Night fall comes earlier outside of city limits. The cityscape that battles the darkness each night has no troops on this front and the emptiness of the night time doesn't hesitate here. It's cold and lonely. Sometimes you go outside just to watch your breath catch meet the chill of the night to make sure you're still alive.
To say I'm alone with my thoughts at night is an understatement. My wife turns in just after what most people call an early dinner so she can be at work by 3am, on a good night the kids follow an hour or so after. On a bad night, they scream and yell and wake her up which makes her scream and yell and the whole process becomes painful and tedious.
In the begining of this whole mess, I called it a silver lining to spend more time with the kids. But trying to put to bed two overtired children, with out anyone raising a voice above the whisper, is painful. I love the kids and I love spending time with them, but throw one little wrench into the nightly routine, and all enjoyment is sucked out of it. Something as small as my wife staying up fifteen minutes late and it's and hour of temper tantrums by the daughter and another hour after that of my son being almost asleep. Asleep enough I can't move, not asleep enough to put him down without waking him and starting the ritual over again.
I call those the bad nights, but the good nights I'm left alone, walking through a shell of a house, surveying all I have to loose. I try to lose myself in chores or the like, but all the mindless chores just let my mind wonder back to the helplessness of it all. Sometimes I can't help thinking to myself what's the point of cleaning a house that's more valuable to be up in flames than keeping me warm at night. I'd never do it of course, but the stark cold reality of that fact adds to the dispair.
Thanksgiving was tough. We went to my parents, and while the family used the time to plan the Christmas holidays, I couldn't muster up the nerve to ask them to count us out. Maybe it's misplaced hope that something will come through between now and then, maybe it's the last bit of pride I'm holding onto, maybe it's just complete desperation in needing something, anything new in the house to provide the tiniest bit of hope that keeps me from calling it off competely. Thankfully, and I hate to use that word in this context, but thankfully my grandmother decided to reschedule the extended family Christmas and my wife will most likely have to work then, so two wrongs make a right, or at least a not as sucky there. It's one thing to admit to my parents and sisters we're flat broke, thrown in the cousins and aunts and uncles ... shit. I don't think I'd call my self happy to skip Christmas, but if there was going to be a year to miss it, this is it.
As for the immediate family, I'm working on gifts. I mean my wife and I have always embraced that a heartfelt gift is much better than a expensive gift, and we've given cook books with family recipies and hand knitted scarfs, and calenders with pictures of my daughter. But even crafts take craft supplies and we don't have money even for the supplies. The only thing we seem to have in surplus is empty baby food jars, and we wouldn't even have that if it weren't for WIC. If we did have money for the supplies, why would we spend it on gifts when we have house and heating payments to make? I managed to get one sister a gift off of the free area of Craigslist. My other sister, I think I'm going to check out a CD from the library and copying it for her. I know it's the thought that counts, but I'm not putting thought into it. I'm looking at their wish list and going "What can I give them that doesn't cost anything?" I'm not sure which is worse coming off as that fucking cheap, or coming off as that fucking broke. Neither sounds appealing.
My computer died just before Thanksgiving. If you must buy a computer, being in the market for one on Black Friday is the best time to do that. Still we're broke. Taking the $200 my grandparents previously gave me, added to what we could afford to spend we had a total of $200 to spend on the computer. The lowest priced one I could find was $229. I can't believe that it's come to the point where $29 plus tax seems like a lot of money, but given the dire straights we're in it still felt like a necessary purchase. Without it, there's no way to hunt for jobs, or sell things on eBay or Graigslist, or freelance work or anything else that might keep us a float. My sister will want her lap top back eventually. If things are bad now, they'll only get that much worse with the lifeline cut off. Out here, in the middle of no where, calling it a line line isn't a metaphor it's a fact.
The down side of this cheap computer is it's brand. While beggars can't be choosers, my last two computers have been the same brand, and both have suddenly and without warning died on me mere minutes after the one year warranty expired. So I don't want this computer, but I don't feel there's an option. What if it dies in a year and we still can't afford a computer? Then what? I'm browsing the circulars while the Macy's parade is on TV trying to find something else in the next to nothing price range and my father's doing the whole you get what you pay for bit. He's found a $500 computer in a circular that fits our actual needs. "Spend more now and you'll pay less later," he says and he really doesn't need to convince me, but he obviously doesn't get how poor we really are. My wife, on the other hand, has unexpectedly taken the position that we won't be getting any computer.
Have you ever tried to have a fight with you wife, while your parents are in the room, and not let them know you're fighting? It's awkward and embarassing. It sucks even worse when you know she's 100% right. I knew we couldn't afford it, but at the same time could we afford not to have a computer? I eventually relent. We'll go without and hope for the best before we need to return the laptop.
We head to my Grandmother's for Thanksgiving and it's a subdues affair. My immediate family and my grandparents, no extended family. After dinner my wife excuses herself to the other room to call her parents and wish them happy Thanksgiving. After the call she leans over to me and whispers "Get the more expensive one." Instead of gifts, they're giving us cash for Christmas, enough to cover the remainder of that $500 computer.
The challenge now, is the black Friday crowd. We got back to my parents around 8pm. By the time I mapped out a battle plan it was nine o'clock. My father said he'd been to this store on Black Friday and being there an hour before the 6am opening time should be more than enough time to get whatever I wanted. I seem to recall that being the case as well from several years before. I left the house at 1am anyway. Couldn't take the chance. I pulled into the parking lot and there were three cars in the lot. We entered into an uneasy and unspoken truce, none of us would leave our cars until the someone else did. None of us wanted to brave the snow flurries. At 3am the truce was broken by a new arrival and with blankets in hand we all waited, sleep deprived, in the cold until 6am. Third in line, I had no problem getting what I wanted. I was out of the store and back in bed before the rest of the family awoke.
Hope is a funny thing, especially in dire straights like this. Having this new computer, although it offers nothing tangible that the old computer didn't as far as offer assistance in finding a job, has been a morale boost. On the other hand my wife bit into a sandwich the other day only to find the bread crust was hard and stale and you would have though we'd just been foreclosed on. Many people find the strength they need in their religion, by going to church. I was raised in a mixed religion family so we celebrated both Christmas and Hanukkah. I call myself Jewish, but it's more of an ideological similarity than belief in the mythos. So finding that spiritual support in a church isn't really an option. Even if I considered my Jewish faith strong enough to find support there, it's an hour drive, one way, to the nearest temple. I feel guilty going to food banks because they're all at churches and in some strange way I feel like they "payment" that's expected for the free food is to believe in the same God they do. I know they wouldn't turn me down, but still it's one more that makes the process of begging for food more painful.
With that said I prayed for the first time in what must have been years the other night. I wondered onto my back deck, a place I find myself often late at night, and just looked up at the cold dark starry sky. I know there's a God. I see that every time I look up into the sky at night. There's zero light pollution out here. It's easy to forget how small we all are in the grand scheme of things when you live in the city. But out here, on my back deck I feel like I can see the whole of the universe and I feel so small and so enlightened at the same time. Like I'm one of the few people who remembers that all of that is still up there. There is a God. I see that every time my kids smile at me. That twinkle in their eyes shows me something that can't be explained any other way.
What I can't see now is how this all ends. That's what I prayed. I stood on my back deck, looking up at the vast expanse of the cosmos and asked God, "How am I supposed to take of my kids? How am I supposed to take care of my wife? How am I even supposed to take care of this stupid dog my wife hates? Whatever lesson you're trying to teach me, teach it to me! Whatever I'm supposed to learn, I want to learn it. I'm tired and I'm scared. And don't know what else to do. Please ...."
This is my life now.
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