mainsqueeze's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- gifts My Mother, sister, and I met with my aunt for dinner last night. She's in town for this huge convention at the Paris, some sort of movie industry awards thing. She's a wonderful person, one of the few members of my ex step-father's family that I still feel a bond with. We brought her a tiny gift bag, with a candle and a little beaded bracelet, small gifts. My Mom is like that-- she buys a thousand tiny gifts for everyone for even the most minor occasion. So we arrived at the restaurant, and it turned out that my aunt had gifts for us, too-- a Christian Dior silver and diamond locket, and a bottle of expensive perfume for Mom. Woah. My Mother and I were both a little taken aback-- our gift, in comparison, was cheap and ugly. An awful feeling. We knew that she hadn't meant to make us feel that way, of course-- she's just got money, and we don't. Later on, in the car, I asked my Mother how much she thought my aunt and uncle brought in anually between the both of them, and she said that they had to make at least 700,000 per year. Woah, again. I don't understand how people find jobs like that-- I make less in an entire year than they make in two weeks. How does that happen? It's a very dangerous topic for me, money. We have never had any. None. Never enough. I remember looking at an income diagram in my US Government book in highschool and realizing that my family was below the poverty line. I went home that day and sat on my bed and listened to my stereo and thought, "This is poverty? But I have a bed, and curtains, and a television. This is poverty?" I still don't like talking about money with my friends and co-workers-- Much as I try not to, I have to make it so personal, like, I'm well below the lowest income bracket on most financial aid forms. What does that make me? How am I worth so little? My Mother has worked two jobs for most of her life, back-breaking, frustrating work, and she makes less than I do. What is she worth? She sat in the car and inhaled the aroma of her new perfume, mixed with the dusty, smoky smell of our old, perpetually broken car. I knew she was thinking of the dollar store candle and the cheap plastic beads she had brought for my aunt, and I knew she felt like I did at that moment: little, and worthless, and hopeless. How are we worth so little? 12:33 p.m. - 2004-03-24 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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