When our older son was born, between three days in labor and emergency caesarean, on COBRA, we found ourselves eighteen thousand dollars in debt.
Now, this might not seem like an insane amount unless you take into account up to that time the most husband had ever made was 28k a year. AND he was unemployed. (Because he had to quit to look after me through pre-eclampsia) and there were no jobs in town. So we had to move out of town for a — rather terrible — job. And we had to live like we were … well. At one time we sat outside a soup kitchen trying to get the courage to go in. (Look, at the time I wasn’t published. And I was too addled — the pre-eclampsia didn’t clear out completely till I stopped nursing, plus there was severe post partum depression — to get a job, besides the fact we had no one we trusted to watch the infant. So– It was bad. Really bad. I’m jealous of people who can hit upwork of fiver and get SOME work. I participated in a focus group on baby names BECAUSE it paid us $50. This was toilet paper for the month.) To add to the depression, I was sure we’d never pay it off/come back from it.
I won’t lie. our entire time in South Carolina, while Dan worked in job-from-h*ll — 16 to 18 hour days working on origami code while I was home alone with the kid, and no car that ran, even if I were brave enough to drive which I wouldn’t be for 7 years — it was like the noir novel where the character lives in a squalid room, with the plaster falling off the walls, and tries to ring two more tablespoons of soup from the can.
Also we gained tons of weight, and probably materially damaged our health by living mostly on carbs. (Not on purpose. It was mostly rice.) It’s cheap. It was the cheapest we could eat. Rice and bulk frozen vegetables in winter. Go-to-farmer’s-market-just-before-closing-and-buy-at-pennies-on-the-dollar veggies in summer. I’m here to tell you cutting fat and protein did NOT work for us. (For the record, you know someone’s metabolism, you know ONE metabolism. They vary that much.)
Why am I telling you this story?
Well, because at the time — I’d only been naturalized 2? 3? years — all my relatives from Portugal — and friends — were singing the siren song.
“Living there is too hard. They demand you be rich already, or how can you weather things like this? If you lived here, you wouldn’t have paid for that complicated delivery. You should move back.” Mom was working 24/7 to try to find Dan a job there, and I have a friend I haven’t talked to since, because she offered me a job and I turned it down. (She made the decision to cut contact, not me, to be clear.)
They honestly thought I’d lost my mind. All this insane hardship we were going through, and it was all so unnecessary. In Portugal things were so much easier, so much more cushioned. The state picked up health care; we could live with my parents till we were on our feet, and why did we insist on doing it the hard way?
At the time, being very depressed and thinking I’d never spring up, I wondered if I was insane too, in choosing the hard over the soft. (It’s 2025 chilluns. We ain’t doing phrasing anymore. Also, the gentleman who laughed, yes, you in the back, can stay after school to help clean the blackboards.)
I can’t claim any great discernment. And to be honest if we hadn’t had a kid, and it had been some other kind of debt, I might have buckled. BUT–
But I had a strong — STRONG — feeling I didn’t want my son to grow up anywhere else. So we turned down all the help — except dad insisted on sending us $200 a month for two years. THANK YOU DAD. We’d have gone under without it. We were paying mortgage, rent, kid expenses, and still didn’t have insurance because job from hell didn’t offer it.– and soldiered on.
At some point, a year later, Dan snapped, came home late one night (Might have been when they told him he wouldn’t have Christmas off?) and asked me where I’d like to move. Because he’d looked for jobs all over the Carolinas and found nothing, might as well look another state. I said “I always thought when I grew up I’d be a writer and live in Denver.” Yes, I immediately explained when I first got this idea, I was 8 and had no idea where Denver was. But he had decided. So, over the next several months, he’d go by the magazine store once a week and get the Denver papers, and send out a minimum of 10 resumes. The idea being he applied even for entry level jobs in his field and adjacent fields, because once we’d moved we could find another job more easily.
Eventually we found job at a 30% increase, moved to Colorado, paid off the debt within a couple of years… and life got markedly better.
Along the way, we bought houses, fixed and sold (Not flip, because we lived in there for a minimum of five/six years while working on them) and we had another kid and–
We went through some very tight spots, but never that tight again. And I kept trying and got published, and made some money from that, and now the boys are on their own paycheck (younger one still in the rice and veggies phase, but this too shall pass, and help is not mandatory but voluntary on our part) we are okay. Not rich by any means, but okay. Enough for us, and cats and some help when kids need it. Still socking most of the money away because old age and health are expensive together. BUT doing okay. A far cry from those hopeless years.
So…. are we masochists? Was the hard way we chose just punishing ourselves for no reason?
I don’t know. Barring a machine to examine parallel universes, I can’t know. But here’s the thing: The last time I talked to childhood best friend (not same friend as above, but we lost touch. Probably just life. I don’t even know if she’s still alive) she said “Isn’t it weird that of all of us you’re the only one doing exactly what you wanted to do when we were little?”
