Feeding the Family, on $15 a day

January 18, 2009 | Category: Family, It's a Trip

I wrote a post last summer for the Chicago Mom's Blog last year about shopping at Aldi's.

A couple of months ago, a Wall Street News reporter came looking to interview me because of it. Because writing about how to "make do" is all the rage, what with our impending (*shhhh*) recession. It's au current - trendy, even.

Me? Trendy? Ha!

As if I could be proud of this. The dire straights we face (as opposed to the dire straights we listen to while we vacuum).

This is the fear that keeps me up, tossing and turning and telling myself to dream of winning the lottery (although, interestingly, we don't play it).

Jenn, of Breed 'Em and Weep, wrote this wonderful post last year. It makes me sad to read it now. About how living on the knife's edge of poverty was also was sort of preordained for her and David because of who they are, and where their bliss is.

It wasn't preordained for me. I walk around with the weight of that truth heavy on my heart. I grew up with a foot in two worlds. The artist-intelligentsia-coffee house and hemp placemat set in one. And the Talbots suit-deliverables and business cases-late night red team sessions in the Ambassador's club at Atlanta airport in the other.

To put it simply: I can make "The Way We Were" a one-woman show.

I spent most of my 20's in the impoverished flower child state. Then I spent most of my 30's in a gangbusters career. It was nice to have money. To be able to afford things.

I remember the day we started looking for a new home. The bank pre-approved a new mortgage for 5 times the amount of our first one. We ran out to a new development - the kind that builds to your specifications - and raced up and down the grand hallway of the model home.

"I'd want at least 7 water jets in the master tub," CD pronounced.

"Of course," said the sales rep, checking a box on her clipboard.

"Laundry facilities on the second floor," I added. "In fact, I'd want them in a room off the master closet."

"Absolutely," she smiled, checking off another box.

"And a slide in my room! Going right to the TV room downstairs!" Bear added.

"No problem," she smiled. "Oak or molded plastic?"

The day we were supposed to pass papers on the place, Bear was admitted to Children's Hospital with an uncontrollable fever and seizures. On the way home, I decided I was going to quit my job. Go back to being a full-time mom. Go back to the hippy chick paycheck. I knew the consequences - knew them well.

Friends and family find it hard to support our new lifestyle, and with good reasons. They don't want to see people they love struggling for the basics. Making do and doing without. They don't want to see them choose between food and healthcare. And, hey, don't want to be a bank when the time comes.

Adults should take care of themselves. They should provide to the best of their ability for themselves and their family - security. And CD and I broke that tacit promise with our choice.

I'm feeling tied up in knots a little tonight. Thinking about Jenn, and the impoverished but loving life that now no longer includes David. About my father complaining that he just sunk tens of thousands into the new backyard fence and the landscaping and now he's maybe considering moving again. About the childhood I am giving my son that doesn't include those great ski trips I knew growing up. Or the long weeks in Florida during the winter. Heck, we can't even afford to put him on Iceland soil; half his birthright and citizenship.

I knew it would be hard. I didn't know it would become this hard. For all my bluster and stress, I didn't even stretch my thoughts to these kinds of lows. And I don't know if I'm regretting or just accepting.

Take away the odd trips to Panda Express and the local diner for breakfast and I feed this family on about $15 a day. It isn't easy, but it's usually good. And it feels like something - like a satisfaction, in my soul.

But not pride.

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