The Little Things

It's the little things people forget about when dealing with the poor single mother. And it's the little things that leave me with that big feeling, the one of not knowing how to address the little things or taste the words coming out of my mouth.

I'm dating a man who drives a Hummer, lives in a 3 bedroom house all alone, and buys $50 ties without so much as looking at the price tag. And I've been a trooper, I have. I'm gracious when he picks up the bill, I don't fret about how utterly unthinkable most aspects of my life would be to him if he were to live them. But, he is a Packers fan and I wanted to wear his team shirt (more for our own amusement given my clueless nature regarding athletics than to be of some real Green Bay support mind you). And it seemed like a good idea-- at the time.

Did you know packers shirts, or at least any moderately attractive ones, are almost $30 plus shipping? And that in order for them to get here in time to wear for more than 2 days previous to the game, it's going to be about $40?

Well I do. That is to say, I do now.

And it's sad, remarkably so. I was online looking them up kind of halfheartedly (as in not yet looking at the list prices) when I got an email from him this morning, links to three separate shirts. He was happy that his new girlfriend wants to play (and I do, I really do). I could completely see the bearded little smile playing around the corners of his mouth. And then a little smile started playing around the corners of my (un-bearded) mouth . And then I started really looking, and the smile melted away as though Amazon.com were a sudden spring heatwave in early march and said smile was one of those tiny little dirty mountains of compacted snow and ice which used to be a giant mound of plowed white that remain after most of the snow has started to puddle away.

And it's not that I don't have $40 to spare here and there. It's not even as though I didn't spend more than that on my last Sephora bender. It's just that try as I might to think of it as a gesture in the way of love, I don't have $40 to spend on a sports teamed t-shirt I'm going to wear for 3 days, and I can't find a place in my mind where I have as little as I do and that's going to be one of the luxuries I choose and I can be OK with that.

Which is fine, and not a big deal, but it's one of those glaring obvious things I keep thinking about-- me and this man, we're different. And I offered to make a nice, oh fuck-- let's be frank: an absolutely adorable gesture, and then had to say "Oh, you know, it's going to take a while to get here" and know what neither of us are really talking about (and I honestly believe that in his good albeit naive nature he really doesn't think it matters at all): His girlfriend is literally poor, and sometimes limited by that.

And it's gross to blog, even knowing that he doesn't read my blog. And it's gross to know all on my own-- and some day I'm going to have to say outright "Yeah... I can't afford (some thing that isn't a big deal to him but is to me)". And it's going to feel gross to both of us. And that's when things are going to start to change.

I understand that I elected to live the life I did, that it wasn't even that I had to make a hard choice but that "I would rather not have very much money, and I would rather raise my child without too much money". It was always not only my choosing, but my very deliberate and sometimes even enthusiastic choosing. But, other people don't understand it-- not always. Men and the date night suggestions forgetting that this requires money per hour for a sitter. Friend plan evenings out that they know I'll just love, but I have strict rules about what I won't spend money on so I can spend money without concern in other areas. And ultimately, this isn't fair to them-- I've made a lot of decisions for these people and their relationships to me in deciding I was going to be poor. Sometimes too poor for the little things, which is what interpersonal relationships are made up of in general.

And I don't like Green Bay, I don't care. But I do like my boyfriend, and I would have cared to see that look on his face when I as promised showed up on game night in an adorable little green tshirt with those yellow letters across my adorable breasts, saying adorable little things and making such an adorable little gesture.

And when I think about the adorable lost in this little matter, it doesn't feel like such a little thing at all. Which is why in the time it has taken me to type this, I've decided to put one of my little splurges on hold and get this instead, because all too soon we're both going to have to look at the truth of his poor girlfriend-- and as long as that's already coming, I want to be sure there's a lot of delightful going on before the ugliness and discomfort comes along. I had someone in my life once who said that he always liked leaving my home and feeling the weight of poverty lift off of him... and he wasn't a great person to have in my life-- but he was an honest one. And since then, I've never been OK again with letting anyone else see that weight over my head or letting it seep into the fibers of their own lives, arranged entirely different for I'm sure exactly the reasons they should have been to them.

And as long as it's inevitable, I'm going to go ahead and not crush this wonderful man under that weight any sooner than need be, or even leave any clues that it is there if he's not feeling it yet.