We are getting by these days on very little – a few editing and writing jobs, a new stint as a virtual assistant, and cat bed sales. I have found most of my clients and customers through word of mouth, or from this blog. This has been a lean month so I’d like to ask loyal readers who have provided so much support and encouragement in the past to spread the word a bit for us. If you don’t need an editor, or a cat bed, perhaps a friend or co-worker does – or knows someone who could use one? We do appreciate the free advertising!
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Living in poverty is hard – perhaps that’s why there are so many words related to hard that can be applied to a life of poverty – hard time, hardship, hardscrabble, hard luck, hard pressed, hard row to hoe, hard-hearted…it’s just hard. Most of us can deal with some hard in our lives – we get going when the going gets tough; we keep our chin up and maintain a stiff upper lip; we shoulder our burden. We retain hope. This is an excellent short term strategy. But over the long term living in poverty gets progressively more difficult.
The ills of poverty are varied and numerous. Some people begin life in poverty and never leave it. They are racially segregated and poorly educated. They work hard at menial labor in unsafe conditions, living from payday to payday at the best of times. They possess little in the way of material goods and live perpetually in debt. Their dwellings are poor and overcrowded. They may be malnourished and probably have physical ills that have never been treated. They might have fallen victim to crime or substance abuse. They reproduce and die young.
Strangely this description of life in the tenements of New York at the turn of the last century can be just as well applied to many Americans at the turn of this century. And with the Great Recession leaving scores of formerly middle class families homeless, without regular income, and without medical insurance, the likelihood is that this description will be aptly applied to even more people.
Poverty in the U.S. grew substantially more common during the last decade, with hardships increasing for millions of people and their families, especially with regard to food, medical care and housing. (Poverty, Hardship and Families: How Many People Are Poor, and What Does Being Poor in America Really Mean?)
Poverty has been associated with numerous physical, mental and social ills in any number of studies. People living in poverty today are more likely to be ‘food insecure’ or have to forego purchasing needed prescription medicines or visit doctors. Children in poverty are more like to suffer abuse. Depression abounds amongst the poor, so much so that studies have questioned which comes first – does depression cause one to fall into an impoverished lifestyle, or does being poor make one depressed?
I daresay some people, depressed to the point of being unable to maintain social ties and good work habits, descend with their depression into poverty. Yet I also believe that the constant ongoing stress of being financially insecure, on the verge of homelessness, and unable to find employment is a clear cause of depression. The strain and anxiety, the insomnia and irritability, the worry and shame, they all eat at one, dragging one down in an increasingly steep spiral, until it requires a near Herculean effort just to get up in the morning.
You might think having children would inoculate you against depression. It doesn’t. It gets you out of bed in the morning but if anything thinking about your children, the material and social advantages that you cannot give them, the insecurities and privations they endure, and your anxiety about their futures, the concern that you may be causing them incalculable harm, merely serves to contribute to your burden and diminish your sense of self-worth. When you are poor you feel very much alone.
Poverty, like smoking, accidents or obesity, has even been found to be a cause of death in America. In an article published in the American Journal of Public Health, researchers found that in the year 2000 poverty caused nearly 300,000 deaths (compared to about 120,000 deaths per year caused by accidents). I suspect that number will only increase.
Some half dozen years ago I spent the better part of a day volunteering at a local soup kitchen/food pantry on the weekend before Thanksgiving. There’s something about the holiday season that heightens my desire to care for strangers and this was a perfect opportunity for a busy single mom of 2. A friend who admired my initiative but didn’t share the same commitment was happy to take my daughters for the afternoon so I donned my work clothes – jeans and a sweatshirt - and a feeling of benevolence, and headed off to dole out charity.
The first hour or so was spent sorting food that had been donated – mostly canned goods, bags of pasta and rice, but also loaves of day old bread, and produce; heads of wilted lettuce and limp bundles of carrots. There were dented cans, food that was past the expiration date, and foods clearly given more as a means of cleaning out the pantry than to provide a meal for the hungry. Cans of sauerkraut, pearl onions, gravy, and surprisingly (given that Thanksgiving was still to come) cranberry sauce. The only meat I saw that wasn’t in a can of soup, was a can of Spam.
As we packed the food into paper grocery bags, a more experienced worker gave us tips. “Put the generic veggie cans and odd stuff on the bottom,” she said, “then rice, bread or pasta and produce. Try to top it off with something appealing if you can – like this.” She handed me a box of Frosted Flakes cereal. Naturally there was no dairy, nothing that needed to be refrigerated or frozen.
Once the bags were filled we were directed to the kitchen to help prepare the ‘Thanksgiving’ Meal. This was a lot closer to the meal I would be having the following week – it was ham instead of turkey, but the other fixings were much the same. Mashed potatoes, peas, dinner rolls, salad, and pumpkin or apple pie for desert. We peeled mountains of potatoes, chopped lettuce, opened industrial-sized cans of peas and heated rolls. It was an assembly line effort and we were hurried along by bustling workers who warned us of the growing lines forming outside the doors.
Eventually the food was ready, tables were set and the doors were opened. The people filed through and lined up cafeteria style to receive a plate filled with a hot meal. There were older homeless men who shuffled through silently, maintaining a tight grip on their soiled backpacks. There were migrant workers, darkly tanned and hardened by hours standing and bending and lifting in the sun. There were families – not so many (this was before the recession) but a few. Children so eager, eyes alight, tummies rumbling, reaching for their plates. Parents with downcast gazes, hurrying the children through the line, hating the need to be there at all, mumbling their thanks.
We dished out over 100 meals that afternoon, and gave each adult one of the grocery sacks packed with food that we wouldn’t take home and serve to our own families because it wasn’t our brand, or was too old or unpalatable in other ways. We were brightly cheery in the presence of the needy, proud that we had taken the time to come and serve them. We accepted their gratitude as our due and frowned at the child who had a tantrum and refused to eat her peas, instead shoving her entire plate to the floor. We murmured among ourselves, wondering what led people to make a life on the street instead of getting a job and living a ‘normal’ life. Drug use? Lack of education? Lack of drive? We couldn’t imagine it.
Yesterday I stood in line at the biweekly food pantry at a local church. Ahead of me were other single adults, an elderly lady white-haired and hunched over, a man who limped along with the aid of a cane, and a woman about my age, nicely dressed in a colorful skirt and blouse. Behind me a young mother tried to keep her toddler son entertained as the line edged slowly forward. Most of us moved forward silently, keeping eye contact and conversation to a minimum. At the head of the line was a small card table, manned by several nicely dressed and groomed middle-aged volunteers.
They politely asked each person their circumstance and the number and ages of the people in their household before handing out a little green ticket that afforded one entrance into the part of the parking lot that housed the food. Tables laden with sacks of paper grocery bags, bins filled with local produced rejected by the stores, and another table stacked with loaves of bread. I handed over my green ticket and took the grocery sack I was offered. A box of Frosted Flakes peeked over the edge, resting on a head of limp lettuce. I declined the offer of extra cabbage and carried my bag to the car where I pushed aside the cereal and produce and reaching in, pulled out one of the cans. Cranberry sauce.
I took the bag home, put away the food and made two tuna fish sandwiches. These I took to the homeless man who was squatting outside in the bushes, leaning against the wall that surrounds our mobile home park. I put the cranberry sauce aside for the next food drive at the kids’ school.
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