I promised myself that I would get to a good place in my life, and once I got there, I would help others.
I grew up poor. My mother worked three jobs around raising four children. The five of us lived together in a two bedroom apartment. I'm sure you can do the math on that one.
We were latchkey kids. For those of you not familiar with the term it's probably due to the fact that this practice is frowned upon these days. It could lead to legal trouble or child services knocking on your door. Yep, we were sent off to school with the house key strung around our necks. On the days we were foolish enough to forget our key it was EXTREMELY easy to break into our small two bedroom apartment with a simple butter knife that one of our neighbors were always happy to lend. No need to worry about any of the neighbors using the butter knife themselves to get in... there was nothing to steal.
We had a tiny little black and white TV we all gathered around, and we were happy to have that. You know the scene in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy gets to Oz and the movie switches to color? I never knew that happened! I was a young adult when I saw that for the first time and it was magical. All those years of watching it in black and white made me feel like somehow I was robbed of beauty.
My mother made $9000 a year which, at that time, was the cut-off for any state aid. We wore hand me downs of hand me downs of hand me downs. McDonalds was a RARE treat. We didn't have enough money for that kind of luxury.
Funny, even though times were tough, we were happy, really really happy. We didn't see ourselves as poor. We were rich with love. Our family was very close and caring.
One time we had our clothes stolen at a laundromat. My siblings and I were SHOCKED. My mother’s response was, "well apparently they needed the clothes even more than us." That was a very memorable reaction for me. She didn't get sad, or angry, or curse or cry. At least not in front of us. She just spoke with kindness, teaching us to give and forgive in the process.
I always vowed that I would get out of poverty and never ever let it darken my door again.
