Poverty

It has been over 2 months now since Hurricane Helene devastated parts of east Tennessee, southern Virginia, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and western North Carolina where I live. I'm sick of saying the word "hurricane." I want to gather up all these people who never leave my thoughts and take them somewhere warm and safe with me, where I can know them and love them outside of this awful circumstance. I saw videos of a geologist showing our earth's flesh peeled back to the bones of her bedrock, and I want to gather her wounded mountains and take them with us, too.

My first instinct is to run, but my decision is to stay. That and witnessing what is happening around me have made me think a lot about the concept of poverty. It used to be that when I thought about poverty, it was strictly related to money, or a lack of it. But I'm realizing now that it has almost nothing to do with money.

I have realized over time that there are 3 of me: 

There is Illinois Julie, who grew up with parents who didn't get divorced, who had extended family nearby and community, and could even walk to a friend's house, who did well academically in high school and maybe even got a significant scholarship to go to college afterwards. Maybe she became a journalist like Christine Amanpour, or maybe she had the intact self-esteem to be bold and write her own novels. 

By contrast, Arkansas Julie had all of that promise taken away at age 7 and grew up with retired grandparents, a largely absent mother, and a father and extended family that she was only allowed to access once a year for a month in the summer time. She grew up isolated in a small house in the country with few people she could count on. She went through some dark things in high school, and her grades fell to the point that she wondered if she would graduate. She was full of fear and deeply buried rage, and she went into the Navy because she was afraid if she tried to go to college, she would just end up living with her mother again. 

The third Julie is me, living out in the world and carrying the Illinois and Arkansas Julies in my heart. I used to think of Illinois Julie as the lucky one, and Arkansas Julie as her poor hillbilly cousin, and it was all based on access to an environment I could no longer own--clean houses with new carpet, sidewalks that made it safe for a kid to get around solo in the 1970s before everyone was paranoid about letting a kid out of their site for even a minute, weekend excursions to somewhere fun, family nearby to bond with. 

As I have walked through my life and learned and understood the circumstances that ultimately led to me sitting here writing this post, I have come to the realization that the poverty I thought Arkansas Julie grew up in was a disguise for riches beyond measure, and that Illinois Julie never would have existed as I imagined her. My parents coming together created a vein of toxicity between 2 families: one which grew up with a sense of responsibility to be good, law abiding citizens, and one which had been closer to the edge of acceptability and wasn't afraid to break a rule here or there to foster survival. Both families were fiercely protective of their children and deeply resentful of perceived wrongs done to their children. The fact that my parents' marriage didn't make it past my 7th birthday was probably a blessing, all things considered, because it wasn't going anywhere good with all the familial hovering and advising and meddling.

Right now, I have a memory that keeps coming forward of a girl named Darlene who I was in second grade with. We both rode long yellow buses, up to an hour, to get to school each day. In the winter time, the temperatures in Arkansas could get close to zero overnight, and while the buses were heated, they were still fairly chilly on cold mornings. We had just moved to Arkansas, so the bus experience was new to me, just like the southern drawl I was struggling to understand. I remember getting off the bus and Darlene was standing there crying with Coach John, who was on bus duty at the elementary school. He held her tiny gloveless hands in his and announced she had frostbite. For a long time, this memory has stood in my mind as the entry point of knowledge that we were living in poverty, because here was this little girl who had frostbite because her parents couldn't afford to even make mittens for her hands. We always worried about money in Arkansas. We lived on my grandparents' social security checks and my dad's child support checks. We wore our clothes until they had holes, and Sha fixed them with patches. We didn't go anywhere unnecessary. We had a shallow well and had to be careful about water consumption. Bathing was achieved in a bucket of soapy water in the kitchen sink once a week. I slept on the living room floor in a sleeping bag for 9 years, because that's where I could fit amongst 4 other people and our dog in a 500 square foot house. Bugs and snakes could get in our cracked foundation, and I was often terrified.

But ask me now about poverty, and I will tell you now, it has never been about a lack of money. It has been a very painful lesson to realize that the part of my family I always thought of as rich is actually the part of my family that was the most impoverished, because there was so much fear and anxiety about lack and the possibility of things being taken away that it ruined us all. Conversely, it is a comfort to realize that what I had growing up in Arkansas is most of what I still want for my life. I want to live in a place where nature and animals and my imaginary friend God are right outside my door. I want hours and hours alone to just be with the quiet turning of the earth. I want people around me who love me completely, who aren't afraid of who I am or what I might represent or threaten or make them look like. I want to know people in my community who will soothe a child's frozen hands with love and a warm place to go. 

Two years ago now, I stood at the grotto of St. Paul's Church in Pocahontas and had an epiphany that my life has never been about my struggles; it has been about all the places where Love has found me. Love found me in my Bapa and Sha when I was born and as they raised me. Love found me in my Aunt Vickie, who has been my savior in navigating the worlds of the Athertons and the Hobsons. Love found me in that church, that was so quiet before 8 a.m. mass on Sundays when I was in high school that I could feel God. Love found me in Coach John holding Darlene's hands, to bear witness to the small ways Love comes to us. Love found me in Navy boot camp, when I woke up and realized I had just been gifted 80 sisters, women who were trying to save their own lives, however they could. Love found me on a hospital ship, where I would learn that it was okay to be gay. Love found me in love affairs with beautiful hearted people along the way. Love brought me to presence with the girls and boys I grew up with in reunion 35 years later, and I realized that no one ever hated me, we were just all struggling to get through growing up. Love found me when I was my most outwardly angry and resentful and wrapped me up with people who loved me anyway. Love found me when I met my wife and we started our family.

Love has found me in these mountains, in the rocks, and in the trees, and in the waters. Love has found me in these people I have been blessed to meet in my journeys, who are willing to put their own financial stability in harm's way because they understand that the real riches in life are found in being of service to others. I am so proud to be here in the ruins, to give to others the Love that has always found me. It is a richness far beyond money, and I am so grateful for everywhere I've been in life that has taught me this lesson.