The Legacy of Poverty
(From my COVID diaries)
Poverty is traumatic. I was violently poor for half my life. I’m talking about the homeless, living in random basements, rats chewing on my arm (still have a scar) type of poverty. The type of poverty where you cannot see any hope or worth in yourself or your family, but an unexpected Skor bar was as if Jesus himself crafted a meal for you. As with most traumas, I was able to develop some coping skills (some maladaptive, some still useful) that helped me to survive; that are helping me to survive in our new and collective pandemic reality. My daughter has none of these skills—and I think I’m doing her a disservice. We’ll get to that.
My wife and I grew up in pretty rough circumstances. My daughter’s life has been fantastically privileged.
My wife is an orphan. By all accounts, her parents were loving and engaged people with ties to a larger community. So, when her parents passed, she was able to cobble together a semblance of normalcy by floating from family to friends to family to friends to teachers who loved her to university to graduate school. I’m not saying this wasn’t hard for her, it was, but she had a particular kind of resilience, certain skills that I see my daughter exhibiting: there’s a goal, I have resources, let me use those resources to make it happen for myself. I wasn’t so lucky.
I grew up in a violent single-parent household. My mom’s boyfriends would beat her and me. One time we were beaten so badly that both of us wound up in the hospital at the same time. My mother was also very abusive to me, physically and emotionally. She never helped with homework, never let me go on field trips. She wasn’t religious, but used the religion of her mother as justification for her abusiveness. We never shared a hug. There was never any money for things I needed, so I became a thief at a very early age. The handful of things she did that could be considered loving, that I can remember, is that she came to my high school graduation, one of my choral concerts in 9th grade, introduced me to comic books (by giving me a stack to read and then disappearing with one of her boyfriends for a week, over the Christmas break), and letting me crash on her floor when I needed. It hurts me that I can identify specific actions, and that love and kindness and support weren’t her baseline operating system.
I met my father 7 times in my life. The last time we saw each other, we got into a major fistfight. Broken bones were involved.
My childhood forced me to develop survival skills that are perfect for this time. Out of context, they aren’t healthy: I’m able to be by myself for long periods of time, doing absolutely nothing. I can make a small amount of food stretch for an entire day. I can make meals from what others toss out. I can and will hold firm (sometimes violent) boundaries. I can be profoundly pessimistic so all of the bad news of new #COVID19 cases and deaths from the disease don’t hurt or scare me every single time I hear the numbers. I can take an unusual amount of pain and abuse and alchemy it into something normal and expected, mundane and routine. I’m trying not to fall back into or utilize these unless I have to, but with all the misinformation and mishandling of our shared crisis, I’m (as usual) preparing for the worst. And my daughter has no idea what ‘worst’ is.
My daughter knows nothing about survival. She’s only known thriving. My wife and I made sure that she wouldn’t ever have to struggle like we did. My daughter opens the fridge and the light comes on and there is always food in there. There’s food and snacks in the cupboard. She turns the faucet and water always comes gushing out—just put it through the Brita filter before drinking it. She has the clothes she needs and sometimes wants. We’ve advocated for her when her schools were coming up short. She is hugged, kissed, and told ‘I love you’ every single day of her life. She’s been on every fieldtrip she’s wanted to attend. She’s traveled. She understands and appreciates all the ‘do nothing, but chill’ time we carve out for her. And she’s a happy kid. She is the brightest most compassionate light. She will defend herself, if necessary, but she will always try to find the most compassionate and loving solution to any kind of conflict. I don’t want her to be as ruthless as I can be, but I feel that things are going to get way worse before they get better and I want to make sure that she can weather what may happen in the near future. Part of this ‘way worse’ is the reality that, when all of this is as over as it can be, we just might find ourselves in poverty. I don’t think we’ve prepared her for this.
My wife and I have done without, for a good portion of our lives. We’ve made do, separately, and early on as a couple. But now we have a child, and the world looks and feels different. Of course, if Universe forbid, we do fall (back) into poverty, we’ll do all we can to ensure that our daughter has what she needs, that she’s affected the least. Her physical needs will be met as much as we can meet them. I’m afraid that I won’t be there for her emotionally and that it will break her. I’m not sure how her brand of resilience will hold up if one of her anchors isn’t available to her. Survival is a brutal and ugly thing. You have to make compromises—sometimes those compromises will directly challenge your values. Sometimes you have to behave in ways that even those who know and love you might not recognize you—or want to know you.
Maybe the premise of this entire missive is wrong. After writing it all out, I realize that I’m not afraid that my daughter doesn’t have the skills for what’s to come. I’m afraid that I still do—that those skills are razor sharp, just waiting to be used. I’m afraid of who I am when I’m in poverty, when I’m in survival mode. I’m afraid of what I’ll pull out when I reach into my trauma bag. I’m afraid of the compromises and behaviors that my poverty consciousness engenders. I’m still traumatized by living in poverty for so many years and #ParentingInTheTimeOfCovid is one huge trigger.
Hearing about 3 million people applying for unemployment, personally knowing people who’ve had to lay off their entire staff and close their hard fought for businesses freaks me out. My (financial stability) anxiety is through the roof. I’ve made some small investments and put away some savings to weather a little storm. But if this gets any worse, I will do what I have to do. I just hope that it doesn’t take me too far away from the good man I’ve become.
