Pissed off stream of consciousness from a lucky plucky gal

I had some insight today into why I’m feeling pissed off.

(And by the way, sorry I haven’t written in months. My friend Etana has been bugging me to write, and she signed her e-mail “creatively yours,” so that sort of motivated me. And then Roger and Suzanne gently urged me on as well.)

But what’s also motivating me is my feeling of frustration. No, it’s more than that. It’s the Sisyphus thing, like I’m pushing a rock up a hill and wake up the next morning to find that it’s at the bottom again. Or maybe it’s the hamster wheel thing…around and around and around I go, but where does it get me? Of course, bottom line is that I’m putting the best part of my energy into raising strong, healthy, kind, happy kids, and I’m very blessed. Yes, that’s true. I’m blessed, thank God or Whoever. I have to say that. But, that said, I can still take some time and a minor bit of energy to think about why I’m feeling pissed off.

What am I pissed off at? Let’s start with who (or whom?). First, my parents’ generation, who are generally enjoying a happy, healthy, well-traveled, and secure retirement. They don’t just have rights, they have entitlements. They feel entitled to take time for themselves, to relax. Or maybe I can paraphrase this attitude as, “It doesn’t take a village, and I’m living in a luxury retirement condo anyway.” They’ve done their work. Now we need to do ours. (I’m inaccurately quoting the mother of a friend here, but that’s the general feeling.) But, darn it all, we are working. I feel like Henry the effing Workhorse in Animal Farm. “I will work harder…I will work harder…” and eventually he ended up as dog food. Yes, I’m being somewhat over the top, yes I did choose to have 3 kids in a declining economy and country, but I can still be annoyed, okay? (And I’m not specifically blaming my parents, because they are pretty helpful, within their own self-imposed limits. It’s more like some twisted version of Schadenfreude that’s actually jealousy about the fortune of others.)

Anyway, here’s why I’m really pissed off. I realized this morning -- as I was sprinting to the Metro after waking at 5 am and getting 3 kids out the door at 7:45 innumerable juggles and negotiations later – that I’m not living the way I was raised. When I was growing up, in the Free to Be You and Me 1970s, the argument went as follows: Girls can be anything boys can be. A woman has a right to work. Why should a woman have to stay home and take care of the kids? She shouldn’t be consigned to a mere joblet. And so forth. The goal was Working Girl does Wall Street. Does anyone remember this commercial –– “I can bring home bacon, fry it up in a pan, and never let you forget you’re a man. ‘Cause I’m a woman....Enjolie.” My mom was outraged that this was what “the feminists” wanted women to become, and she cut out the ad and taped it to our 1970s tan refrigerator. But she was caught up in the throes of an argument that doesn’t make sense anymore. I say, f—k the “choice” of being the Enjolie woman. I have never had a choice but to work.

And I was raised middle or upper middle class. I’m not from a working class background. I expected to work, but I also expected my husband to support me financially. I expected us not to need my income. The point I want to make now is about the times, which have a-changed. Nobody chooses to be the Enjolie woman anymore. Most of us are her by default. (Except forget the never never let you forget you’re a man part, because I don’t have the time, energy, or inclination for that kind of subterfuge.) And, hey, what about Ms. Enjolie’s kids? Were they glued to the boob tube watching the Brady Bunch or Family Affair? Did their mom put them to bed at 7:30 pm after a supper of Kool-aid and tv dinners? Toggling between the 1970s and now makes me feel a bit like Rip van Winkle. I guess that’s what happens once you hit 40.

I remember when I was in 10th grade, our biology teacher had us write about what we thought we’d be doing when we grew up. I wrote that I would be a psychologist living in LA, married to someone in the Spanish royal family. In my essay, I wrote that one cute American guy had wanted me to marry him, but his dream was to live in Alaska and I knew that that would never work for me. So, there I was, living in LA, being a psychologist, and happily married to my Spaniard. Our biology teacher’s purpose in having us do the exercise was to point out that none of us thought about the reality of having kids in our essays. The essays were actually a starting point for talking about contraception, and looking back, I think it was a great idea.

