Cartoon – pen & watercolour
Copyright 2008 Jean Burman
POVERTY – from the Latin pauper - 1. The state of being poor; want of the necessities of life; 2. scarcity or lack 3. inferiority
The difficulty for writers wishing to write with any degree of credibility on the topic of POVERTY… is that so few of us have truly experienced it. Not in the accepted sense of the word anyway. Sure we might have known what it was like to “do without” from time to time… but we have no real concept of true deprivation. So if a writer must “write what they know”… how then do we even begin to write about POVERTY?
I gave this quite a bit of thought before it occurred to me that… clearly… there are many ways to be impoverished.
POVERTY in the third world is a starving child… without a mother… clinging for life to an older sister who is almost too weak from hunger exhaustion and sickness to stand.
POVERTY in the first world is a privileged over indulged child with every possible material thing… who lacks the love and attention she needs to grow into a well adjusted adult and thrive emotionally.
Which is sadder I cannot say. But one thing is for certain.. both require our urgent loving attention and perhaps even… our intervention.
Iny (Irene) was a tall girl for her age. And skinny too. Early each morning she would bound out of bed… wash her face… and dress for school. Her dress was simple and home made… and she never ever wore shoes! She had eight brothers and sisters of whom she was the youngest but one. They lived in a simple house her father, a carpenter, had built… and there Ivy and George reared their brood with not much money… but love and attention in abundance.
Before school it was Iny’s job to run down to the local butcher’s shop to buy a pound of rump steak for breakfast. The butcher was a cheery old gentleman who affectionately nicknamed her “brolga” for her long legs and bounding energy.
“What will it be today Miss Rodger?” he would cheerfully ask, knowing the answer already. Iny would recite the order by heart before receiving the tightly wrapped parcel along with the one penny change. Then off she skipped to the grocery store to buy a lolly with the penny.
A pound of rump steak would be breakfast for the whole family. Sometimes her mother would miss out… especially if a friend or neighbour dropped by unexpectedly as she was serving it up.
The children all had chores. Some more than one. But a fair and equitable distribution of household duties was “divvied” up between the lot of them so that her Mother could sew for the family. Trousers for the boys… pretty dresses for the girls… even stiff starched broderie anglais hats for church. Washing day was Monday when all the clothing and bedsheets were boiled in the copper and hung out to dry… and the mattresses were aired on the fence. Tuesday was ironing day.
There was a household chore for every day of the week… and in this… Iny was not spared. Hers was the onerous task of scrubbing the bare wooden floor of the dunny which stood sentinel out in middle of the back yard. Of all the detestable jobs… this was the one most loathed of all… no doubt with good reason! (grin) However… Iny knew that if she wanted to eat, sleep and wear pretty home-made dresses… it was her lot in life to get on with the job… with a good stiff brush and a bucket of piping hot water with phenol!
Evenings were spent around the piano as friends and family gathered to sing and talk and laugh. It was a happy childhood filled with the blessings of a simple life within the loving embrace of family.
My mother often spoke of it… regaling us with stories of her enchanted childhood. She would often say… “We were poor… but I always felt rich… because I had my eight brothers and sisters!”
Blessings of the heart are so much more than money in the bank. The best that money can hope to buy is a degree of comfort. Beyond that… you can’t eat it, drink it, hug it, or take it with you in memories when you go.
In these times of financial uncertainty when all about us are wringing their hands with dire predictions of “the end of the world as we know it”… with promises of impending financial doom, starvation and ruination… it sometimes pays to look back on the lives of those who came before us to see how little they really needed… to live the life they loved.
It’s the times we think may break us… that so very often make us – JeanBurman 2008
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