Home Economics (WC)

(Wendy Cabell, March 28, 2025, Our Lady of Castelbruedo, Virgin of Panecillo/Quinto, Our Lady of Mercy (Burgundy), Saint Gundelindis/Gwendolyn of Niedermünster (Niece of Saint Odilia of Alsace). Image from here.)

Home Economics

How do you feel poor, when cornbread wafts from the kitchen, or baked apples appear on your plate, or Grandma sews up matching red riding hood capes for you and your doll come Halloween eve. And mornings, they’d usually start with Mom’s Rise and shine, her kissed I love you.

Why are your friends always the wealthy ones in your class? It was Mom’s grade school lament. I didn't know what to say. Just friended those who liked what I did — book bingeing, slipping notes during math class, silly skipping down the sidewalk on the way to school. I didn’t feel the divide.

Till the day we studied the Great Depression. 

Best friend Grace’s light laugh, Well, my family wasn't suffering. She’d casually listed all the companies they owned. 

I’d remembered then, the stories told round our supper table. Great Grandma Otten forced to sell her restaurant, the one she’d pinched and prayed for, the one Great Grandpa Herman slaved in the ice mines for — led to his double pneumonia, her young widowhood. Mere manager now, she’d quietly tuck away customers’ leftovers, to give her six kids their one meal a day.

Grace, she’d go on to be a pediatrician. Me, I’d teach preschool, get hit by a truck as I crossed the street one Fall, early disabled. 

And life now, it’s midst medicines, treatments and assistance can’t afford, it’s living in this 60’s travel trailer. Though these walls of hers have made it, through hurricane winds, tree limbs through the roof, near misses with wildfire and flood. Spirit Bear Abbey, we call our home. She’s made it this far, thanks be to God. 

And so have I. 

eve’s candle, stars, we sip

sage tea, Joseph’s benediction —

I love you too

*From combined prompts: freewrite as inspired by excerpts from “I Am Never Not Thinking About Money” by Kasim Ali, “Economics at Gemco” by John Olivares Espinoza, and “Money” by Philip Larkin. From Lisa Freedman’s BreatheReadWrite, March 28, 2025.