There are things I hope I never take for granted. Besides the big stuff, like my husband, healthy kids, etc., etc.
This is about the little things. Like real butter. I used to buy two kinds of margarine--the cheapest on the market for cooking, and a slightly better grade for spreading. Butter happened once or twice a year, for holidays. Half & half; same thing. I had milk in my coffee, back in the day, and sometimes not a whole lot of that. Got to save it for the kids, you know. Good coffee is another. If you have never been really poor, you can't imagine the difference in quality between house brand coffee and Folgers. Folgers was a luxury, and really good coffee was outside the realm of possibility.
It's nice to own more than one chap stick. I have one in my purse and one in my desk drawer. Ditto for hair brushes. When I smoked, cigarette lighters as well. I never had more than one, back in the day.
A friend who used to write a humour column for the local paper wrote once that, if she ever got out of the single-parent-poverty rut in which she was mired, she would never buy a generic canned food product again. Her pantry looked so boring with all those black and white labels. I remembered that column whenever I opened my food cupboard.
Being poor was a horrible experience. Deciding, not what you want from the store, but what you can do without till payday. Buying small quantities of groceries because they had to be schlepped home hanging from the handlebars of a bicycle. Calling the utility companies every month to beg a few extra days before cut-off.
Driving to the store and loading Burbie up with food makes me ecstatic.
Life is sweet.
Glad things are so much better for you, Ronni
ReplyDeleteIt is hard to hear about women struggling to feed their children, when the fathers are usually free from the worry. Not always, of course.
Roger and out! I second that - I love your honesty, too. You never fail to let me know if I have irked you (in a good way).
ReplyDeleteYou rock!
~aw~
ReplyDeleteRonni, I remember what it was like to have to decide between needs and wants. There were many times I was able to make wonderful things out of nearly nothing because of it. There's nothing like creativity of the practical kind! I used to have a recipe called "Desperation Brownies".
ReplyDeleteIt consisted of anything remotely chocolate in the house, a little flour, oil or butter and sugar. I'm telling you, those were the best brownies ever made, always with different ingredients and no set recipe. Ahh, good times.
I also had a trick I used to make house brand coffee delicious. I'd put it in the blender (that was before we became a little more prosperous and had an actual coffee bean grinder) and blend it until it was fluffy. I'd add a pinch of cinnamon and put it into a jar until I used it. It tasted fabulous. Also, adding a drop of vanilla to the filter was another nice touch.