My point is that none of us in the class thought about the need to struggle for money to maintain a middle class, upwardly mobile lifestyle. Never, never, never. Yes, I should have listened to my grandfather and gone to law school, but I’m sure at the time that we all assumed that if you just did what you loved, enough money would follow. That there would be enough slack for a do-over if you messed up. And that if you didn’t mess up, you didn’t have anything to worry about. I don’t think that’s the case now.

Sooo… I’m pissed off because I was raised to exemplify an argument – “Women have a right to work! Hear me roar!” – but my life now is “Women get weary.” It’s not a failure of feminist ideals, although the American feminists seem to have forgotten about maternity leave. It’s more a failure of capitalism, or maybe it’s capitalism’s success. I don’t have any other “isms” to suggest, since I generally don’t trust them. Somehow I’ve become this slogging hardworking slob who has been given the “freedom” to take on all of the risk that corporations and the government used to take on.

Even those among us who are well off -- (which I don’t think includes me, although of course I’m well off compared to a Sudanese villager and I’m blessed to live in a relatively peaceful land, yadaydayda…) – are facing some hard truths. Let me rephrase that. Even for those of us who aren’t living paycheck to paycheck (not me, unfortunately), trying to give our kids the same semblance of middle class security and education that we had growing up is a huge stretch. My grandparents managed to put away enough money to put most of their grandchildren through college. I’m putting $120 a month into a limp and sickly 529 plan for my kids. Will that be enough for college any one of them? No way, Jose. Sure, there are ways to get around it, but it won’t pay for Harvard or even the University of Maryland.

And I heard on NPR last night that all 3 legs of the American retirement system may be crumbling. Pensions are becoming non-existent or unpayable, Social Security and Medicare may not be around once they’re drained by those damn babyboomers, and 401-Ks aren’t the magic bullet they were made out to be. So, what’s a gutsy gal to do in her old age? Become a plucky little old lady who builds her own trusty wooden stool and sells pies, like in Mother Goose? I wouldn’t want to do that even if I got to live in jolly olde England and use their National Health System. I need to think of some kind of business to run in my older years, but it’s hard enough to find time for everything I need to do now.

So…whine whine whine….As I say to my kids, “What kind of voice are you using?” Definitely a whiny voice. I’m not even saying please. Please, please, powers that be, can I please have income security in my old age and a decently priced college education for my kids without having to indenture them to the military (God forbid)? Please? And the answer comes down in a deep voice from on high: “Sorry, life isn’t fair. You get what you get and you don’t get upset.”

Oh well, I guess it’s time to ignore it all. No wonder musicals were popular during the Depression. Even if I want to face reality (and since it’s impossible to escape it, I might as well), I still need a little picker-upper for my spirits. We all do. I think the way forward is to think outside of the box somehow. I need inspiration for that, and I need people to brainstorm with. I guess the irritation and resentment I’m feeling can be a motivator. It can provide the kinetic energy to get me out of my head and actually moving forward on something and leave outdated ideas behind. We’ll see. Stay posted. Same bat time, same bat channel.

GirlCrush-o-Rama

When I think about it, I realize that I have a lot of girl crushes. I never thought I was the girl crush type. I've always been blessed with a lot of friends, and I've even had a best friend now and then. But the idea of a girl crush...it was a little too hero worshipy and boarding schoolish, in my view.

Still, I remember my first girl crush. When I was 8 or 9,I was friends with the O'Malleys down the street (not their real name). It's amazing now that I think back on it, but their mother, Carol, was a single mom of 4 kids of various ages. She had moved down from Boston to go to law school. I remember that my dad used to help start her car on snowy mornings. I would run around the neighborhood with her younger daughter, while Carol worked and studied. I don't remember much about the father, except that he had an angry voice and an assumption that all of his kids should accompany him to mass when he came down from Boston.

The one who I had a crush on (on whom I had a crush?) was the older daughter, Ginny. As a teenager, she had her own room in the semi-finished basement. She had long silky brown hair, a variety of hippy embroidered cotton shirts, and a water bed. This was the 70s, after all. She probably wore toe rings too. I was so shy that I could barely speak to her. And of course she barely spoke to me, because I wasn't even on her radar. Once her mom asked me to wake Ginny up, but it was all I could do to call out to her from the doorway then scurry away.

