom that we stuck all the liver in the cooler in his car. We did it as a joke, but also because we all hated liver so much. My mom frantically waved, my dad honked and drove off not realizing the precious cargo he was carrying. My mom said, that was all she could afford. I don’t think we realized it until later that things had gotten really tight. She sold some of her gold wedding gifts to help pay bills, went vegetarian because it was cheaper, we lived in a house with leaks and peeling paper on the walls that we took care of as best we could.

Those were tough times, but I think we came through all right. That wasn’t really poverty, it was do-able or do-without-able and we did okay. I went to college on mostly grants and some loans. I am one of those families that saves, and puts money away, lives frugally, pays taxes, and yet, I can’t get assistance for my daughter’s college. Some days I feel as though my money is like sand flowing out with the tide. I feel right now as though I am paying for other people to go to college and yet still I am paying all for my daughter’s expenses.

That’s when I remind myself that it’s payback time. I did get grants and loans and because of this, I was able to get my degree and get a decent paying job, the same for my husband. I went 15 years without going to the dentist because I couldn’t afford it, but I can now because of that degree. There are kids in my son’s school that go without meals and doctors, but my kids are lucky because I was able to go to college and I can afford to help them go to college. I can afford to buy a couple of cans for the food pantry because I have a decent job with a decent wage. I can afford a garden because I can afford the seeds, and the wood for the raised beds and the good soil to fill it because I have the job and was able to save. College isn’t the only answer, but maybe a decent education is. When we were looking around at a college fair we stopped at the pipefitters table and they told us about training for being a pipefitter and how decent the job was, and the wage was, with the training mostly covered. There are opportunities all around, but if you need to pay for a home, or a meal, or a car to get there, or childcare for your kids, your opportunities can be limited. One of the best solutions to poverty is educational training, we need to figure out how to make it affordable, available and doable for each  for each person so they can go on to the career of their choice.  You don’t need to have a college degree, that isn’t my message, you need to be the best you can be and we all need to help each other out.