How do you measure wealth?
Why you shouldn't worry about what you buy your kids for Christmas.
"Okay, kids. Get ready. When we pass his car on the right, everyone give him the middle finger and smile!" That was my mom. She was behind the wheel of her beat up, dusty-blue station wagon on a scorching summer day; the kind of day that would undoubtedly make her busted radiator she couldn't afford to fix overheat yet again, sending her sprinting into the house in a panic to grab a mixing bowl full of water to cool it down. Thinking we could all use a cool-down ourselves, my mom had loaded up the car with me, my brother, and three neighborhood kids, including Amanda who, at just a year younger than me, was a shy and quiet five-year-old. The oldest of us was ten. So when while cruising down the freeway with all the windows down--4x4 air-conditioning, my mom used to call for with a feigned air of glamour and luxury--and a careless man’s lane change nearly ran us off the road, my mom was forced to slam on her brakes and kick into protective mode, reflexively throwing her arm across the two kids in the front seat. Not satisfied with the standard, banal honk of the horn, my 31-year-old mom then did what any self-respecting woman would do: shame the man by burning into his brain the image of a car-full of smiling children flipping him off for his recklessness.
Day trips to the beach were a common rendezvous when we were kids. Almost ever week during the summer, it seemed. And at the time it felt like we were living a life of the crème de la crème with these seaside escapades--a special treat few were privileged enough to experience. And while this was true in some sense--not every family lives in close proximity to the beach, nor has the ability to take time to go there---what I didn't realize was that much like our reuse of Sunday comics as wrapping paper, the beach was a clever way to stretch your dollar when you're newly divorced and struggling to run a household on your own. Other than the cost of fruit-stand cherries, snackbar french fries, sparkling orange juice, and the gas to get there, a day on the coast is free. But as a kid, this insight was beyond my scope. All I knew was that a trip to the beach was as good as anything I'd done in my few years on the planet, and that seemed pretty high-brow to me.
The year my parents got divorced, my mom kept the house we were renting, and my dad moved into a one-room studio five houses down, just a lane away. With not much furniture to call his own, we had scarce more than a tiny TV with grainy reception, a coffee table, a nightstand, two mismatched bookshelves, a desk, and a dresser for each of us. The frameless futon that rested on the floor doubled as a couch and bed, which my brother and I alternated sharing with my dad on his custody nights. And when your futon-turn came, you savored it, feeling like a king. The other sibling rolled out a thin mat on the ground next to the futon and slept in his or her respective sleeping bag, a commoner you ruled over for one night. Life's little triumphs.
Though the studio life only lasted a couple years, both my parents' financial struggles persisted, but my dad eventually saved up enough to move into a two-bedroom house just a block further down, which meant we finally had a space big enough to house a Christmas tree. But if we didn't have a couch (still), we certainly didn't have Christmas ornaments, and a pine without decorations is just a silly tree in your living room. Without the funds to spring for an assortment of plastic ice-skating Peanut characters, light-up elves, and glittery snowflakes, my dad instead sprang into action and collected supplies at an unlikely place: Japan Town. Variety packs of origami paper in hand and an instructional booklet in the other, the three of us folded cranes, dogs, boxes, and boats all night until our tree was filled with our own lopsided creations. And when our bank account showed we didn't have the money to buy Christmas presents for all our loved ones that year, our kitchen transformed into a bustling cookie factory where I learned to use Redhots for gingerbread eyes and M&Ms for snowman buttons. It wasn't frugal. It was fun.
But these are scenes I'm almost embarrassed to recall now. A string of hand-me-down cars that were never quite fixed no matter how many repairs, three of us living in one room together, no bed, just a sleeping bag on the floor, a shared futon at best... it's a life of poverty seemingly lifted from a scene of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. But it wasn't until I was much, much older that I was at all cognizant of what that must have looked like from the outside looking in--the way I perhaps should have felt ashamed to bring my rich Marin friends over to play; the way I should have maybe felt envy or a sense of personal lacking when I saw how others lived; the way this would have presumably reflected on our family, as if material wealth is a measure of a family's success. And even writing that now I keep returning to the latter, impulsively feeling the need to add a qualifier next to "success": overall success, emotional success, success in love and support. Why is it that we place so much value on economic status that the word "success" seems to only imply a financial one?Because even without it, my parents did a fantastic job of raising us, never even giving us a taste of bitterness on our not-yet-tainted tongues. Sure, my mom would sob to me about how she didn't have rent that month, and wasn't sure if we'd even be living in our home the next week, but the next week would come and we still be there. And when Christmas came she always pulled a rabbit out of the hat. There was somehow always money for Saturday-morning donuts, a Sunday matinee, and of course, a tank of gas for a trip to the beach.
We didn't have much furniture, not even a a couch, but it was always a home.Because home isn't the tangibles that are in it; it's the intangibles that fill the space between your hodgepodge Salvation Army end-tables and the sleeping bag on your floor. Do I remember what I got my friends for Christmas most years? Hardly any at all. But I can still almost smell the perfume of those dozens of sugar cookies splayed out on the counters and tables of our home, feel the warmth of our kitchen from hours of baking edible gifts for our friends and family, hear the laughter of my Dad, my brother and I at the muddled shapes that emerged from our oven. Was that supposed to be candy cane? Or a Christmas tree? And did I feel ashamed at the Sunday-comics taped up around the puzzle present I brought to my friend's birthday party? Why should I? Wasn't that just the Brandenburg signature wrapping paper? We were unique!
At an age when you have no concept of money and how economics work, (who knew checks weren't just "fill-in-the-blank" dollar bills? I could never understand why my mom was always worried about money because she seemed to have endless amount of checks! Turns out she was floating many of them) wealth for me was not measured in the money something cost, but the richness of the experience. It wasn't a life without money, it was a life full of creativity.
So parents, please don't wring your hands across a heart full of guilt for not being able to buy whatever this year's version of Tickle-Me-Elmo is, or to send your kids to that expensive summer camp their friends are going to. They'll likely not remember those trivial experiences, those superficial gifts, anyway. It's counterintuitive but those expensive purchases are a dime-a-dozen. It's the unexpected that fill our lives with treasures. Because as the saying goes, "Some people are so poor, all they have is money." And lucky for us, the Brandenburgs had so much more.
I hope you all have happy holidays overflowing with love, and perhaps even a Christmas tree full of origami cranes. It's certainly a tradition I plan to keep with my future children. Go out and create some with yours.