So, my first girl crush was unrequited. But maybe it served the purpose that girl crushes are supposed to serve, which is -- I think -- to provide you with a potential template for living your life. I never had a sister, but I think there's some kind of sisterly thing going on with girl crushes as well. It's someone you feel connected to, someone you could be, someone who paves the way for you and establishes parameters and possibilities. You may never achieve these possibilities, but it's nice to be able to think about them.

When I was a teenager, those possibilities were all about boyfriends. And things didn't change that much over the years either. In junior high, if someone had a boyfriend, you admired her. It gave her status. And you tried to be like her because if you did maybe you could attract boys and gain status too. Yuck, it sounds so insectoid, like queen bees and ant colonies, things like that. But that's clearly how it was, and the most admired girls were the ones who could display themselves like so many showy male birds.

I remember one horrible girl in my junior high whose name was Tracy McDaniel (Yes, that was her real name, but who cares?). She certainly wasn't my girl crush, but she had status because she flirted with all of the right guys. I remember how she told the girls in my far less adventurous group of friends that she was planning on wearing green to the teen club dance because "green makes you horny" (as if she were an M&M). Not only that, she was planning to wear little braids coming out of her head, like horns. Can you believe that? (The last sentence should be read incredulously, with an African American or southern accent for emphasis.) Anyway, that was the sort of vapid thing that was admired when I was a teenager, and I think it affected who I ended up admiring.

The one girl crush I recall in junior high was a small blond girl named Carrie. I think I had a crush on her because 1)she was short, and I felt too tall, 2) she dressed sort of toughly, and I thought that was exciting, and 3) she had the same first name as Carrie Fisher, who played Princess Leia in Star Wars (yes, I was kind of a geek). As with Ginny, I only admired Carrie from afar. She represented something I wasn't -- being tough, hanging out with boys who smoked. It seemed kind of romantic to me. We really only crossed paths in home ec, where my piece de resistance was burning the cheese because I thought it was butter. Aside from that, I probably didn't make much of an impression on her.

In contrast, when I think of my current girl crushes, what stands out is power and achievement, regardless of their connections with men. The other thing that stands out is style. It's as if I've moved on from bodice buster novels, where the romance is the thing (okay, sex, romance, whatever) to women's books that feature some kind of rags to riches story. I'm thinking Judith Michael books or Judith Krantz. There's always romance, but it's not necessarily the point. It's mainly about power and money. For example, there's one book by Judith Michael (who is actually two people -- a husband and wife team) about a poor young woman who ends up owning a pricey hotel chain. And then there's Scruples, where a young, formerly unattractive woman creates a high-end department store. And I cringe to admit it, but I'm also a fan of Jackie Collins' Lucky Santangelo, who becomes a tough lady mobster. You go, girl! It's stuff like that. They all wear great clothes and end up with supportive men, but the main story is their achievements and business acumen.

So...with that context in mind...here are my girl crushes:

1) My number one girl crush is...Katharine Weymouth, the publisher of the Washington Post. I'm sure Katharine doesn't remember this, but I lived downstairs from her in the Wigglesworth dorm during our freshman year at Harvard. Symbolically, she lived high up on the fourth floor attic, while I lived below her, unnoticed, on the second floor. Katharine looks great, has 3 kids, and is the granddaughter of Katharine Graham. She's also a lawyer, which is something I should have become but didn't. She represents this whole other world -- elite private school, connections with world leaders, high priced law firms. Another great thing about Katharine is that because of her, I'm less than 6 degrees of separation away from the Talking Heads. (Tina Weymouth of the Talking Heads is her aunt.)

So...Wow, here's someone my age who seems so poised and so comfortable with power. Maybe in front of her close friends she's a mess, but to me she seems like the embodiment of cool. I've considered contacting her via Facebook, but once again I'm just too shy. So...she'll just continue to represent the promised land to me, the sort of life that I can dream of but not aspire to. But at least I can learn from her example that it's possible to achieve more than I've done so far.

