After a back and forth with Stephanie Land in a private FB group for memoirists, I read her book MAID which was adapted into Netflix series. The book got me to thinking back to when the boys and I were on WIC (the government-subsidized food program for pregnant Women, Infants & Children.)
None of the food was organic, and I was nursing, and the babies were babies so my husband ate all the cheese and cheerios and drank all the milk.
Boy did we get a lot of milk and cheese!
We were new to VT so Casey had to learn to eat cheddar on everything–from pizza to sandwiches to macaroni. The large blocks of white state-issued cheddar were what we contributed to every potluck and to every stay when we visited relatives.
Casey and I both had college degrees (I’d graduated Magna Cum Laude at the top of my education class) which begs the question: WHY were we on WIC? And why did we need heating assistance and clothing assistance and Dr. Dynasaur (health care) and later food stamps when Casey was in between jobs?
We thought it was because we sucked.
Because we hadn’t figured out how to make it like our other friends with kids.
Because we’d chosen the wrong careers.
Looking back I know now that we needed support because this country and its priorities are seriously fucked up.
For starters, like so many Americans, Casey was paid poverty wages. His medical insurance didn’t include his family in our first year in VT. We bought costly catastrophic coverage out of pocket for me. This meant there was no money left over for anything, beyond the bare necessities, and even there we often fell short.
Just after the baby was born, my aunt and uncle came to town for a visit and before they left, they dropped off a roasted chicken and a baguette from the VT Country Store in Brattleboro. I’ve never forgotten that meal. I devoured the meat. I’d dropped 18 lbs in the week since the baby was born. There just wasn’t enough food.
Beyond my husband’s poverty wages as a high school teacher, we needed assistance because there was no real child care in the area, and even if there had been how could we afford it?
In the month after my son was born, I took over a non-profit and while I could do much of the work from home while he napped, I had to hire a babysitter for meetings and in-session work, and that ate up most of my own poverty-level earnings.
Before our second son was born, I was filing charts with my college degree in my midwife’s office to barter for his birth. I was cleaning the kitchen at my older son’s preschool to pay to help cover his tuition. I was babysitting at the mountain on weekends to afford diapers. During those years, I also worked in a video store, a pizza parlor, and in various other A to Z part-time roles. At night, I took a weekly shift at our Co-op which helped offset our grocery bill and provided welcome freebies. I wrote articles for local publications and sometimes got a check for doing so, sometimes $25, sometimes $75, a few times, $200.
Through those early years as a young family, my son and I never went to a cafe or ate out together. We never went on a field trip that wasn’t provided for by community services. I never bought him any toys except for what we found at the second-hand store. Every few months, we’d splurge at half-price night at the Italian restaurant in town, a huge piece of lasagna for $5 that came with bread, with water on the side, but that was it. We never even ordered a pizza.
Though it all, I became a pro at finding anything to do that was free or funded, especially if there was food involved. I applied for every level of support available. It was sometimes humiliating, always humbling, but I was tenacious in support of my family. It was all I had to offer. Every librarian in a fifteen-mile radius knew us by name. For Christmas one year, I splurged on the biggest canvass library bag you’ve ever seen.
Despite my protest, about the cost and the time away from home and especially the unfairness, my husband enrolled in graduate school. I had always planned on getting my masters, but I had a new baby and Casey’s earning potential was already outstripping mine. What was also true was that my license had lapsed and re-licensure was costly and time-consuming. On the heels of a second baby and my mother’s death, two full-time careers began to seem unmanageable. Instead, we invested in Casey’s future and in our kids, while I remained on the margins.
WE BEGAB taking baby steps toward buying our first home. It too was a humiliating experience at first and then a humbling one and finally when the boys were 4 and 9, a successful one. Casey taught school and then worked on the house on the nights and weekend while I was with the kids around the clock. By then, we were no longer eligible for any government support so every dollar he earned and I earned on the side went to pay the mortgage and bills. We couldn’t even afford to give the kids allowance anymore.
“He has such a good work ethic,” relatives noted about my son on a visit back home, after my sister offered the kids 25 cents for each piece of trash they found around her pond. The other kids lost interest, but my son worked until dark, until my sister had to cut him off because her out-of-pocket cost was absurdly higher than she’d imagined possible. I shook my head. It wasn’t work ethic. It was our reality.
Eventually, the gap between my husband’s earning capacity and my earning capacity became Grand Canyon-like. Occasionally, I took on a more professional role outside the home, but we all suffered for it, and the pay wasn’t commensurate, so I’d come slinking back after a year or two to simpler work, putting our family first again.
And so it was that I continued in one part-time role after another, discovering that there was never a full week of school given all the holidays, professional days and sick days. I ran the after school program in town which meant my sons could participate for free. During the summer, I babysat other children and applied for scholarships so that my boys could go to camps.
I always had my pick of all the part-time roles in the county, but as I aged into my forties, with both boys in school, I grew weary of the kind of work available to me, most of it without any future. I thought about school again but the cost was daunting. I thought about heading in new directions, but my energy for re-invention was dwindling. Meanwhile, my husband’s opportunities exponentially expanded as he reached the peak of his career.
By the time I entered my fifties and my nest began to empty, I stopped getting interviews, let alone job offers. I worked as a field researcher for a few months, a waitress, an Elf, and most recently a census taker. During COVID, I collected unemployment for the first time in my life.
And so, here I am, at 57, the age my mother was when she died, with few if any career prospects and very little mojo to remake myself.
There are millions of versions of my story in America among women. The hardships are magnified in every direction. Stephanie Land’s story is by far more brutal than mine, and she and I are both white, CIS, hetero women with college degrees.
BUT MUCH LIKE the author of MAID, I was once upon a time filled with so much promise and possibility. I never dreamed of being a stay at home mom of being second class to my husband.
At 19, I was running a restaurant with 50+ employees. Customers offered to fund me in any business I wanted.
By my mid-twenties, I was nominated as teacher of the year in the school where I taught sixth-grade. At the same time, I supported my husband through school, financially and as a tutor and life coach, until he too had a teaching degree.
When Casey and I relocated to Vermont after our first miscarriage, I was hired out of state from a pool of 200 candidates.
By my thirties, as a new mother, I was applying for food stamps.
Yesterday, we took our grown kids out to eat before they returned home to their own lives elsewhere. I’d pressed my husband about it, thinking the expense worthy so that we could all relax together without anyone needing to plan, shop, cook and clean up or press others to pitch in.
After brunch, each of our sons thanked their father.
The Empty Nest Diary 