Seriously.
I do.
Richard purchased it in 2004.
Like most everything in grown up life, it all comes back to money. Click the butterfly to flutter on over to Work It, Mom! for today’s post!
Our “Pretty But Essentially Worthless” chips from Mason Mountain Mine. I keep the “jewelry worthy” stuff in a separate bag!
Just one of the impossible to answer questions that Vivi lobs my way in an average day: “Mama? Are we rich?”
I answered, “Well, compared to most of the world, yes.”
“What does that mean?”
“A lot of people in the world struggle just to have something to eat and a safe place to sleep. Compared to them, we’re rich. But compared to other people that we know…we’re not rich, just normal.”
“But not compared to anyone, just us?” Huh. I had to think a moment.
“I guess so. Yes. We always have what we need and we usually get what we want, so I think that makes us rich. And lucky.” But if Daddy and I weren’t working, we wouldn’t stay rich for long. I didn’t tell her that part.
She got me to thinking–“rich” is ONLY a relative term. It’s always in comparison to some standard. Of course there are some pretty fair measures. If you have two commas in your bank account, you’re rich. If you have more than one house, you’re rich. If you can work when you feel like it, you’re rich. But does rich mean safe? No. Does rich mean happy? No.
I’ve already taught Vivi about fool’s gold. Iron pyrite–it looks like gold but it has no value. It’s just as pretty and pretty equally useful. On our trip to Mason Mountain Mine, she was more excited about the calcite and quartz than the rubies and emeralds. She is saving up her “Athens money” to buy a big pink “diamond” when we go back up there to pick up our jewelry that’s being made by Mr. Tom Johnson. She has no concept of market value. She calls American coins “Athens money” as opposed to the Brasilian money that Daddy gathers up to use on his next trip.
G helped her sort through all of her coins yesterday morning. They separated out the Chuck E Cheese tokens, the Brasilian reals, the Canadian dollars. He showed her how to stack them according to their percentage of a dollar–dimes, nickels, quarters. She is just beginning to understand that size isn’t the only thing that hints at value. Or “goldenness” doesn’t necessarily mean more than “silverness.”
I want Vivi to learn about money from a place of comfort and security. When I was her age, I remember understanding inflation when Super Bubble went from one penny to two. Ah. Same product, twice the price. I wasn’t much older than she when I realized that we didn’t always have enough money. I have a lot of anxiety attached to money–I remember the days when we got home from school and the electricity was cut off. I remember wondering how I was going to get back in to college from one semester to the next.
On the way to Nana and Papa’s house yesterday, I saw this at the gas station:
and I realized how long it’s been since I had to watch the pump and make it cut off at five bucks. We spent more than that on Slurpees yesterday. Yes, we’re rich.
What sign tells you that you’re rich? What keeps the money anxiety down?
tal·is·man /ˈtalismən/This is the first talisman that I can remember identifying for myself: a yellow Tupperware creamer that my family used as a sugar dispenser. My mother noticed this one sitting on my kitchen counter last weekend and asked if it was the one from her house. “No, I found that one on eBay ” I explained. I didn’t explain WHY I was on eBay looking for an old Tupperware creamer, now did I?
When I was about 7 or 8, I was already old enough to know that money wasn’t an easy thing for our family. There were times when there wasn’t enough and that was just the way it was. One night while my parents were watching the evening news, I heard the anchorman foretelling some shock to the global economy that would send sugar prices sky-rocketing. SUGAR? I was old enough to understand that and know its value! I sidled into the kitchen and opened up the cabinet above the coffee maker. I took down the sugar dish and checked to make sure that it was full. It was. And that meant that we were OK. To this day, I can remember the weight of that full sugar dish in my small hand and the feeling of safety that crept through me. If sugar was expensive and we had plenty, we were OK.
I can’t remember what knocked that memory of the comforting sugar dish back into place. When eBay first took off, I took advantage of the opportunity to reclaim lost things from my childhood. I found an old aluminum cookie cutter shaped like a horse and another shaped like a bunny. I found a yellow sugar dish all my own. One Christmas, Fartbuster won me a 1946 edition of The Littlest Angel exactly like the version our Grandmother Eunice read to us when we spent the night with her. I bought a blue glass slipper like the one she used to hold her bobby pins.
I surrounded myself with things that made me feel safe and loved. That’s all a talisman is. There’s not magic inherent in it, only the magic you entrust to it.
What makes you feel safe? Shake the memory loose then go and find it again.
* A phylactery is the small leather box containing Hebrew texts on vellum, worn by Jewish men at morning prayer as a reminder to keep the law. I learned a new word today, how about you?