CNF: How To Be Poor
by Tamara Gane
Pancakes are acceptable for dinner if that’s the only thing you get the makings for at the food bank. If you also received a can of peaches or a jar of peanut butter, use one of them for a topping and convince your son it’s not food for poor people but a fun game called Breakfast For Dinner.
If he hands you a note stating you need to send him to school tomorrow with $6.00 for a field trip, don’t yell at him for not giving it to you sooner. Instead, wait until he goes to bed and gather change from underneath the couch cushions and on top of the washing machine. Run out to the car to check the console and between the seats. Count it. Put the $4.27 in an envelope with a note saying it’s all you have and to please not say anything to your son because it will embarrass him. Seal the envelope before you put it in his backpack. Tell him to give it to his teacher without reading it. Try not to cry when he heads out the door.
Expect to be pulled over frequently by the police no matter how carefully you adhere to the law because you drive an old, beat up car. They will speak to you sternly and ask if you have drugs for no apparent reason. They will look at you’re not a real person.
Learn to lie so you can tell your son you’re not hungry on nights there isn’t enough food for two. Live with the shame of your circumstances knowing this is all your fault. Feel you deserve this life so deeply it hurts your bones.
But also know this. Poverty does not define you. You devour books at night. You see things, understand things. Your inner thoughts run deep and wide. You have value, even if no one else sees it. Even if you don’t see it yourself.
Someday you will take all those words in your head and put them down on paper. Poems will burst from your fingers like flames. Remember this as you peer inside your empty refrigerator.
You have flour, water, potatoes, and a cube of chicken bullion. It’s enough to make soup for dinner. You carry the bowls to the table, steaming and hot. Your son says it’s delicious. And words fall down like rain.
Tamara Gane is a freelance writer in Seattle with bylines in HuffPost Personal, The Independent, Ozy, Fodor’s Travel, USA Today’s Reviewed and more. Find her on Twitter @tamaragane.
What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “How To Be Poor”? “How To Be Poor” is based on my experience as a single mother. I worked full-time, yet struggled to put food on the table. It was lonely and terrifying. But I also had the love of my son and a rich interior life filled with poetry and words. In that sense, I was lucky. This piece is basically a letter I wish I could have sent through time to let my younger self know that things would be okay someday. I started out expecting it to be a full-length essay but the words decided they wanted to be something quite different. The length gave me to permission to fuse together elements of prose and poetry.
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