Being Poor

Gigi wrote in her comment yesterday:

"It puzzles me when you say your parents were poor when you were a child. Yet, your mom lives in a nice house in a good neighborhood, now. How did that happen?"

Thank you, Gigi for giving me my post idea for today.

It really is because of my mother. Although she grew up in a very comfortable home, the war years, full of death, starvation and worry shaped the rest of her life.


I spent the first five years of my life in an isolated rented plantation home in the middle of a sugar cane field in Kunia (deep country). I have no idea where our closest neighbors were. I have some nice memories of that time chasing geckos, grabbing fresh water eels in the ditch, playing in a lot of dirt.


However, that home was too far from school so we moved to another rented plantation home (Camp 57) where I could catch a school bus. (This is me in front of that house.)

All the while, my mother saved every penny she could get and lived as frugally as was possible. She learned to sew and made all our clothes (including my underwear). Then she began sewing for others. It was not easy for her since she came from a rather privileged background so she reinvented herself.

She had someone read the English words in picture books to her and she transcribed it into Japanese phonetic letters so she could read some books in English to us.


Eventually she felt that house was still too far in the country so when another house closer to school opened up, my mother grabbed the opportunity. This photo is of my mother and brother in front of that third house. Once Dennis and I were old enough, she found a job at a newspaper company. She can still find mistakes that other editors miss in Japanese language papers.

We never ate out at restaurants. She still sewed all our clothes and even my father's work shirts. Every car was driven to the ground. We never traveled anywhere. As I said, there were few toys. She knew where all the sales were. She still does. I recall my homework desk, chair, globe and a lot of other things came from Gold Bond stamps that she saved. We didn't have a lot of books, but my mother bought us a set of Encyclopedias which my brother and I read every night under our bed covers.

My mother put their money into Money Markets and conservative bank CDs where it grew.


(This is my brother with his wife holding Tiffany at the back of that house.)

Then the opportunity arrived to buy a home. The plantation was planning to burn down all their rental housing so they built homes elsewhere and gave the workers a chance to buy the new homes for a very reasonable price.

My mother finally withdrew their money and bought their first home.

Then the neighborhood began to change. The neighbors had about a dozen cars some how squeezed into their small yard and street front. Art and I actually stood there once and counted. Their other neighbor conducted loud church service and were constantly trying to convert my parents.

Therefore, about 10 years ago, she took the equity from that home, added to it with even more of her savings and bought this present home.

And now, after building a second floor on it, Art and I will be buying it from her this coming week. She has loved passing on all the utility bills to us each month and just enjoying her house without worrying about maintaining it.

After all those years of scrimping and saving, she has a granddaughter who keeps sending her presents, grandsons that come to see her, family all around, food on the table, her own TV, tons of books, Art and I taking her traveling every year, her son always watching out for her. She says she can hardly believe how happy she is, how lucky she is.

I think she's made her own luck.