Embracing my Poverty

That’s what I’ve been thinking about. Trying to get a grip on that old feeling of being happy not just in spite of being poor, but because of it.

I know that sounds crazy. You’re not supposed to like being poor. You’re not supposed to think it’s a little bit funny sometimes or dance too much with a sort of jubilant fatalism.

It’s antithetical to my upbringing. I’m supposed to be ashamed that when the dryer breaks, I hang my clothes around the studio (which is really a converted hundred year old garage, and only partially converted if I’m honest) and pretend I live in Russia circa 1975. With the snow, I can’t go for a current age ghetto Thailand, like in the movie The Blossoming of Maximilio Olivero. Besides, I’m not that poor.

I have three jobs, after all. I’m not in danger of losing any of them, as far as I know. And so although we are scraping the edges of all possible credit sources, while someone upstairs types away at grants and I click along at SAT essays by the dozens—balancing phone calls from the schools I sub at, and trying to get as many hours as I can take—I ought to be happy. I’m still not required to get rid of all my waking hours in order to eat. I’m not worrying about losing anything that’s important to me.

But all it takes is one major appliance breakdown, and I kind of feel the sense of standing at the edge of an abyss.

But why not laugh, when you’re at the edge of the abyss? No sense in crying about it. No sense in worrying any more than I do. (Which is all the time.)

I go back and forth between feeling a bit ashamed for feeling poor, when so many people have so much less. And trying to realize just how much we live shamelessly without so many things that other people around me take for granted. People around me still go to Best Buy to buy televisions. They still go out to eat. They still go on vacation. These are all things I can’t imagine doing, or when I would be able to at anytime in the future. So I feel privileged while at the same time feeling surrounded by rather clueless people who are oblivious to the idea of living on so little.

The conundrum.

So if I’m going to take advantage of my background, all the privilege I was born with, then I think it is important that I embrace where I am. I mean really love it. Get a thrill from the idea of dumpster diving. Feel pleasure in the learning to make my own tortillas and bread. Celebrate the new skills i’ve been gaining, anticipate with joy a summer of my fingers in the dirt, wandering about with nothing to do but a book to write.

Yoga is free. Baking is nearly free. Dumpster diving is free. Watching cable TV isn’t free, but it’s cheaper than a movie (which we never do at all) and going out to eat. Painting the house this summer will be free, because we’ve already spent the money on it anyway. Walking in the woods is free. Biking around is free. Snowshoeing is free. Reading fabulous books from the library is free. Playing with the cats is free. Surfing the net isn’t free, but we use it to work, so it balances in our favor. Drinking fabulous tea isn’t free, but it’s beautiful. Homeschooling—the truly fabulous times—those are all free. Learning is free. And infinite.

I remind myself of how big the cosmos is, and how little my life is. It’s ridiculous to be anything but happy at the miracle that I have consciousness, my senses and half a lifetime ahead of me.

If I’m lucky.

Dammit, More Planting!

I was watching a program on our local PBS station yesterday on the creation of Morgan Park, a neighborhood in Duluth. (TiVO if you are one of those who pay attention to Duluth’s PBS schedule and wonder how the heck I watched a show from a week ago.)

Morgan Park was a company town built for employees of US Steel. I mean, the real kind of company town where the houses are all kinda the same except more classy for the supervisors’ families, and everyone’s kept very much under the thumb of the bossman. You couldn’t have a messy yard, for instance, or the company would come by and clean it up, docking your pay for the expense. You couldn’t plant trees (which really did make the place look an awful lot like the suburbs I grew up in—flat greenness with a few skinny saplings to break the monotony).

But gardens. There were gardens everywhere. Everyone had one in their backyard. There were huge community gardens, and there was even a garden next to the neighborhood club.

I’m trying to imagine this today. Everyone growing stuff in their backyards that is more about eating than what trendy flowers you bought at the parking lot nursery this spring. It would be such a transformation from what we are now.

It still seems like food gardening is seen as the province of those who have too much time on their hands. The underemployed. The retired. Eco-yuppies. If you garden, then there’s something suspiciously earthy about you.

Up until the 1950s, when American suburbia went all crazy-like, people had gardens because it was sensible.

What happened? Car culture, perhaps. Maybe people were so exhausted by the war effort community togetherness of victory gardens, that when the effort ended they felt relieved at stopping it. Lawns got more manicured and sterile looking. And the gardening that the “ladies of the house” got involved in was flower-centric. It was about fitting in, and showing off your color-sense. An extension of your living room, replete with a bunch of crap like wagon wheels or artfully placed stones.

Nowadays, it seems like anyone with any amount of income at all is hiring someone with brown skin to dash in an hour a week and buzz-tame the lawn into bland uniformity. Weeds are the enemy, and shrubbery is king.

These places rarely have gardens. It would be too messy, I have heard people say. Disturbs the aesthetic, I guess. Attracts vermin or deer, and then you gotta deal with poop that isn’t from your dog and all kinds of wildlife that are probably dangerous or something. Especially I hear the statement that the deer will eat it all and so what’s the point.

Duluth tends to be a little more relaxed than most places. There are community gardens, and people regularly seem to use big parts of their back yards for food growing. But it’s still more rare than it ought to be. It’s weird to drive by houses on the edge of town that have vast lawns unmarred by any growing thing other than grass. So much space!

Will we change, as times get tougher? Will more of us dig up a few feet of sod, and get our fingers in the dirt?

I’m plotting. There are a few portions of our rather wild meadowy yard that are just begging for raised beds for herbs and vegetables.

We already are the recipients of a huge family garden tended by Grandpa Meadowhawk. And I do mean huge. We live all year on the canned tomatoes and green beans, frozen raspberries, jellies and jams. We just ate the last of the onions and carrots. Still have plenty of potatoes and apples, dill and dried parsley. They have chickens too, and I sometimes get off the vegan bandwagon for the eggs. It’s a bounty. And such a help with our food bills!

Garden in Winter

Grandpa Meadowhawk's chickens

So because we are being fed so well from the family garden (where we are banned from helping *at all* mind you. Grandpa and Grandma Meadowhawk enjoy doing things themselves, thank-you-very-much) it’s hard to know what to grow at our own home. Don’t want to end up with excess we can’t use, after all.

But then, so what if we grow too much? Perhaps in tough times we can all sort of enjoy that sense of community. If you grow more than you can use, give it to your neighbors. Share!

(What a concept, eh? Is that crazy hippie talk or what. Sharing. Isn’t someone going to come by and call me a commie?)

A Minute for Mother Earth

Mother Earth News sponsors short videos called Mother Earth Minute. (They don’t do embeds, but go ahead and click the logo and it’ll take you there.) The current one’s on green cleaners that also happen to be super-cheap.