2) Michelle Rhee, Chancellor of the DC Public Schools. Michelle recently came to speak at the government agency where I work. My first impression of her was...wow. Although it was November, she wore a short skirt and high heels without stockings. She looked great. She seemed so comfortable up on the podium, and also kind of scary. I didn't really agree with her views about firing teachers, but I liked her passion for helping the kids in the DC Public Schools. And I like the fact that she sends her kids to DC Public Schools (although I just googled it and learned that she placed her kids in the best of the best among these schools...oh well.). Like Katharine Weymouth, she demonstrates for me that you don't have to shoot yourself in the foot career-wise just because you're a mother. I'm not sure to what extent she's going to meet her goals, but she's certainly going to give it her all. I like that.

3) Michelle Obama. I love her dresses. And I'm such an imbiber of the Obama kool-aid that I had to put her on this list. She projects this clean-cut but sharp image. She totally rounds out the image of the Obamas as the black Kennedys. And she's so poised. I'm so excited that she and her family are coming to the White House. I'm not that interested in what she'll be doing, because I assume she'll focus on her kids first and foremost (totally understandable). But I am interested in how she'll present herself and what she'll wear. I've never really been into the First Lady, since none of the first ladies during my lifetime have been very appealing to me. So, this will be a first...yay!

4) Samantha from Sex and the City I've always considered myself more of a Carrie (I'm angst-ridden) or a Miranda (I've got a kid...in fact, I've got three of them). But Samantha is so honest and out there being herself. I definitely admire that. She doesn't apologize to anyone, and she's not self-conscious. And like all of the women on the show, she dresses with style. But for me, the most admirable thing about Samantha is a single line she says in the Sex and the City movie. She says it to her gorgeous, much-younger beau Smith, whom she followed to LA and lived with for over 5 years: "I love you, but I love me more."

God, what I would give to be able to say that in my life! It's not something I would ever say to my kids, of course, because (see earlier blog), they're the center of my life and my being. But to be able to have that attitude about other aspects of my life...to be able to love myself and take care of myself without getting entangled in all of that Prince Charming bs....hopefully I can move that direction in my future. And I'm saying this independent of my marriage or anything else. I don't want to have to be mad because nobody is taking care of me in that fadeout, happily ever after kind of way. To do that, I need to be able to reflexively take care of myself, and that's hard for a girl who's been raised to please men and all other people. If I could move from Sally Field ("You like me, you really like me!") to Samantha ("I love you but I love me more"), that would really be something.

5) My beautiful diva-ish daughter Sofia. Sofia is just amazing. Even before she was a year old, she knew what she wanted and what she didn't want. And she doesn't have any trouble expressing herself. Of course she's 3-1/2, so she may become more inhibited in the future. But her self-esteem is great. And she's so stylish. She could wear a pull-up on her head (and she does, sometimes) and still look like she should be walking down a runway. She's the girl who, when she was feeling sick to her stomach, rejected the bowl I gave her to throw up in because "Blue isn't my color, Mommy". Anyway, I love her and I think she's great. I learn things from her every day.

So...those are my girl crushes of the day. There are plenty of other Women I Admire,whom I would be happy to list:

My former boss Jacquie (high-achieving, great shoes, warm but poised);

My former boss Barbara (supportive friend, knows who she is and what she wants, left an unhappy marriage and found a happy one, adopted 2 kids at age 50 and above, and lives in a world of wealth that I can't even aspire to);

Hillary Clinton (maintained her dignity when her man did her wrong, brilliant mind even if she did disappoint me on Iraq, a committed and hard worker);

My Aunt Beth (Got her Ph.D. in her 60s, survived various significant health problems with dignity, loves exciting travel).

And there are two more points I want to make.

First, I believe that my daughters, at ages 3-1/2 and 6 months, already have girl crushes. Sofia seems to be obsessed with Disney princesses, while Angelina has her own girl crush...on Sofia. We'll see how that turns out.

Second, when I look back at my first girl crush, I think I was idolizing the wrong O'Mally. Thinking of the mother, Carol, going to law school and raising 4 kids alone...that certainly trumps a hippie teenager with a water bed. But our girl crushes are appropriate for the specific times of our lives, so I shouldn't reject my past crush on Ginny. Carol is now happily remarried and a lawyer, and she still lives in the same town as my parents. I have no idea where Ginny is. I could google her, but that would destroy the romance.

