Lurkie posted a blog posting recently that sent me down memory lane. It had to do with being poor (living with financial anxiety). As you have read before here my parents divorced when I was about three years old. My mother took me and my sister (who was 18 months older) to California to live with her parents while she tried to build a new life for us. 

At first I think, based on what few memories I have of those days, things went alright. But then, as all adults do, my mother struck out on her own. Our first house was a rental in San Jose that the previous tenents had pretty much trashed. The deal was we would get a few months free rent in exchange for cleaning and painting and making the yard look like a yard again.

The house was just down the street and across a blvd. from the school I was to attend the 1st through 3rd grades in. My mother eventually got a job as a sect. receptionist for an accountant with offices right across the street from the school. I suspect that it paid just enough for us to get by.

My sister, who had been born in convulsions and had uncontrolled epilepsy her entire life was in what today would be considered special education classes. One day, after a seizure, she was acting out and the school called my mother telling her she would need to come get my sister and take her home. I know from conversations I overheard later that she was told by her boss that if she left she would not have a job when she came back.

Thus began what was pretty much a hand to mouth existence for us until I left home at 17 which I have written about here in the past.

Time passed and we eventually ended up back in Texas. First a year back in Abilene then for the rest of the time, until 2006, in Austin. All part of a deal that my mother made with my father if he would get us to Virgina where the Epilepsy Foundation was located then he could have possession of me for the summers. I say possession because that is what it was.

At first, in Austin, we lived in a tiny one bedroom apartment above a garage. I remember it because it had a gas refrigerator (yes they had such a thing at one time) and the pilot would keep going out and what little we had in it would spoil in the Texas heat.

But it was near a city pool and a library and a couple of museums and I was in most ways happy. My mother was however having to work two full time jobs just to make ends meet. Primarily because, in those days, there was no assistance for pretty much anyone, much less a woman on her own with two children one of who was sick and in constant need of medical care and very expensive medications.

We would have to move pretty much every six months because the rent would go up and we would have to find another place we could afford.

Eventually my sister ended up in a State Hospital but my mother still had to pay the state for her care and medicine.

I remember, during this time, there were times when we might have one can of Campbells soup or a tin of Spam left to eat. We would dilute the soup so that it would last the 3 or 4 days until my mother would get paid at which point we would splurge and get a loaf of cheap white bread to have Spam sandwiches. Often, in the evening, my mother and I would go for walks around the neighborhood and pick up Pecans that had dropped to the ground to supplement our always empty pantry.

I can look back now and see why I, as an adult, always had enough food in the house to feed ten people at least. I would buy food, then pay rent/mortgage, then car payment, the bills. Those were my financial priorities.

My sister died at the age of 32 when she had been hospitalized for a change to her medication, had a seizure while sleeping and suffocated in her pillow. Until her dying days my mother carried that as a burden believing that if she had not had to work two jobs then she would have been with her and it would never have happened.

I could go on and on about things and times and events, many of which are written about in past postings to this blog. But sitting here, soon to turn 75 years old, I can look back and see that with all the horrible times there were more happy times. Times that I experienced the miracle of a book that would take me to a place of peace and tranquility. Times that I could manage to get an after school job and feel like I was contributing to the life we lived. Never did I feel that our life was bad or in some way aberated. But only that it was the only life style I had ever had so it was my normal.

I can look back and honestly say that I regret absolutely nothing in the 70+ years I have been alive. I can see how it made me the person that I am today and built within me some sort of strength to survive no matter the obsticles.

And, I can honestly say that today I am happy. Sure I would be happier if My Robert had not died two years ago and we were still living on our little farm with all our dogs and chickens, ducks and geese. But that is not the direction my life had taken.

Today I live the best life I can. I am able to save up the money for some much needed dental work. I have a good retirement plan with health benefits. I am alone but not lonely most of the time. I have a dog that thinks I hung the moon and the stars. And, in many ways most importantly to me, I have a community of friends that I have met/made online here in this blog and on Facebook that, though we may never meet, give me comfort just knowing that they are there.

So, each of you, don't dwell on the past but know that it is a part of who you are today. And, in my opinion, even if we all are sort of opinionated and often crumudgeonly at times, you are all the most beautiful people on earth...to me.