my parents had 10 kids and i suppose it’s pretty needless to say that we were poor. and not just American poor, where you have to buy your shoes from Payless instead of Nordstrom.  i don’t know where the next meal is coming from, poor. still, as my mom would say, “God provided.” people from our church would anonymously drop groceries, new shoes, coats and towels at our door. my mom would be overwhelmed with anxiety about how we were going to pay the mortgage and a check would come in the mail from our aunt and uncle. this happened over and over again, for years. still, there was no air condition, which due to the dark wooded area we lived in, lent itself to mold growing all over the baseboards. we washed it off every day with bleach. and it grew back over night. there were ear infections that lead to ear drum explosions. stitches my parents would remove themselves and abscessed teeth that they would preform home-spun surgeries on. but we never really minded.
one of the ways that we got by was by going to a food drop, on an urban street, in the projects of a near by city. Megan and i would do the pick up. the locals would call us by name, welcoming us into their “hood.” unshaven, toothless black men would insist on taking the boxes of organic, day old food out of our hands and carrying them to our car, which by the end would be packed full. i don’t know that i’ve ever felt so much a part of something. i wanted to move there.