On Scarcity

I've written about wealth, and now I'm going to write about scarcity. When I reflect on the concept of scarcity, it makes me think of words like "penury", "skinflint", "tightwad", and "spendthrift". They're narrow, ungenerous words, and what comes to mind is a world where people are always cutting, cutting, cutting and trying to make do with less. It feels negative and constricting, a dark and narrow place, the way Egypt is described at Passover.

Is this the direction we're moving in? Is this a bad thing? I grew up -- most middle class Americans grew up -- in a world of waste and high expectations. If something broke, we could always get another one. My wishes always turned up under the Christmas tree. My parents read Consumer Reports and made a practice of buying the most sensible quality items. We had a pool membership, piano lessons, out-of-state travel, and summer camp. If we needed a service or a specialist, we simply paid for it. It was one part planned obsolescence, one part entitlement, and one part optimism. Our options and resources seemed endless in an ever-broadening world.

It wasn't always like that, of course. It certainly was different for the folks two generations up. There was my maternal grandfather Jerry,who was successful, egotistical, and somewhat mythical. Having grown up in a poor family of 10 kids in Denver, CO, he attended Harvard Law School in the 1930s on scholarship and -- legend had it -- could only afford to eat a single muffin for lunch each day. And he was a slave to that era, even after he became wealthy. Years later, in the spacious Central Park West apartment he had purchased, he still saved string. He took the subway to work long after he could afford taxis, and he refused to buy a washing machine for his summer house.

Then there was my paternal grandmother, who, although she was only a typing teacher, did well enough in the stock market to put several of her grandchildren through college, including me. I remember visiting her in the nursing home when she was in her 80s. "I don't have any money", she would wail, over and over. Her daughter would write out for her, "You have money. You are rich." But over and over again, my grandmother would forget. She would be bereft, lying there, as her deepest fears played themselves out in her mind. It's amazing what a Depression can do to people.

For whatever reason, I've absorbed some of these same fears. When I was in college, I remember riding a New York City bus through Columbus Circle and seeing a bag lady wearing a Harvard sweatshirt. I thought, oh no, that could be me in 30 years. This was in the 1980s, when bag ladies (and men) were popping up all over the place. I remember homeless people sleeping all over the steam grates on my college campus, like so many outlined post-nuclear apocolypse bodies. I think the fear of becoming a bag lady was more of a female issue than a guy thing. Maybe it had to do with a gender-specific lack of confidence, or a lack of imagination even the 1980s about how a woman could support herself even. All I know is that several of my female friends -- all of whom were high-achieving -- shared the same fear.

Despite these unrealistic (I hope) fears, there were some aspects of scarcity that seemed utterly foreign to me. But now I'm thinking that maybe they're not so foreign after all. For example, in 1994 I visited my cousin Laura in St. Petersburg -- that's Russia, not Florida. I slept on the spare bed in the kitchen, and I remember thinking that that was simply how life was in Russia, along with the decrepit apartment lobbies that nobody bothered to keep up. But then, years later, when my fiance and I visited friends in San Francisco, we ended up sleeping in the cramped kitchen of their small apartment, which had originally been a garage. When I expressed amazement that we should all be sitting on a bed in the kitchen, drinking vodka, our friend responded that this was what housing was like in San Francisco.

Around the same time that we made the trip to San Francisco, electricity companies were going broke, rates were shooting up, and Enron was somehow making a profit from it all. I recall listening to a show on NPR about how middle class Brazilians were dealing with the electricity rate hikes by only turning lights on in the rooms they were in at the moment. According to the announcer, you could look up at a tall apartment building in Rio or Sao Paolo and see the lights flicking on and off as people walked from room to room. I certainly didn't connect myself with any of that. At the time I was living in an all-utilities-included place. When my husband didn't turn on enough lights, I would jokingly say, "This isn't Sarajevo, you know." But now...well, you know how it is. It's not Sarajevo, but maybe it's Sao Paolo.

