Chapter 4: Have you ever been so hungry that you thought about eating lard?

Most kids loved summer breaks. I suppose that I probably got caught up in that enthusiasm as well, but for me, summer breaks and weekends meant that the one meal that I got a day I may not have.

We were poor. When I say that, I do not mean a little poor like I had to wear clothes from Wall-Mart, I mean really poor.

Let me paint a picture, we did not have running water in our house for three years. We had to use an outhouse for a bathroom, even in the dead of a Michigan Winter. I would get to take a bath once a week at my grandmothers’ house and sponge bath for the rest of the time. At times our electricity would be shut off, which tends to happen when you don’t pay the bill. I rarely had new clothes. My clothing came from the local church charity or yard sales. I could live with all of these things, but the most painful was not having food.

Saturday mornings were for cartoons. Back in the day, that was the only day of the week you could watch cartoons. My little brother and I would watch Garfield, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Smurfs, Looney Toons…the best line up. We would get up early, and if we were lucky, find some cereal or fry up an egg. We would then look in our mom’s room and see that she was still sleeping, always sleeping.

This Saturday morning, my brother, probably about 5 years old woke up before I did. He came to my room to tell me he was hungry and there wasn’t any food. I got up and started the hunt for food. He was right, there wasn’t anything. I went into my mom’s room to try to wake her and tell her, but she wasn’t interested and told me to go away.

How do you tell a 5-year-old that you have nothing to eat and he’s going to have to tough it out? And why is it the responsibility of his 9-year-old sister to do that?

I went to the big chest freezer we had to do another pass. I could barely see in it, but from what I could tell all we had was frozen lard. I didn’t think we were at that point of desperation yet, so I’ll save the lard for another day.

I drug a chair over so I could get a better look and there it was, a bag of frozen strawberries hidden under the multiple containers of frozen lard. I had forgotten about the frozen strawberries that grandma had sent to the house.

So I had my brother climb onto the chair to make sure the freezer lid didn’t fall down, and I climbed in to secure our breakfast. Yes, it wasn’t much, but my brother and I sitting with that bag of frozen strawberries, eating them as we watched cartoons satisfied the hunger pangs until we could repeat the cycle again and search for our next meal.

Being hungry is probably one of the worst feelings when you are helpless to fix it. We weren’t always hungry, but it happened more than it ever should in anyone’s childhood. Even though we most certainly would’ve qualified for government assistance, my step-father would’ve never applied. He’d rather suffer than take government money. And so we did.

Every night for years, I used to say the same prayer to a God that never came through for me.

“Dear Heavenly Father, I want to thank you for another day. My grandma always tells me that you have a special plan for me. But all I really want is a normal mom, in a warm and clean home, and to not be afraid every day. Please, God, give me a normal family”.