Monday Memories

I'll never forget the winter I realized that maybe we had less money than some other people. I know that through most of my life until that winter, I never noticed that all my "new" clothes were some cousin's hand-me-downs, that we never took vacations, that maybe we had less than others.

But this winter was different. My dad had been trying to get work for quite some time. But living in an area where seasonal work is the norm, if you don't get work in the summer, you are in trouble for the winter.

This winter on thing we did have was caplin. Caplin is are fish that when they are spawning, roll up onto the beaches in massive quantities. We had gone out when they rolled and gathered them up in big buckets and then dried them, froze them, and bottled them.

Over the course of the winter, money and consequently food was getting scarcer and scarcer until finally all we had left was caplin. My poor mom invented recipes to try to make it different, being very creative and trying to make us forget that for Breakfast, Lunch, and Supper we were eating caplin. By the time things turned around for us, I would have rathered eat a cardboard box than touch another caplin.

That winter affected me in more ways than is obvious. from that moment on, I knew we were broke. I knew that if they were selling anything at school, asking mom and dad to come up with the money for it was mean because they only felt bad. I knew that if I wanted anything new, I had to come up with the money for it myself, by babysitting or whatever other means I could. That was the winter I felt like we were poor.


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