And it's not just electricity, it's gas too. I remember reading about an American philanthropist who went to North Korea in the winter. When he visited one government ministry he noted that one of the high officials was wearing a thick jacket and gloves inside because there was no heat. Not too long after that, I caught myself wearing gloves and a thick sweater at home as I teleworked, just so I could keep the heat below 65. I loved Jimmy Carter and his energy conservation thing, but I did feel like a little bit of the axis of evil -- the cold part -- had entered my house that day. The other day, to keep the heat down and save money, I actually wore a wool cap on my head. I felt like I was channeling Soweto township fashion, but at least I was keeping my gas bill down.

Similarly, I remember being in Serbia not long after the U.S. stopped its bombing campaign. The price of gas had shot up, and people waited in long lines at the state-owned gas stations because they charged a few pennies per liter less than the private stations. I remember being amazed that it would be worth it to them to do that, but as our own gas prices shot up this past summer the joke was on me. I also remember hearing about the inflation in Serbia during the early 1990s, which at the time was the world's worst ever. One friend told me that he worked for hours in the field one day, cutting grass with a scythe, and at the end of the day he received 6 million dinars. He took his pay to a store to buy some toothpaste, but to his chagrin he saw that one tube cost 7 million dinars. That's not something I can specifically relate to, thank God, but it does sort of call to mind our increasingly insane healthcare costs.

It all reminds me of a great David Byrne song called "Dirty Old Town". I always thought the song was about Brazil, because it's on the Rei Momo album. But when you listen to it, you realize he could be talking about New York or any other American city:

Well, there are sixteen people in Danny’s apartment
Sixteen people are living in there
Remember the days of rent control
Grandpa remembers rock and roll

These days won’t last forever
These days won’t last for long
You know, somebody somewhere owes us a favor
That’s how things really get done
In this world of opportunities, it’s a land of possibilities

Now when the ladies come from Kansas
They wear their traditional colors
Today the fabrics are ragged and torn
The clothes on their backs is all that they own
They say, don’t draw attention to yourself
They’ll tear you apart for a couple of bucks
Keep you head down and keep you nose clean
’cause people who’re scared do dangerous things

So, the world and its ways of scarcity can enter our cities and our houses and maybe change our behavior. But how much do tight times affect our character, our way of thinking? In The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver writes about women in Congo who lived in such dire straits that they related to each other in a totally different way than she was used to. She writes, "The Congolese have an extra sense. A social sense, I would call it. It's a way of knowing people at a glance, adding up the possibilities for exchange, and it's as necessary as breathing. Survival is a continuous negotiation, as you have to barter covertly for every service."

I've also experienced these different ways people have of thinking and acting that help them get by or survive in times of scarcity. I remember when I was living in Morocco, I met a woman who was studying biology. "Oh," I responded innocently. "My father works at the National Institutes of Health in the U.S." What was an offhand comment to me was practically a job offer to her. It was a totally different way of thinking. It was the same thing when I was living in a post-conflict area of Croatia and had much more cash than the locals. Looking back, I think I was pretty clueless. I was generous to other people there because I'm a generous person, but also because it caused me no pain to be that way. But I also didn't spare much thought to what people could and couldn't afford. Sometimes I made insensitive gaffes, like not treating people when we shared dinner or coffee. I didn't have to live in tight times, so I often forgot that other people did.

Thinking back, maybe I wasn't so generous, relatively speaking. When my landlady in Vukovar, which was still recovering from its 1991 near-destruction, wanted to increase my rent, I argued with her because I felt it wasn't fair. But I could have easily afforded it, and she definitely needed the money for her uncertain future. It's so easy to be generous when you have more than enough. What's really admirable, though, is being generous when you yourself are living in scarce times.

I remember, for example, when I worked at a movie theater in high school. We had a game to support the Will Rogers Foundation. We put an empty glass at the bottom of a large trash can filled with water, and we inveighed people -- "Drop a quarter in the glass, win a free movie pass! All proceeds go to charity!" Inevitably, it was poorer people, including a large proportion of Hispanics, who would play. You can explain this away by discussing the excitement of a game of chance, or you can say that maybe these people were poor because they gave away too much of their money like this. But I also think it means that they weren't poor in their imagination. They could imagine themselves winning a free movie pass -- or perhaps getting rich. In their minds, at least, they weren't living in the narrow world of scarcity.

