If I could have a brand new sofa some time in my adult life, I’d be thrilled. I love good food and wish I could buy fresh bread and French cheese on a regular basis and not go straight to the bargain wine section. I don’t want to spoil my kids, but I don’t relish the cloud that passes over my mood when they preface a request for a toy with, “I know we don’t have much money, but …” Mainly, I long for security.
Visiting Beth and her family in suburbia fills me with repulsion and jealousy. And something else, too. It’s an itchy, unpleasant feeling, and I think it’s anger. It’s not anger at Beth, because I don’t think she really notices how much she has—it’s so a part of the milieu in which she lives. Of course one has a matching shower curtain, toilet cover, towels, and rug. I also imagine that she feels sorry for and a tad disdainful of her brother and me, wondering why we don’t do more to lift ourselves out of our bohemian mire. No, the anger isn’t with her; it’s with a system that highlights financial inequities with such clarity—a system that makes it uncomfortable to visit your own relative’s home because the comparison to your own home is, well, uncomfortable. How can two American families live so differently and still both consider themselves middle class?
My kids are still young, but eventually they’ll visit their cousins and take note of the big screen plasma TV and the labels on their clothes. I want to find ways to help them understand the differences between our lifestyles, like the fact that when their father and I had a tiny bit of extra money, we chose to go to France rather than do something sensible like put a new roof on the house. We do invest in our futures, putting money toward instrument lessons and insurance, but we also have a desire for a kind of living that goes beyond material goods. The memories of that trip—sitting in the Square du Vert-Galant, a tiny park on the very western tip of the Île de la Cité, watching the boats float down the Seine—buoy me as much as money in the bank. I fretted about that trip at the time. How irresponsible of us to spend money we hardly had. But I’d spend it again. Just as I imagine my sister-in-law would tear down her house and build a new one again.
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