Lessons from Donation Bins

I come from poverty. Not outright cardboard-in-the-alley poverty, but according to a conversation I recently had with my mother, I have eaten squirrel. Out of necessity. Fairly regularly. I always knew I was a "poor kid", but for some reason, living in a busted out trailer in the woods eating fucking squirrel meat strikes me as a low unheard of. Interesting side note; apparently you have to cook it very slowly.

I remember the first time I realized my family wasn't as financially secure as I thought.

I was five. We had just moved to Maine, where my father thought he would be able to find work (and did, at a job that paid $20/hr, with a mortality rate of 2+ deaths a week, and was 5 hours away). We took the only place we could find. An "expanded" trailer, in the middle of Maine, the middle of nowhere. My school bus identified the area as "Unorganized Territory". It was. If you came across a deer in the woods, it would just stare at you. It had never seen a human before. I have always said, if I was going to kill somebody, that's where I would hide the body. Maybe I shouldn't write that part.

We had one vehicle which my father drove to his job. My mother would bum rides off of the neighbors (not that there were too many of them) to get us around. Besides school and the grocery store, the only other place we went with regularity was church. My mother is a lifelong Christian of varying degrees of faith, and took it upon herself to raise my sister and I that way. She always got us to Mass, always had us enrolled in Sunday School, always made it a part of our lives, and with the way our world was at the time, it may have been the only thing keeping her together.

It wasn't until one morning after Sunday School that I realized it. My class was taking donations to help the poor. Canned food, money, anything. I said to my mother;

"We should donate to the poor and help them."

Very plainly, my mother said "Asa, we are the poor. Where do you think we get our food?"

A punch in the face.

I remember it being like my entire world had revealed itself to me. The trailer. The cans of food with the plain white labels. The "new" clothes already a little worn out. I wasn't the same after that. I was POOR. This image of everyone having money except me seemed super-imposed over everything I saw. I was an outsider, filth. I started to grow resentment for my family. Why couldn't my father cut his fucking hair and wear nice clothes like other dads? Why couldn't we have two cars like my friends? Why us? Why ME?

It stuck with me for years, and to this day, I recognize the poor as my people. To this day I quietly resent those with more than me. Not for what they have, make, or are, but because it is ingrained in my soul that they couldn't possibly know what it's like to receive someone else's old and unwanted toys for Christmas. They couldn't understand what it's like to be told time and time again that "we can't afford that", or, "we just don't have the money" when all I asked for was a pair of shoes from the store, and not the church.

Don't get me wrong, we made life work. At least I was fed. I had a roof. I had clothes. As an adult, I understand these things. I understand how fucking difficult living can be, and how hard it must have been then. And while I have learned harsh lessons in humility, charity, and necessity, I have also been marked. An ash colored smudge of shame, donated to me, in the smug pity of those better off. For that reason, I am incapable of accepting charity for myself or my family today. I refuse government assistance. I will sell off all of my belongings and starve before my children notice anything has gone awry in my household.

They may be poor, but they will never know it.