And I think that's one key of how to respond to tight times without narrowing our mind as well. If you can give to others, you're empowering yourself and acknowledging that you do have something to spare. In a sense, giving spares us from becoming slaves to our fears of penury, like my grandfather was. Judaism says that the best kind of charity is totally anonymous, when the donor doesn't know the recipient and vice versa. It's the unalloyed act of giving that counts. But if you don't give at all, then your world really becomes narrow. You're focused only on yourself and your own shrinking circle of need. Maybe by giving, we keep our world large and allow space for hope and even faith. Maybe it's one way to keep ourselves out of the dark, narrow world of Egypt. So, while I feel like times are getting tighter and tighter for many people, including me, I'm going to try to keep my mind open and give what I can.

Let's talk about wealth

I have a dysfunctional relationship with money and spending. For some reason, I can't get my arms around my financial situation. I can't seem to take a clear-eyed, dispassionate look at my finances and then make logical, rational choices. I've never really been able to make or follow a budget. Instead, I've always aimed to make just enough so I don't have to worry about what I spend. In other words, I've sought to have a margin of error that allows me to say "whatever" and live on in hazy and willful ignorance.

This sort of attitude is fine if you're a childless renter in good economic times. However, that certainly doesn't describe my situation. To put things into perspective, I'm paying more in daycare costs now than I made during my entire first year out of college. Holy moly! Let me repeat that: I'm paying more in daycare costs now than I made during my entire first year out of college. And my income hasn't gone up all that much, so daycare costs -- and utilities and house stuff and medical bills and classes for the kids -- really do take a huge bite. So, as I say to my kids...no more funning around. Let's get serious here. Let's talk about wealth, the lack thereof, and my mental struggles with it.

There is a quote I came across recently. It's from David Copperfield, which I admit I've never read. It says,

"And think most of all of Mr. Micawber and his advice to David: 'Annual
income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result
happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty
pounds ought and six, result misery.' Following that advice will
protect you from the worst of economic upheavals."

In other words, spending less than you make leads to happiness, and spending more than you make creates anxiety. Logically,I know this is right, but I've always thought about things the other way round. It's not so much that I try to spend more than I make, but I certainly don't equate saving money with happiness or other good feelings. Unfortunately for me, it's spending money that makes me feel this way.

Dickens is talking about wealth and how it makes us feel. For me, it's first and foremost about security. There should be a word for it -- security and happiness that comes from feeling wealthy. I'm sure the Germans do have a word for it, similar to Farfegnugen. That makes sense so far, but what makes me feel wealthy -- and therefore secure and happy -- is all messed up. There are several ways I end up experiencing this happiness that comes from feeling wealthy, and unfortunately none of them is particularly healthy, financially speaking.

First of all, I associate wealth and security with images of richness and stability. I remember as a teenager walking up 5th Avenue in New York with my mother, looking in the display windows of Tiffany's and other jewelry stores. I felt a sense of solidity, as if these big, thick buildings, with their gleaming displays would always be there. I remember going to amazing restaurants with my parents and afterwards stepping out into the day, feeling sated and protected, as if I was surrounded by a magical glow.

I remember visiting a college friend of my father's who had become a professor at Brown University. He had a large, well-ordered house with shiny wood floors and Harvard chairs in the study. He took us to a restaurant in Newport, where 19th-century shipping magnates had build huge, fortress-like mansions along the coast. The sun was low on the horizon as we pulled up to the restaurant, and my brother and I were allowed to run around on the well-manicured lawn. I felt a sense of security from the setting and from the fact that we were able to be part of it by going to the restaurant. I think back to that restaurant now and the quality of the light, and I think that it's something that I would like to have in my life. It's certainly something I would like to give my kids. But there's fat chance of that, since for us an evening out is Baja Fresh with a splurge at Starbucks if we're feeling flush.

