Poor Part I

Poor is the first word in the acronym that was used to describe my “pity party”. To me when the word poor comes to mind I think of someone who suffers from financial hardship or something  that is of power worksmanship or quality. To be honest in my life growing up I can say I have been both.  Up until the time I left home with my sister at 12 I lived a pretty comfortable life. Of course I had no concept of money or what it took to run a household than and to be perfectly honest I never really went without much. Up to the point before the big jolly man that came at Christmas no longer existed in my world Christmas was a big deal for me. I remember the last Christmas I had believing in Santa and the mountains of presents that filled the room. Once I stopped believing in Santa there were no more mountains on Christmas morning. 

When I left home with my sister at 12 we left the house with what we could get in the car. My sister had a job as a night clerk at a hotel so we were able to stay there otherwise there’s no telling where we would have ended up. We lived there for about a month until a travelling salesman that came to stay at the hotel a few times a year who had been interested in my sister convinced her to pack us up and travel with him to another state. He traded in his Cadillac and we were off to a new life. We made stops in New Mexico, Arizona, California, and Las Vegas between Thanksgiving and New Years day before settling into an apartment in Colorado Springs Colorado

The apartment we started off in was pretty nice with all the bells and whistles that come with luxury apartment living. All was well for a couple months till my sister discovered that he was a fraud and that he was in debt to the company they both worked for to the point he wasn’t able to pay the money back. She decided to be done with him and get a place on her own. At this point it was just me, my sister, and my almost 1 year old nephew now. Just after my 13^th birthday we moved to another apartment just the 3 of us. At this point she had begun dating a new guy. He was a very nice guy who treated her good, took my nephew on as his own child and was even accepting of her extra kid which was me. One thing I can say about my childhood is my sister always had my back. She may have struggled a lot but no matter what I always knew she loved me and would never let me down. This began a pattern of us moving every 6 months I was in junior high school. Starting with the school I began junior high in when I was still at my mom’s house I went to a total of 7 different schools. We lived pay check to pay check on welfare. In order to afford Christmas the year after we left my sister rang a bell for the Salvation Army in the freezing cold temperatures of a Colorado winter while she was 4 months pregnant just to make sure my nephew and I didn’t have to go without.

 My sister always did what she had to do to take care of us. Times were hard yet I always knew during this time that no matter what I would be ok because she was there.

I think this is probably where I learned that as a mother no matter what you took care of your children. I learned that you do everything in your power with every part of your being to make sure that they knew the love and sacrifice that you made for them.

Stay tuned for Poor Part II