sometimes poverty isn’t sitting on the street begging for spare change. sometimes poverty is sleeping in past breakfast so you have money for laundry. sometimes it’s pretending the playground is the same thing as kennywood. sometimes it’s buying work clothes from goodwill so your kids can get new shoes for school. your kids think you’re weird for saving the coupons that come in the mail, but your mom tells you while you cry to her on the phone after the kids have gone to bed that you’re just doing your best. your son gets made fun of for his too-small, off-brand, hand-me-down athletic pants and your heart breaks. your daughter can’t join the soccer team because the travel cost is way too much, and why is a two-day competition that expensive anyway? your husband has been putting in 85 hours a week, and he’s so weary that today he accidentally put the baby’s desitin on his toothbrush. you don’t know how much longer you can keep up this façade with the pta moms; acting like everything’s peachy and yes, libby would love to have a play-date, even though you’ll know she’ll come home begging for a 3DSi that has no business being $250 and you’ll cry yourself to sleep before your husband gets home. you feel greedy and ungrateful when you pray for help because you know there are people who have it so much worse, but you don’t know how to get out of this entrapment. you can only accept so many casseroles from the elderly woman at church before you’ll have to start tipping her like a pizza boy, after all. you call your mom for the third time this week and she sighs as she begins to recount her early motherhood years to you. you realize that maybe you’re not the only person who has struggled like this, and maybe you’re not the worst mom in the world. you stop talking to the pta moms and you pick up a couple night shifts at the diner on the corner to buy your kids some new clothes. as you dry your tears and tie your apron, it dawns on you that sometimes poverty is a relative term.
~mj