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The Locked Bathroom

It's a funny thing about a blog that no one knows about yet. It's like a locked bathroom, a magic sanctuary, a junior high school journal. You can just sit in it, rummaging around in the old bellybutton for wayward lint, maybe sing off-key a little bit or stare off into space, and nobody's the wiser, the more grossed out, or irritated. Even after I hit the "Publish" button, I think I'm going to pretend I didn't.

Extra Extra. Need. All About It.

11/7/2013

11 Comments

 
Picture
"It'll be fun," I remember fake-enthusing to my three-year-old son after my electricity was turned off for the umpteenth time in my single mother days. "See, look at the pretty candles. It's like we're in olden times." 

We weren't. It wasn't. 

Our economic life got better when I married, but as our family grew, and my husband and I  embarked on our attempt to start an organic donut-making business - dubbed the LWP (Latest Wacky Plan) by my sister-in-law, "extra"  never became a thing we felt we had, our born in the middle-class, white, college-educated privilege notwithstanding.

But after a decade of wearing a groove in the earth sprinting between Peter and Paul and often showing up at one or the other's door with nothing but a pocket full of lint, something changed this year.

We experienced a small bump in our income as our boot-strapped business finally crossed the line out of eating up all the borrowed resources in sight into making a small profit. On top of that, I got paid a good chunk of my advance for my novel. 

So what have I done? Bought seven garments. New. From not a thrift shop. Arranged for piano lessons for my daughter. Didn't blink when my husband brought home the "free" broken will-cost-a-mint-to-fix hot-tub. In the grocery store, I've stopped tensely watching the amount displayed on the cash register as it rises with Everest steepness. For the moment anyway, I know I won't have to play last-minute Sophie's Choice between a can of beans and a package of hot dogs. 

And I've taken up a heretofore unthinkable new habit: Regularly purchasing $3.52 cafe au laits at one of those lovely coffee shops with the shiny machines, a "fair trade" coffee bean option, and music I never hate. Cupped in my hands, these coffees, besides smelling and tasting divine, feel distinctly and dangerously luxurious. As though, if the family wallet continued to fatten, they might lead to puma-hide toilet seat covers or Goddess help me, pea gravel, and most alarmingly, to a wandering away from my immediate knowledge of what it's like to live in even relative economic insecurity, and my at least proximal knowledge of what life is like for the huge number of people who --  multiple orders of magnitude worse off than I or mine have ever been --  struggle far too hard to obtain life's most basic necessities -- and, through no fault of their own, often can't procure them. 

Steaming and sprinkled with nutmeg - thank you, beautiful young barista - there's no telling how long my access to this coffee will last but for now the luxury daily insists upon potent questions which I can not ignore: 

1. Why do gold-plated bath-tub faucets and mouths full of missing teeth for lack of dental coverage still exist in the same Universe?

and

2. If you don't want to hoard wealth, and yet, not being saintly, also want to do right by and take care of your nearest and dearest, well then how much wealth is enough? At what balance point in your personal calculus, do you say: "Over and above this amount, any other income I earn, win, or hookly or crookly get, I will share, and spread out and invest in others?

Is it when you own a house (at least on paper), can pay all your basic bills easily, and can afford the organic pecans and a new package of underwear each year and a Stetson every five?
Is it when you have all the above going, plus $10,000 squirreled away in a Swiss bank account, plus a full set of matching bath towels, linens, and tupperware?
Is it when you can regularly buy coffee house coffees?

Up until now, because of our family's chronic indebtedness and lack of fungible flim-flam (plus the fact I only started drinking coffee a year ago) , the consideration of such questions has been a largely theoretical exercise, intellectual pillow-talk, akin to wondering how I would have behaved if I'd been a German during World War II - would I have gone against the Nazis? Rationalized a passive complicity? Become a dehumanizing dehumanized monster? I will never know and I don't want an opportunity to find out. Or maybe I already have had one. Iraq. Moving on.

The fact that the one llama I chipped in on for a family in Peru stands out in my memory in lonely technicolor splendor on an otherwise empty windswept philanthropic landscape, tells you how much sharing of my resources I've actually done up until now. A few dollars for local radio stations, donuts and truly minute amounts of cash for this cause and that hidden in the scrub, and that's about it.

