this woman’s work

You are browsing the archives from 2005 May.

“Am I the only one who finds it really sad to think of someone not reciprocating an invitation because they were too ashamed of their house? Personally, if I was one of the mothers who’d invited Noah over for a playdate, I can see myself feeling pretty insulted by that.”

It was pretty sad but there you go.

This was the part of town where Brett grew up, too, and I used to roll my eyes when his mom would talk about what a difficult place it was to raise her kids. It’s a lovely neighborhood — those high taxes make for nice parks, safe streets and well-kept roads. But you go to the grocery store and stand behind women with Louis Vitton bags (not knock-offs) talking about their annual vacation to France. It gets to a person.

And, getting back to what Chris said, this was also the neighborhood I thought I might like to buy a house in back when I was a teenager. I would drive through it every day on my way to school and think — with all the hubris of youth — that maybe this is where I would settle. See, that area was a step up from the area where I grew up — our area was newer money and this was older money — and as a teen and in my early 20s, I kinda thought kids did better than the parents as a matter of course. I was very naive about this.

My point is that I was ashamed of myself and of my home because I thought it spoke ill of me. I thought I hadn’t worked hard enough (and that Brett hadn’t worked hard enough) and I felt like a failure. (It’s worth saying, too, that Noah was going to this preschool during my fertility woes — adding to my sense of failure.) I thought I would have one of those palatial homes, too. I thought I would have married someone rich and would be taking a break from a really great job to raise my kids. Oops.

I think it’s very likely that most of the nice women at the preschool would not have come to my house and then refused to let their children play with Noah. However, I have experienced a shift in friendships when one of us realized the relative differences in our incomes. Truly. And in a particularly vulnerable time in my life when I was already feeling pretty low, I just didn’t want to put myself out there.

It’s those assumptions I was talking about. I didn’t want to have to correct someone again and then wait through the awkward pause, the forced brightening of her smile, and then the sudden change in subject to something more neutral.

“Where does Noah live?”
“We’re in one of the townhouses there by Chef-o-nette.”
“Well! … Isn’t that fun! By the Chef-o-nette! How fun! So when will this rain ever stop!”

“We should carpool to the picnic. I could pick the boys up and you could take them home!”
“Unfortunately our car doesn’t have shoulder belts so it doesn’t work with traditional boosters.”
“Maybe you could use your husband’s car that day?”
“This is our only car.”
“Well! … I suppose we could meet you there then! Let’s just hope the weather holds!”

“Oh yes, my husband is lead counsel for [name of company]. What does your husband do?”
“You know when you call about your insurance claim to see why it hasn’t been paid? He’s the person on the other end of the line.”
“Well! … That must be … interesting. Can you believe this snow?”

“Oh I heard you bought a new house! How exciting! Where is it?”
“Up between [street] and [street] near [shopping center].”
“Well! … Look at the time, the kids will be out soon!”

It’s not that the women (most of them — there were notable exceptions) weren’t nice and friendly, it’s not that they weren’t welcoming. But it’s exhausting to always be the one putting a damper on the conversation, making everyone feel awkward, and being reminded again and again that you are a have-not in a sea of haves.

I have friends who are wealthy by any definition of the term and we’ve remained friends because 1) we have talked through this stuff (in fact, one of them was my sounding board while I struggled in this area of town), or 2) We have just been very careful with each other. I know that it’s hard for them, too. They don’t know whether to censor themselves (Don’t bring up the European tour! Don’t mention the expensive new slipcovers! Don’t talk about car shopping!) or bring it up and worry they’re being rude.

It’s better now that we’re financially stable (here I toss kisses to my job — smooch smooch) and more emotionally secure (here I toss kisses to Madison covered in banana in the high chair — smooch smooch). I still wouldn’t go back to that preschool though. It’s just too much, too too much. And it’s why I would never send either of my kids to a great school on scholarship. It’s just too damn hard to be the poorest person in a sea of money.

I’d like to hear from other people with friendships that cut across class. Is it hard being the have? Being the have-not? tell me about it.

I’m loving this conversation!

Chris said, “Dawn, I wonder if you are more sensitive to these types of situations having grown up with money and now not having that same lifestyle for your children?”

Yes, I think so. But also when my parents split (when I was 12) we were in this weird no-man’s land of no money but some money. Basically we still lived in the big, new-build house but we had no furniture since my dad took all the nice stuff. My mom sealed off the sunken living room with plastic so we didn’t have to heat it. We had food in the ‘fridge but if we ate it all before my mom could shop again, then we didn’t have food (making me slightly psychotic about both wanting Noah not to feel panicked about having enough food but also feeling like I need to distribute bananas on a quota system). I babysat to pay for my lunches and school clothes, etc. Everyone else in our neighborhood still had money (still had two incomes) and so we were the only ones with our air shut off and our clothes hanging out. I got very defensive about our lack of money situation and I remember feeling very, very scared about it all of the time. And guilty about ever needing money, which is the reason I babysat a lot.

This is why I’m not really clear about where I fit. I think that the middle class (and I haven’t read the NYT series so I may be talking out of my ear) is so flexible and huge and really very diverse. My mom went from dirt-floor poverty to lower middle class as a child; she went from upper middle class to lower middle class and back up again as an adult. My sister and I both have dipped down and I’ve recently come back up. My dad was second generation American whose father sold hats for a living and who now makes a tidy living doing financial planning for the truly wealthy. We’re all over the place and I think that’s pretty common.

In my own limited experience, there is definitely a mindset that comes from growing up with money and there’s definitely a mindset that comes from growing up poor and these mindsets have to do with feeling secure and how you use your sense of insecurity or security as you make your way in the world. But middle class folks, they are less predictable. Because, I think, that’s such a flexible and sometimes unpredictable class, you know? And then, too, you can grow up solidly middle class in a rich neighborhood and feel poor. Or grow up solidily middle class in a poor neighborhood and feel rich. It’s like there’s too much room in the middle to really define it very well.

