From This Moment On (10 page)

Leave it to my dad to make lemonade out of lemons, or in this case, a poor man’s sandwich. Its origin goes back to one morning when I went to make myself lunch for school, only to discover that we had nothing to put between the bread. “Of course there’s something to make sandwiches with!” he piped up cheerily. He opened a jar of mustard, grabbed a butter knife, and gave me a demonstration. “Voilà!” he exclaimed, wearing a wide grin. Then he took a giant bite of this meager sandwich, as if to say, “You see? Problem solved. Nothing to worry about. All is good in the world.” I was grateful for his solution and
so
relieved that I wouldn’t have to go to school empty-handed once again. My father lived by the optimistic outlook “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” He was not easily discouraged, and I was encouraged by his positive attitude, although I didn’t like mustard sandwiches or the fact that that was all I had to look forward to in my lunch at school. But he was right that it was better than nothing.

At lunchtime, I’d sit at my desk with a lunch that did not satisfy my hunger and wish that the girl next to me would share hers with me. She always had twice as much food in her lunch bag than she could possibly eat, like that apple she’d take one bite out of, then put aside. I would have happily finished it, but I never would have humiliated myself enough to ask for her leftovers.
What a waste,
I used to think. Most of the time, she didn’t even finish her cookies. Imagine that! How could anyone bring cookies to school and not lick up every last crumb?

Most of the other kids’ lunches were on a par with hers, including the one boy whose family was poorer than we were. I used to feel sorry for him because he’d come to school with dirty hair more often than I did, wearing stained pants full of holes and ripped in the arse so badly that you could see he didn’t have on any underwear. But even he had a decent lunch.

Carrie remembers bringing glazed buns to school one picnic day to share with the class. Dad had pulled them up from the depths of our freezer, as she was embarrassed to be the only one not able to bring anything in and didn’t bother asking my mother to bake or buy anything because she knew it wasn’t possible. The problem was that these glazed buns were bought off the sale rack and were way past the sell-by date; they had tiny black bugs sitting under the plastic wrap, snuggled into the icing. Carrie, determined to contribute to the class picnic, picked the bugs off one by one and brought the buns to school.

On mornings when there was no breakfast to be had, I’d be especially famished come lunchtime. But so as not to draw attention to myself, I’d eat my sandwich as s-l-o-w-l-y as possible—I didn’t want to finish way ahead of everybody else. There were times when I felt sorry for myself, as well as jealous of the other children. To me, they seemed spoiled, which was probably unfair of me, as it wasn’t any fault of theirs that they had something proper to eat for lunch. But I think it’s safe to say that they were certainly fortunate.

One thing about not having much in the way of luxuries: you learn to become very frugal. I became skilled at rationing and appreciating every last morsel of food. For instance, I often took charge of pouring the milk in our cereal in the mornings to make sure it went around equally. One time I had a friend sleep over, which was allowed only when we had enough food to eat; during lean times, we wouldn’t even invite children over to play, let alone sleep over. The girl was used to helping herself to as much milk as she wanted at home and was shocked when I almost slapped her hand away from the milk jug at breakfast. “I’ll pour the milk in your cereal,” I scolded, “to make sure we all get some.” The possibility that there might not be enough was foreign to her. She was more accustomed to leaving a third of the bowl with milk in it after the cereal was eaten and couldn’t imagine having to ration such a basic staple.

Even when we had enough to eat, we were conditioned to make it last. Even today, I am still very good at making just enough to go around with nothing left over. My ex-husband wasn’t crazy about this,
as he liked my cooking and loved leftovers, so I’ll admit that my habit of always making just enough—nothing wasted, nothing left over—might have been a bit annoying. I developed a knack for judging quantity just right. The way I see it, why buy more than you need or make more than you need? Old habits die hard, I guess. I’ve remained resourceful, but I think it’s fair to say that I learned these skills the hard way. I don’t like being wasteful in the kitchen.

