Those Are My Neighbors You're Talking About
It's really hard to not take the words personally, you know. When you talk about freeloaders and people who have something to hide and people who are abusing the system, I think, "I know those people." Those people are my neighbors.
Well, not literally. Not now, anyway. I'm 1500 miles and a lifetime away from being that little girl living in the trailer park, but still. Those people are my neighbors. I know them.
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We were always terrified of her. She was a tiny old woman with curly white hair, but we really only knew that because we sometimes peered into the windows of her white and turquoise metal mobile home. It was one of those things that kids dare other kids to do because she was terrifying.
The tiny old woman seemingly never left her house. She never opened the door and she never opened the windows. We knew she was in there, though. We knew because when we knocked on the door to say "trick-or-treat!" she would let out a shrill growl.
"Go away!" she would yell.
And we would. As fast as we could.
Her home was the only home in the entire trailer park that was a bust on Halloween. We always used that as an excuse to hate her. She was an evil, mean old woman. She didn't hand out candy.
Years later, after my family had moved to another part of town where the trailers were more than 10 first-grader steps apart, I learned that she had died alone, in her home, just feet from where I had once lived. "Serves her right," I thought.
But then I realized that the person telling me the story of her sad death was her grandson. Minot, North Dakota is a very small place, so coincidences abound. The tiny old lady who was so very mean had died all alone, and wasn't found for weeks. She was ultimately discovered when an odor was reported to the authorities.
The tiny old woman had rarely ventured out of her house for the greater part of a decade. She had out-lived her husband of over 50 years. She had nothing to live for once he was gone. And she had nothing. A lengthy battle with cancer, the battle he ultimately lost, had robbed them of their life savings and it had robbed the tiny old woman of her pride.
She lived in that dilapidated trailer because she was too proud to accept help from her kids, spending her days impatiently waiting to die.
No income. No savings. No photo identification. That's why it had taken so long to find out that the little boy's grandma had died all alone in that trailer park.
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Clinton was one of those friends that you make as a child and you think he's not all that important, but he sticks with you for decades. His kindness and generosity help to make you the person you eventually become, but you don't know that when you're sitting around at the playground talking about how stupid grown-ups are.
Clinton's mom was always at work. Always. Clinton wasn't really old enough to be left home alone after school, but what choice did his mom really have? It was stupid that she had to work anyway. Why couldn't she stay home just once?
On the very rare days that she was home, I was crazy jealous of Clinton and his mom. She would rip off her apron and throw off her shoes and it would be all about him. 100% Clinton. His eyes would light up and they would talk and play. In retrospect, he really was her entire universe.
She would give him all of the silver dollars that she had earned at work. They were part of her tips and surely money she needed to get by, but she always thought the silver dollars were too special to use to pay for bread and milk. I don't know why those silver dollars still reside in my mind, but they do. Every time I see one, I think about Clinton and his mom who worked way too many hours so that she could make enough money to get by. I think about how she still always gave Clinton those silver dollars.
She was a single mother who waited tables and did everything she could to provide for the little boy who was her heart and soul. I don't know where his father was. I just know he wasn't there as that baby boy grew into a man.
He wasn't there when Clinton's mom fell ill. It wasn't anything serious, just the flu, but you can't really show up for work at the local diner when you're obviously feverish and nauseous. She missed a week of work that time she had the flu.
And that's how it came to be that Clinton and his mom stood beside us one day as we waited in line for food at the WIC office.
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Do you know how much out enlisted military members get paid? They sacrifice stability and they travel the world fighting for what they believe is right and they make ... Well, right now the starting pay for an enlisted member of the Air Force is under $18,000. Right now those young men and women who graduate from high school and decide to dedicate their lives to defending our country make less than I paid in taxes last year.
It has actually gotten better in the past few decades. Back when I lived in that trailer park, the one with the abandoned laundromat, a lot of our neighbors were enlisted air force families. One way to "work the system" when you're in the military is to live off base. You have to find a place that costs less than your housing allowance. It's no small feat, but several families found themselves in that trailer park because it was a way to pocket a little bit more of a paycheck.
One family needed to pocket a little bit more of that paycheck because of a car accident. A terrible car accident years before had left them with a mountain of debt and a lifetime of hardship. The driver of that brand new car that wasn't insured nearly enough was a young, pregnant woman. The mother and baby survived that terrible wreck, but the baby did so with a severely broken leg and some brain damage.
It wasn't as bad as it could have been, but it was bad enough that the first several years of his life were spent going to physical therapy and speech therapy and every other kind of therapy under the sun. He didn't learn to walk until he was four years old and he didn't speak until he was even older, but eventually, he found himself still technically mentally and physically disabled, but nowhere near as bad as it could have been.
The struggle was a long and hard one, and the sacrifice his mother made was great. You can't really hold down a job when you're travelling between therapy sessions and advocating for your son. You can't really hold down a job when there is no facility anywhere that can handle that little boy's needs. You have to choose between doing what you have to do and what you wish you could do.
That's how a family of four found themselves living in that crappy trailer park and barely getting by, even with a military paycheck and some government assistance.
For what it's worth, my brother still lives on government assistance. He collects social security and disability and whatever else he is entitled to, but what choice does he really have? He's not the one who caused that car accident nearly 32 years ago to this day.
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I don't say this all so that the politicians who are waging war on the poor, and there IS a war on the poor going on, will read it and magically understand what it's like to live in that neighborhood. I say it because I see you commenting about the woman in line at the grocery store holding her Coach purse as she pays with an Access card. I see you judging the woman who doesn't have a drivers license because how does she buy booze anyway? (Hint: There are people who have to choose between paying the electric bill or buying booze and they pick the electric bill.) I see you ranting about the people who abuse the system.
Those people are my neighbors. Their stories are far more complicated than they seem.
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