But it’s almost midnight and I’m tired and I haven’t read the series and probably I don’t know what I’m talking about.

I was reading this entry at Pendagon on class and marriage, which made me think about how class differences impact my friendships.

This is tough because I’m loathe to try and shove any of my friends into class slots since I don’t know how they would label themselves. Mostly I’m going to try to talk about money and expectations and how these can play out in friendships.

As one of my friends says, “It sucks that money matters in a friendship, but it does.”

It does in obvious practical ways, like when a friend says, “Hey, you want to go grab lunch with the kids after we leave here?” And you have to say no because it’s the end of the pay period and the bills are due. This can be awkward and if too much of that happens and the asking friend remains oblivious, it can get in the way of things.

But money matters in more subtle, conversation-stopping ways. Like there are assumptions that people can make that can be divisive.

I remember one time where a group of us were talking about how to make ends meet. (Again, to set the picture, most of us are from middle to upper-middle class families and are now middle-class women who have given up an income to be home so we’re struggling but we’re struggling, I think, in part because we have expectations. Like we all own our own homes but sometimes we’re bitching because our homes aren’t in the neighborhoods like the ones we grew up in, basically.

And we were discussing who, in our marriages, handled the money and how it was divided, etc. The one friend said her husband handled the money but they discussed the big things like buying investment property and managing trusts so she had a hand in that, too.

It was very awkward.

I mean, we went from saying, “Yeah, I hate it when he eats lunch out and forgets to record it in the check book because then I can’t fill the car up at the end of the month” and even at least one “And then he never paid the phone bill so we lost service for a week while that got straightened out” and this one stand-out was talking about investment properties. Kinda stopped the conversation and I wasn’t sure whether to feel bad for her — for stepping in it, shall we say — or bad for the rest of us for not owning vacation homes on the beach.

The bigger things for me is that I feel — as many people feel — like I’m faking it sometimes. Or passing when I shouldn’t. I still don’t know where I fit in although I don’t know if it’s really that important to figure out. I certainly don’t think on it except when I come across blog posts and things. But you know that post below about sometimes not wanting to confront assumptions?

When Noah was going to preschool, we went to one in a high-priced neighborhood. The preschool was this great play-based, low-key place affiliated (loosely) with a very, very liberal church. It was, I think, about $800 a year and we got a lot of financial aid so it was about $200 and the first year, my mom paid for it. (The second year, I paid for it out of writing money.) I was driving an ‘83 Monte Carlo we got for four hundred bucks from friends and I would park in the middle of all of these shiny SUVs with leather seats.

The other moms were wonderfully nice and friendly but I could see them trying to figure us out. We were renting, hmmmm. Wrinkled-brows. And the car. Well, more than once another mom would stop and stare, surprised, as we pulled away. But the worst were playdates where I would drop Noah off at these three story, 1/2 block, stone mansions with additions because 5-bedrooms just weren’t enough for a family of four and I was always too ashamed to invite them to our run-down 2-bedroom townhouse with the broken window air conditioner.

So this led me to decide that while their assumptions were not quite ok (”Are you renting, then, while you build a house?” said with a puzzled but friendly air) and some of them were downright rude (”Why on earth would you buy a house in that school district?” asked one mom when she heard me giving the teachers our new address), that I didn’t have to internalize them. And — bigger — I didn’t have to assume the worst when someone thought I had more than I had or had experiences similar to their experiences.

I haven’t gone to Europe. I didn’t go to a good college. I am mired in student loan debt that terrifies me in the deep dark night. The kids have college funds that might buy them books for a quarter or two.

But see, we’re mostly ok and I think that money is a necessary thing and enough is a blessing and more than enough is a lot of good fun so I don’t feel bad unless I let myself feel bad.

(Yesterday a friend told me that they have enough money put aside for the kids that each will be able to get several graduate degrees from good schools should they want to and I had a blinding moment of envy and fear but then it passed.)

Sometimes I think, “Why is she telling me this? Doesn’t she have any idea what my bank account looks like?” No, of course she doesn’t besides which we all make assumptions. Like I assume everyone loves chocolate and showtunes, right? But not everybody does. (Shocking, I know, but heck more Godiva for the rest of us! And there’s no accounting for musical taste.)

I think that the money differences among us will become more divisive as the kids get bigger. As some children end up traveling and others stay home, as people jet out for better schools and hobbies get more expensive. Especially as the disparity in our college funds becomes apparent. I feel sad about that but it’s the way things go.

Five reasons to love Noah:

1. Because he says things like this, “Having a sister is really an up/down proposition.”

2. And this, “He claims to be an expert on lizards and all things considered, he is.”

3. He is effusive with hugs and proclamations of undying love when in the right mood.

4. He talks back to his audio books, which he listens to while playing downstairs. “Oh no, not that!” he yells at Fudge for eating his brother’s turtle.

5. He enjoys cleaning his room while listening to old Superman radio shows and today found himself so inspired that he made both his top and his bottom bunk!

Five reasons to love Madison:

1. Because she screeches, spins and falls onto her back in dramatic horror when inappropriate things (pens, tiny Pokemon figurines, paper clips) are removed from the fat little fist she’s bringing to her mouth.

2. She is like a pleased puppy — if she had a tail, she would wag it — if you scratch her curly head.

3. Dimples — when she smiles and when she bends her elbows.

4. She gallops (well, it’s more like a limp but the spirit behind it is galloping) when pleased with herself.

5. She glowers with her eyebrows down and her mouth very serious until you glower back and then she laughs.

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