Independent Living

When I went to Princeton for grad school, I thought of myself as financially independent. I was extremely proud of myself for not needing help from anyone. I was nineteen when I first started (soon turned twenty) and I had the stupid confidence of youth combined with the arrogance of Mormonism and also had been raised in the kind of poverty that doesn’t know that it’s poor. I admit, I’m aware now that the level of poverty my mom grew up in (and probably my dad, too, though he never spoke about it) was extreme. She tells me that the war years were great because she had ration cards for sugar, something she never had before. But still . . .

My mother reused bread bags and cut underwear up into washrags and never once bought cleaning supplies other than Ajax. She kept a ball of rubber bands and a ball of aluminum foil to be reused. My father had her on an incredibly tight budget (for eleven children) and he didn’t account for such things as new clothes or going out to the movies with friends. I remember frequently eating a can of pork and beans on “away” swim meets in high school because he wouldn’t give me money to go out to McDonald’s on the way back (this was a treat reserved for special occasions at most once a year).

In the dorms in college, I had a roommate that I split groceries with and we made dinner together a lot. We ate well, mostly because of her. In grad school, I didn’t have a kitchen, just a single room with a bed and a desk. And a dresser, which was where I kept my food. I didn’t have a car (didn’t need a car, of course) so I had to shop at the expensive grocery store just down the street from the university.

I went once or twice a week and bought apples and oranges because they kept well without refrigeration. Bananas would have kept well, too, but I hated bananas. Still do, but I eat them anyway now while exercising. I also had a loaf of bread and peanut butter, which I made sandwiches of for lunches when I had to be on campus. And for DINNER—I had a little can of spreadable cheese and a box of wheat thins.

This was what I ate most of the time, unless someone invited me to a free meal of some kind. I always made sure I went to the free meals, just so that I could have something different. That had been, you know, refrigerated and then cooked in an oven. The department had nice kaffee klatsches on Wednesday afternoons and I was lucky enough to be allowed to go shopping at the nice grocery store on occasion for food for everyone. They had way more money for one meal on Wednesday afternoon than I had for a month.

Also, I was assigned to make coffee. Twice. Until people realized that I had no idea how to make coffee and had no idea what good or bad coffee was because I didn’t drink it. I listened to the instructions of Esther, the department secretary, who also didn’t drink any of the coffee and whose only interest was in making sure that the coffee grounds lasted as long as possible. When I was pushed aside so another grad student could make the coffee, I was unoffended. What Mormon woman wants to be known as someone who can make good coffee? Not me.

I look back on those days rather fondly, strangely enough. If I tell my kids about this, they stare at me in horror and say—Mom, those foods aren’t really good without refrigeration. I remind them I didn’t die and then they remind ME that I still eat expired food all the time and don’t I know something is wrong with me? Well, I’m sure I was never as poor as my parents were when my father was in graduate school. He had six children by the time he graduated and my older siblings like to remind me that we younger kids had it easy. Not only did we get beaten a lot less but we got a lot more and better food. (My dad’s idea of a treat for the older kids was one Ding Dong cut eight ways.)

I eventually moved into an apartment at Princeton with a kitchen. But sadly, I lost the wood pieces of the waterbed my brother gave me on the drive from his house in North Carolina to school in New Jersey. I had a folding table and chairs. And that was it for furniture. And there’s the story of the day after we arrives when I went to the grocery store to load up on staples for a week. Only to find out they wouldn’t accept the starter checks from the bank and I didn’t have a credit card (good Mormons don’t use credit, see? Or didn’t back then.) Anyway, I had to put all the food back but a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk, then drove home crying in the rain.

But I wasn’t poor. No way. I was just fine and didn’t need help and certainly didn’t ask for it. Which is why when I flew out to Newark and arrived after the last shuttle bus, I just slept on one of the benches in the airport so I could wait until the first shuttle of the morning arrives. I had other choices, you must understand. Not only  were there multiple Mormon church members who would have come to pick me up at the airport and drive me back to my dorm, but my older brother lived in New Jersey and would gladly have come rescue me from sleeping at the airport among the other homeless. He was appalled when he learned what I’d done, but to me, it seemed like a perfectly normal response to the situation.

And this is why I now understand why “normal” depends entirely on the situation you grow up in. You see other people’s families only from a distance and they seem strange to you, certainly not normal. My family was normal in my head, and everyone else who was not so independent was truly to be pitied.