I became pretty good at hiding our financial struggles from other people, but it required a lot of thinking on my feet. To have to explain to my friends that I couldn’t have them sleep over until we could afford to go grocery shopping would have been embarrassing. When we were outside during recess in twenty-five-below-zero temperatures, I insisted to my schoolteacher that I wasn’t cold, despite my wearing worn rubber boots with plastic bags over my socks to keep my feet dry. Better to shiver in the cold than to have to explain that we couldn’t afford winter boots, and my parents were too proud to get secondhand ones at the Salvation Army. I think my parents would have responded to our complaints if, for example, I cried to them about my cold feet or told them it was embarrassing to not have the proper winter clothing in front of my school friends, but I refrained from whining about things I didn’t believe they could do anything about. I understood there was no point in putting pressure on them for things they couldn’t change, and which would only make them feel worse. I just learned to manage with what I had.

Once you start getting into below-zero temperatures and all you are wearing are rubber boots, you are in trouble if you are outside for any length of time, as your feet will simply start to freeze. Of course, when we’d get back inside the building from the playground, my feet were aching. And once they started warming up, I’d be in agony, because thawing is very painful, believe me. But at least the plastic bags kept me dry and free from serious frostbite. (In fact, they were the same plastic bread bags I used to carry my lunch to school.) Most Northern Ontarians know this well, and it was my father’s poor man’s solution to not having proper winter footwear.

I seem to have inherited his resourcefulness. Friends of mine are always marveling at how I’m usually able to make things just …
work
somehow. I think to myself,
If you grew up the way I did, you’d learn how to make something out of nothing, too.

One thing that baffles me today is that I sometimes meet families living below the poverty line who are overweight. After all, wouldn’t you be skinny if you were hungry, not overweight? I naturally associated being poor with being hungry. Fattening, synthetic, refined foods were too expensive for our grocery list, so there was no risk of us getting fat, because we simply couldn’t afford it.

Many of our cheapest foods today, however, are the packaged junk foods. Fast food is also very affordable, so many poor families are able to get their fill on empty calories while loading up on preservatives, colorings, saturated fats, chemicals, and “pounds” while remaining malnourished. They’re full but nutritionally starving at the same time. In contrast, when I was growing up, the poor ate overripe bananas instead of packaged cookies, or drank a glass of water instead of a glass of soda. Nutritionally, we ate the better choices; we just didn’t realize it then.

From as young as I can remember, I had big dreams regarding success in life. However, my definition of financial success was far more modest: I just wanted to earn enough money to live comfortably so that I never had to struggle through the humiliation of having less or not enough of the necessities in life. I would later find it difficult to adjust to the wealth that would come my way. How to manage it, how to share it responsibly, and how to enjoy it without guilt. Having more money than I needed was not something I was prepared for, since having more of
anything
than what I needed was just not my way of thinking. “Making it,” to me, wasn’t measured by having as much as possible but simply by having enough.

The feelings of anxiety and insecurity that not having enough money to eat or stay warm brought me growing up are painfully vivid, although from where I stand now looking back, they also feel incredibly
distant, as though they might have happened in another lifetime or to another person altogether. So much has changed since then that it’s hard to imagine it really happened. Time has allowed me the ability to talk about it with some acceptance and even amazement that we survived some of the more extreme situations. Most of all, I feel sadness for my parents for enduring the struggles and not living to see life get easier. I wish they could see that it all turned out okay. I wish I had the chance to share my life now with them. I’d spoil them with a nice house, a new car, vacations to places they’ve always wanted to go; take my mother shopping for fancy clothes; and sit with them in the audience during a Grammy night. I would certainly make sure they never had to worry about financial security ever again.

On Christmas 1977, when I was twelve, the best gift came from some relatives on the reservation who sent us a box packed with precooked game, including rabbit, moose, fish, and partridge. It provided a welcome change from meager soups, bannock (similar to an American biscuit), and, of course, goulash. Despite our circumstances, Christmas felt festive after all. It was comforting to know that this food had been prepared by concerned extended family members who wished to share it in a spirit of goodwill and who knew what Christmas should be all about.