I have many more images of the kind of solidity that makes me feel wealthy and secure, however temporarily. There's even a smell I associate with it -- a whiff of gin and tonics in the open air. The images include big sprawling houses on Point O'Woods and Nantucket. Volvo station wagons and Subaru Outbacks with LL Bean trim. Golden retrievers. A complex glass of wine in a calm, reflective place.

Perhaps I've seen one too many Ralph Lauren ads, because It seems that many of my images of wealth are kind of preppy. Or maybe it's just a remnant of coming of age in the 80s. In any case, that wealth wasn't real for me then, and it certainly isn't real now. Nobody ever bought me any jewelry from 5th Avenue. The youngest daughter of my father's college friend had Down's Syndrome. The shipping magnates of Newport are long gone, and for all I know their descendants may be facing foreclosure on their tract housing in scruffy New England suburbs. In reality, most of the time I recall smelling gin and tonics in the open air, I was working as a college bartender (or bahtendah, as we liked to say with a Boston accent).

Still, thinking of these things even now gives me comfort. It's pretty crazy, but there it is. So I experience this feeling of wealth, which has nothing to do with real money. And it doesn't get me any closer to any kind of security, financial or otherwise.

Wealth means something else to me as well. It's connected with shopping and the acquisition of stuff. I grew up in suburban America, shopping for sport. Like many kids, I hung out at malls, surrounded by material goods. Now that I think of it, it was pretty spiritually bankrupt, but of course I wasn't aware of that as a teenager. Obtaining certain items -- generally clothing and cosmetics -- made me feel secure and complete. I remember putting a certain Gunne Sax dress on layaway. I remember getting high heeled clogs when I was in junior high. These things were my armor. If I wore the right things to my nouveau riche public school, I would be protected. Maybe I wouldn't be popular, but I certainly wouldn't be a loser with a capital L on my forehead. At a certain point, my parents gave me a clothing allowance. I supplemented it with part-time McJobs. I knew that if I could find just the right outfit or pants or shoes, everything would be okay.

And, guess what? It's still like that for me today. I tell myself, I have to look professional and just right for work to build my image within the limitations of our office casual dress code. I think to myself, I just need to get the right pair of high black boots to wear with skirts, the right pair of low black boots to wear with pants. Or I need yet another black jacket or black shirt....and I will be protected and ready to go. (Yes, for me black is the new black. I should probably go shopping for some brighter colors sometime or else I'll start looking like somebody's Old World grandmother.) Again, these clothes make me feel secure and calm, like I've checked all of the boxes and am simply okay. I can now start from zero.

That's all good, but although my purchases make me feel wealthy, I'm in fact decreasing my actual wealth. It would make so much more sense just to be happy with the clothes I have....but they're never enough.

And finally, the third bass-akwards thing that makes me feel wealthy is finding bargains. Never mind, as Ben Franklin said, that it's not a bargain if you don't need it. Never mind that the spending depletes my resources. Engaging in the process of getting a good deal makes me feel like I'm being proactive about increasing my wealth.

Yesterday, for example, I bought a bunch of stuff at a thrift shop sale. It was great stuff. The price was right. I felt good. But it certainly didn't make me any richer. Nonetheless, I came away with the happiness that comes from feeling wealthy. I felt as if a hole had been filled.

And maybe that's what it all comes down to. For me, feeling wealthy is about filling up what feels empty. And it's more important to me to fill whatever emotional emptiness is inside me than to fill up the empty coffers of my bank account. It's something I'm going to have to get past, because this is the real world, man. Money doesn't grow on trees, and these are hard times. As the main earner, I have kids depending on me.

I just need to get it through my head that "saving" = "wealth". Or maybe it's that "not spending" = "wealth". Or perhaps I should think more broadly. Maybe I need to find other, healthier ways to fill the emptiness that I feel. Taking a deep breath, appreciating nature, listening to and watching my kids, enjoying a good book. It won't be natural or easy, but I've got to try. Once I learn to use my inner resources to create this feeling of wealth, maybe I"ll be able to focus on creating financial wealth as well. Then one of these months I may be able to I can keep my spending down to nineteen nineteen six rather than twenty ought and six.