But what if we keep doing better financially? Though no one in a convincing Mistress of the Universe up-do has guaranteed us anything, it feels for the first time at least possible that we could -- with the help and cooperation of a whole lot of people and circumstances, between the donuts and books, create "extra". If we are lucky enough to end up consistently generating/receiving such "extra", I fervently hope that I'll recognize it as such, and not let expanding appetite trick me into ever mistaking that "extra" as somehow newly "essential" to our "needs". I want to deeply remember just how "extra" coffee shop coffee feels at this moment, and if we prosper, allow the warm cup in my hands to be the constant bellwether that indicates "Enough".

Photo Slideshow: Poverty in Today's America
 Photo Slideshow: Poverty in Today's 
Click here for Photo SlideshowText
11 Comments
the Coconut Girl link
11/7/2013 11:36:12 am

Lovely piece, and even lovelier sentiment to sew the seeds of monetary philanthropy as "enough" spouts into "extra." As for the coffee, it's the hug of community in a fiercely independent country, a consistent point on the daily horizon in a busy, shifting life, and an alertness mid-wife to creative output. I see your cup as the Universe's material acknowledgement of your lifelong, non-monetary philanthropy.

Reply
Lise
11/7/2013 09:14:37 pm

A wonderful treatise on an age-old dilemma (at least for those who are awake enough to wonder and care). The answer? Hard to say. But I am sure that generosity is always a good thing, in whatever measure. Thanks for caring and sharing your caring. It's important to help nudge others out of complacency.

Reply
Sarah
11/8/2013 12:17:52 am

As always such a beautiful and well thought out piece. Reading your writing is always a treat and this certainly asks some essential questions. I wish you could give us some easy answers!

Reply
El
11/8/2013 02:30:18 am

The House of Representatives is larded with so-called Christians who are starving millions of fellow Christian children--and others--by cutting drastically their food stamps. Good luck with having them ponder this issue...Excellent article, Jen!

Reply
dana alison levy link
11/8/2013 05:36:29 am

You wrote this so beautifully, and though there are no easy answers to your questions it doesn't mean we shouldn't ponder them. A lot. Savor that coffee, and here's to a future where you can balance "enough" and "extra" and the delicious feeling of wrapping your hands around a perfect cup of warmth.

Reply
Mable
11/9/2013 11:16:50 am

An important question in a world of such inequities. I have reminded myself, when finances have been limited or uncertain, that it is possible to give to/support the whole in many ways no less valuable. I see you doing this.

Reply
auntie betz
11/10/2013 04:34:58 am

The not so subtle guilt of a (finally!) walk on easy street does not escape me. When we think of our wealth as a blessing, it makes more sense. When we experience its fleeting, it is a reality check. Here's the thing...we live in a country that might have kept children from going to bed; having had one "meal" that day, hungry, while billions of dollars have gone to the killing fields of war. the shame is readily shifted. These things are generally too huge for us to fix. What you will find is that part of the blessing you're adjusting to will bring you the ability to do good within a small circle; one person at a time. Buy two fancy coffees and give one away (leave a ridiculous tip). Jen, please enjoy the very well earned luxuries that fall far short of those obscene gilded toilets; yours are hard and long earned; the operative being earned! Take some revel lessons girl! It is very easy to find needs very close to home; keep your eyes peeled. Stay on the joy train.

Reply
Grier link
11/10/2013 07:37:37 am

We live in a country where some people have so much more than they need (envision the packed-to-the-gills garage plus an off-site storage unit)... and others have nothing. You obviously are a thoughtful person who is finally able to afford a few small luxuries. After all of your hard work you deserve to treat yourself. Share a little when you can, or give time and expertise if you can't. Most importantly, enjoy.

Reply
sathish Kumar link
12/26/2013 01:19:55 pm

Nicely written article.

Reply
Lawrence B link
12/31/2020 06:24:05 pm

Interesting post I enjoyed read this.

Reply
Madison H link
7/18/2024 02:09:43 am

Nice blog thankss for posting

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