memory capsule [2]

i remember when i was probably 13 or so. it was during that awful time when dad was switching careers, which meant going back to school, which meant mom was teaching 50 hours of piano lessons a week to pick up the slack. mom was never home. dad was never home. we had a babysitter that was probably more of a nanny because even though i was 13 i was afraid to be home without any adults.

so anyway i was 13ish and it was late and night and my family was just coming home from somewhere. church something or other maybe? or one of my cello recitals? i have no idea. but we came home and discovered our power was off. it was the middle of winter so my mom got out every candle we had in the house and we lit them and then we made hot chocolate over the stove (gas, not electric) and we all sat around the candles and drank hot chocolate and piled every blanket we owned over top of us and i remember thinking that was such a cool thing. i don't know why but i just felt so happy and close to my family and my siblings and i thought it was the best party ever basically.

the power came back on again the next day and our friend jonathan came over because he always came over. i started telling him about how the power went out and how much fun we had, when my dad yelled at me and told me to go to my room. after a few minutes he came back in my bedroom and told me not to talk about the power outage to anyone and that i don't need to go around "gossiping" about our family to everyone.

at the time i was super confused and upset and angry.

but in retrospect i have come to realize that our power was out because my parents couldn't afford to pay the bill. and as a now married adult with a family and a baby, that is such a heartbreaking thing for me to think about.

i remember when dad got a job working at a meat packing plant from 2-6 am every morning, and then would go to class from 8-5 every day. his hands were so swollen from work that he couldn't wear his wedding band anymore. if he was home, he was sleeping, or desperately trying to get homework and studying done.

what strikes me about this even more than the heartbreak of the situation is the fact that i had no idea we were poor. i mean, i knew we didn't have much but i didn't know we literally had nothing. i attribute that to my mother. she is endlessly resourceful. she made full meals out of nothing. she made clothes from scraps of fabric. she made me a doll that had a matching wardrobe as mine, all from scraps of fabric she had laying around. her games were the most fun and required nothing more than a stick or a ball or maybe even nothing at all. she created such an atmosphere of love and happiness in our home that i never noticed all the things we were lacking. there was never a void. there was only love.

i don't know what the future holds for me and my family. i don't know if we will be incredibly rich or impoverished. but i do know that our money doesn't have to define us. i want to be a mom like my mom, regardless of our financial status. that is such an important thing to me. when my kids think of home, i want them to think of hot chocolate and warm blankets by candlelight and i want them to think of me.