Hold Your Head High

In the summer of 2000, we sold our business, and Chris started

graduate school. Oh, and we also had our fourth child in 4 1/2 years.

But it was okay--or at least we thought it was. We had a plan. Chris can put together spreadsheets and proformas like nobody's business. We were going to be just fine. We had savings, and we thought it was enough. We had money from the sale of the business. Chris had scholarships and a graduate assistantship. We cobraed (Is that even a word?) our health insurance. We had a plan; we were going to be fine, and we were at first.

But then...

Boss's asthma got worse, and his monthly maintenance medicines, even with that cobra insurance we were paying over $1000/month for, cost close to $200/month. Caroline got RSV and was hospitalized. William had to have his tonsils out. The suburban needed new tires. The plumbing backed up. And we watched our carefully laid plans along with our savings slip through our fingers at lightning speed.

In August of 2001, at my Daddy's urging, we dropped our cobra health insurance. We applied for the children to be on PeachCare for Kids, a government program for uninsured children in Georgia. Chris and I went on a much cheaper insurance plan with much higher deductibles--no maternity and my knee was pre-existing so not covered. We cut expenses as far back as we could.

Here was our reality...

We pulled the boys out of preschool. The director, a dear friend, offered to scholarship them even though I had told her I just wanted to spend more time with them at home. (She's both a dear friend and not stupid.) We accepted but begged her not to tell anyone. God bless our friend.

We worried when it came time to donate money for teacher's gifts. And sometimes we just couldn't do it so I kept the children home on the days that money was due.

We sold stock at the wrong time to pay for Sarah Katherine's kindergarten. We were still late with payments many months and I would have to call the headmistress and "explain."

The money my parents gave us for the children's college fund that year, didn't go into the college fund. It bought groceries and new shoes (little children grow quickly--thank goodness they liked to be barefoot and we lived in Georgia) and paid bills. I have never told them that.

My knee gave out, and I had to have surgery. We just finished paying that bill 2 years ago. There were months we couldn't pay, and we worried about our credit score.

We stopped keeping drinks and snacks in the garage refrigerator because we had always had an open-door policy for the neighborhood children, and we could no longer afford it.

We made up excuses not to host supper club because the host had to provide the main dish. We could only afford to make a side. Often we just didn't go.

Our children stopped all extracurricular activities--no more soccer buddies for the boys. SK continued ballet only because our neighbor and a dear friend made a "deal with me." I didn't pay tuition, and I would watch her son while she taught ballet. Most days, her husband watched her son, but we pretended. Chris was the "bouncer" (you're not allowed to video, he's still traumatized by the woman with the large pocketbook) at the recital, and I was in charge of backstage to cover our recital fees. God bless that family.

We made homemade birthday cards and "forgot" to send gifts. We stopped going to birthday parties.

I met with our rector and reduced our pledge to almost nothing.

When I took the children to the doctor, I had to show that hot pink (Why does PeachCare use bright pink and not a nice subtle peach color?) 8 1/2 x 11-page "card." I was embarrassed; my face was bright red. After the third time, the receptionist made a photocopy of it (not legal), and I never again had to dig it out of my purse and try to slide it through the window. God bless that woman.

I remember clearly one-afternoon needing milk and not wanting to worry Chris, so I dug in the cushions of our sofa and chairs to come up with enough to buy it.

We ate a lot of pasta without meat sauce. Breakfast for dinner was a regular meal, and leftovers did not rot in the refrigerator. They were never thrown away.

We learned how to transfer balances around credit cards and how to get limit increases. (You can only ask every 3 months.) We paid minimums and have spent years crawling out of debt.

One weekend our water was turned off. A BIG bright (what's up with all the bright colors) yellow sticker was put on our front door. We told everyone we thought the other person had paid the bill. We were really just waiting for Chris's stipend check. We told the children we were playing pioneers.

It was a long year full of fear and frustration and yes, I'll say it shame. We thought we knew what we were doing. We weren't living extravagantly even before we sold our business. We made good choices. We tried really hard. And yet it happened, and we didn't want anyone to know. We didn't want to ask for help. So we hid, and we lied, and we pretended.

When we moved to Pittsburgh, and the first paycheck and the signing bonus were not yet available but we were living in a hotel because our house wasn't ready yet (buying that house was not a good choice, more on that later), we could only go eat places that took credit cards. (Back in 2004, that did not include any fast food chains.)

That Pittsburgh house--I loved that house, and it was a huge money pit. We bought at the top of our loan amount. We rationalized we deserved it because we had sacrificed so much the year before. Then we worried about people's judgment. It wasn't a good choice, but it wasn't a choice we made because we were lazy, didn't want to work hard, or thought anyone, the government included, owed us anything. We didn't want more than "our share." We didn't want to hoard. We just wanted to feed our family and have a roof over our heads, and to maintain just a little dignity.

This morning I think about the many people who are or may be now living our reality. And I want them, you, all of us to know. It's no one's fault. It's not because you're a terrible person, a dumb person, a lazy person, or someone who deserves it. It's because we are in a global crisis, and I suspect we will all spend months or years climbing out of it.

In the meantime, hold your head high. Take the subsidies offered to you. Apply for unemployment. Do what you need to do to get through this time. You are enough; you do enough, and that's enough.

May God bless us all.