Weird? I don’t know. I know that year and change from hell, and a child who was our responsibility lit a fire under both of us.
And I can’t tell how it would go otherwise, because — well — there is no way to know. BUT I do know I’m incredibly lazy. Unless a book PUSHES I have a heck of a time finishing it. And this house right now looks like Pompeii after the volcano because I’ve been putting things on every surface rather than actually, you know, organizing and cleaning (I need to work on witch’s daughter today and tomorrow and then the great cleaning and organizing starts. I need to try plaud.ai and see if it works for me.) Given a choice, except for “which country to live” I tend to take the easy way and coast. Because I’m lazy.
BUT of course, there were other reasons to choose the US, like my feeling better here, and already, over there, a creeping whiff of jackboots. (Which like most Latin countries, Portugal flops into regularly. However, the EU already scared the cr*p out of me.)
Still…. would we have fought so hard if we hadn’t come close to hitting bottom? I don’t know. I know we were terrified.
And it’s not like we’re big hairy independent. Obviously we’ve had help along the way (you guys know of one instance, plus my dad. There were also years when my parents sending us a Christmas gift was the only reason we HAD Christmas. Because cars or house had broken down.)
BUT it’s more, we didn’t have that guarantee that if we did nothing and just coasted we’d still be fed, and warm, and with a roof over our heads.
I can tell you that the prospect of hanging in the morning being broke and barely surviving for the rest of our lives lit a fire under us.
There’s also the fact an economy not as encumbered as Europe’s (We can’t claim to be unemcumbered, alas) by social net nonsense is more agile, and better able to provide opportunities for people (even as bad as things have got here, yes. Europe as the stench of decay of something that gave up and crawled in the corner to die.)
So there were more opportunities for us — motivated as we were — to keep going.
My conclusion, with all the begs that I can’t know the parallel world where we took the bait offers from Portugal and went with the soft way is that yes, we didn’t come that close to starving, but we’ve also not done much of anything. In that timeline — if other timelines exist — we likely live in a two bedroom condo and might never have had second son, and both of us work, and we barely make it every month. And I never did what I really wanted to do, which was to write and publish books. And which — with this blog — has brought me more satisfaction than anything else since the kids.
Man — and woman and those who just looked in their pants to see what they are — is made to strive. There’s satisfaction in achieving against great odds. There’s also incentive to achieve just to make sure you’re never in THAT situation again. I swear half of my life has been scrabbling up the ice-face by my bleeding fingernails, because the pit I could fall into is so clear.
So, what is this about?
I don’t know if we’re doing anybody any favors with our social net systems, even those that are reasonable like “Health care for the very poor.” Or “Food for women and children in need.”
I’m not saying each man (and verily, if you require me to say that, woman, and every little jot of variation along the way) is an island and shouldn’t get help. Heaven knows we have a budget for helping friends in need (And at one time we got in trouble, until we made the budget.)
BUT help is best given by friends/acquaintances/people who decide you’re worth it, when in extreme need. Because you know what? Then you can’t always just COUNT on it. It’s something that yes, usually comes through, but in the depths of Autopen, everyone was too pinched to even help, even when we tried.
And knowing the help MIGHT NOT come keeps us striving (while getting help, most of the time, in utterly dire situations.)
Look, I’m as much of a bleeding heart as the next person. Right now we’re feeding three homeless cats at the backdoor, and because one of them is pregnant, husband bought them a little heated house. We’re SOPPY.
I don’t like to think of women and particularly children going hungry and cold, much less without food. And yes, the impulse is to say “let the government handle it and that way none of us needs to worry.”
But given how government wastes money, and frankly disperses it to outright evil things, like, oh, various “insurrections” here and abroad or paying illegals to come over (do you have a better description of what they did?) and work subpar wages so our kids are all unemployed, State-Welfare as well as morally wrong (taking money from a citizen to give to the other is theft) might be a net harm.
“But we can’t be sure private charity would come up to snuff.” Private charity ALWAYS comes up to snuff, particularly in the US. It’s just that it’s more unlikely (though not alas completely unlikely) to just take care of malingerers who want to do nothing and waste their lives on being high. It might be less lavish when times are hard, but it will always put a bottom under the endless fall, unless you try to live FROM it.
Something to think about. Philosophically I oppose welfare (which is why we didn’t take it, though we probably more than qualified) but from the practical side, it might also be counterproductive.
It’s entirely possible, because humans are built upon the frame of a scavenger ape, that making things JUST easy enough means the person can’t find the drive to get out of the hole.
In which case we’ve been doing this ALL wrong. And it explains much of the 20th century and its failed promises.
Just something to ponder.
Sometimes the hard way might lead to more soft.*
(*You two gentlemen who joined in the giggling back there. We have extra blackboards to wipe down after school.)
According To Hoyt 