On the other hand, it brought home to me how bad off we must have been, because my parents rarely ever asked anybody for anything, so we didn’t often receive anything. And this particular Christmas, the closest family with anything to spare was a four-hour drive away. Even during times when we didn’t have enough, it seemed my mother always found it in her to bake for us at Christmas. Butter, sugar, flour, shortening, and a few other inexpensive basics allowed my mom to make something delicious and festive out of nothing. She made the best pumpkin pies, butter tarts, and shortbread cookies. I admired how she mustered enough cheer to put her heart into these small pleasures for us, and I am proud of her as I think of this; how she found the strength for our sake. This is a mother’s love.

Another Christmas, my little sister asked for a Baby Alive doll. It was battery operated and could drink and eat baby food; it even needed its diaper changed. My dad was able to get one on sale, but it was an African American doll with curly black hair. Carrie, of course, had white skin and straight blond hair. He worried that she’d find it odd that her “baby” didn’t resemble her at all and told her it was the last one on the shelf. But my sister was grateful just to get the doll she’d wished for and didn’t seem to notice the color of its skin. I remember thinking,
And this is how the world should be: no prejudice, no judging who we love and care for based on the color of their skin.
Being raised in a racially mixed family, I was sensitive to this, and I said it to myself with conviction. Carrie’s brown baby doll and her innocent blindness to color was beautiful to me, and I appreciated it. It made me feel good, and it made me feel like something was right about our poor, patchwork family.

That had been one of our happier Christmases. Getting back to the year 1977, we kids were all abuzz about what Santa was going to bring us. For my parents, however, who naturally wanted to give their children a postcard image of Christmas, the holidays often delivered serious stress, with advertising campaigns hard-selling the picture-perfect Christmas, with mounds of gifts under the tree, a feast on the table, and a healthy helping of milk and cookies to leave for Santa. This extravagance was simply out of reach most Christmases in our home. One afternoon I walked into the kitchen to find my mother sitting at the table crying. She’d just come back from town.

“Leeny,” she said to me, sniffling, “pass me the lighter. I need a cigarette.” I took a chair across the table to face her. My mother and I often sat at the kitchen table to talk about life, troubles, and music. She befriended me there; it was like our place to connect as companions, confidantes, friends. Sometimes the things she told me were beyond my level of comprehension, but I knew that my job was to listen and comfort her. With my heart breaking for her woes, feeling her fragility, I would often gently cup her face in my hands and say, “Mom, you are my angel.” Not so much because she was guiding me
but because she seemed too innocent for this world. A good person put in a bad place.

Sitting there, her face wet with tears and the tip of her nose red and sniffly, my mother began to tell me about her trip downtown. In a strained, halting voice, she proceeded to confess that she had gone Christmas shopping for us. When she got to the car in the parking lot, her shopping cart overflowing with gifts, “a policeman walked up behind me and said I’d have to bring everything back.” I didn’t understand at first. Then I realized what she was saying: she’d shoplifted everything in the cart. The officer was kind and didn’t arrest or charge her; he just took the cart away and let her go. How pathetic she must have felt.

I had mixed emotions. Part of me was humiliated that my mother would do such a thing, yet another part of me appreciated her intentions; she didn’t want her children to wake up on Christmas morning with nothing under the tree. Carrie and the boys were still young enough to maybe believe that they had been “bad,” and that’s why Santa skipped our house. But I think she was more likely to have thought we felt we weren’t worthy of parents good enough to give us a proper Christmas. This weighed heavy on me, and I felt the guilt she carried of feeling like a failure to her children. It’s no wonder Christmastime has such a high suicide rate. So much cheer that only reminds the unlucky of what doesn’t belong to them, and that some parents have to explain to their children why Santa couldn’t come to their house. The pressure parents feel to live up to giving a Merry Christmas they simply cannot afford.