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Cheeries for my grandmother
I grew up poor in the Bronx. My mother raised my three brothers and me by herself. When she couldn't find work, we went on welfare. When she could find work, it was in jobs that paid women so little money that we couldn't tell the difference between welfare and work except that our mother wasn't home when she was working. People talk about poverty and the poor like it's so easy to not be poor. But I know a different story. It takes great sacrifice and talent to work your way out of poverty.
My mother used to make all of her own clothes. You couldn't raise four boys on her salary and afford to buy dresses to wear to work. When we were young, she used to make our clothes, cut our hair and make toys for us out of cereal boxes. All her life she sacrificed for us. She put off getting her college degree and her master's degree until we were grown and on our own.
And you know what? We hated being poor. We loved our mother but we ruined her Christmas every year with our tears of disappointment at not getting exactly what we wanted. I couldn't help but be angry when my shoes had holes in them and there was no money to buy new ones. And I couldn't help but stare angrily when I needed money to go on a school trip and there wasn't any money to be had.
And while there was much love in our family, being poor strained our loving bonds. We had to blame someone, and my mother was the only target. And here she was giving up all she had for us, going without lunch, without movies and nights out, walking 10 blocks to the train because we wanted something, needed something she could not give.
There are some Americans who think poverty stem from a lack of values and determination. But you can work hard all your life, have impeccable values and still be poor. My grandfather was the pastor of Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Harlem. My grandmother was a Christian woman. They were hard-working, moral people. They were poor.
I lived with my grandparents during my high school years. My grandmother worked all her life: caring for other people's children, selling baked goods or beauty products, doing whatever she could do to help bring money into the house. She was a beautiful woman, kind and intelligent. She was determined to save my soul.
I was a wild and reckless adolescent whose soul was indeed in danger. And I fell in love with my grandmother. A deep love that any of us would develop if an angel came into our lives. The more time I spent with her, the more I loved her. She cooled my hot temper and anger over being poor, and she showed me there was dignity even in poverty.
In all the years I knew her, she was never able to afford material things that others took for granted. She worked very hard but never could afford anything of luxury. She taught me how one could enjoy a deep spiritual love of life that was not lied to material things. This is a tough lesson to teach in a country that places so much value on materialism.
But each summer my grandmother and I would secretly plan to indulge her one vice: cherries. She loved cherries. Two or three times a week when my grandfather was at work, I would walk the mile to the supermarket and buy half a pound of cherries. My grandmother and I would eat them secretly because my grandfather would have had a fit if he'd know we spent an extra dollar a week on them.
My summers with my grandmother were measured by how good the cherries were that year. It was our little secret. And I was amazed at how much she loved cherries, and how expensive cherries were. Later when I went off to Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, I would sit in my room and think about how much my mother and grandmother had sacrificed for me to be in college.
I would fantasize about how when I graduated and got a good job, the first thing I would buy with my first check in August would be a whole crate of cherries. It would have to be August because our cherry summers taught us that August cherries were the sweetest. I would dream of wrapping the crate up in gift paper, putting a bow on it and presenting it to Grandma. And many a night I would go to sleep in the cold winter Maine nights warmed by the vision of my grandmother's excitement when I brought her this small treasure.
Grandma died during my sophomore year. I never got to give her all the cherries she could eat. And if you want my opinion, the summer of 1971, the last summer she was alive, was really the last great summer for cherries.
Poverty is tough on families in many ways. It's not quite as simple to get out of as people make out. We must be careful to make sure we build ladders so children and their families can climb out of poverty. It's not an easy climb. You can climb all your life and never make it out.
Grandma, who sacrificed so much for all of us, I just want to say I know that in all I've been acknowledged for, I still haven't reached the level of love and compassion that you tried to teach me. I think you accomplished your goal: you saved my soul. And I hope they let me bring gifts to Heaven. You'll know what's in the box.
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