Just Eat It

I watch a lot of documentaries.

During the long, long nights since Gabriel was born (2,653 nights as of this post), there were quite a few where Michael and I got...considerably less than the recommended sleep requirements. Especially while I was nursing, I tried to find something to fill the quiet hours, a way to keep myself just engaged enough to stay alert.

Video games fit the bill most of the time. With Emerald, I conquered Cyrodiil in Bethesda’s “Oblivion”; for Gabriel, I wandered the wastelands of “Fallout 3”; baby Benjamin, I soared in the skies of “Skyrim”. To this day, if I play the title screen music to any of those three, the associated child gets suddenly and inexplicably drowsy.

Documentaries made for a good distraction as it got me thinking. I have learned that you have to take what is offered in these films with a pretty hefty grain of salt, as the prevalent information is presented in that particular way to lead you to their “logical” truth, of which I can’t always entirely agree.

This past winter, I got to watch “Fed Up”, the Katie Couric/Stephanie Soechtig documentary about how junk food is affecting the health of our country.

To be perfectly and absolutely fair...yes. Many of us know the dangers of processed foods, preservatives, dyes, and the demon High Fructose Corn Syrup. The film was thoughtful and important, raising attention to a very serious issue here in America.

Why am I bringing it up here though?

There is some pointed ignorance regarding the affordability of healthier alternatives. My stint on food stamps and nearly a decade of consistently having a tight grocery budget has changed my way of thinking about how I buy food.

In “Fed Up”, they pointed out how much “cheaper” it was to eat healthy foods at home. On one side of the screen, they showed a McDonald’s meal for four, hamburgers and drinks and french fries for nearly $28. On the right, a chicken, potatoes, and salad dinner for four clocking in at just under $14.

Well, yeah. It IS more cost effective to make food at home than it is to eat out.

Kinda.

Ingredients themselves cost less, because you are not paying for someone to prepare them. Preparing your own food is costly in other ways though, which they do not factor into their calculations.

First, the expense of time.

McDonald’s, even with a line, will take no longer than 20 minutes before you all have your food.

With home-cooked goodness, you start by going to the grocery store. Discounting driving time (you will have to drive to fast food as well), the average grocery store visit takes 41 minutes (http://timeuseinstitute.org/Grocery%20White%20Paper%202008.pdf).  

That’s finding what you need and getting through checkout, if you go in already knowing what you want; it will be more if you are hoping to figure something out once you get there.

Once you get home, you still have to prepare the meal.

With the “Fed Up” example of chicken, you budget thirty minutes for prep. Assuming the bird is average size, it will take around two hours to roast fully. You gotta eat tonight, so the brine is out; you wash it, dress it, season it, and it is ready to go in the oven. An hour before the chicken is done, you come in, wash the potatoes, wrap them in foil, stab them a few times with a fork, and toss them in to bake as well. Thirty minutes out, you wash and cut the greens, whip up your own quick vinaigrette, dress your salad; pull the chicken out, carve it up, and everything goes on the table.

A cool three hours after you have started, you and your family can sit down to a meal.

Parents that are working full time won’t get home until 5 or 6 at night; they wouldn’t be able to get that dinner on the table until nearly 8, if they got straight to cooking right as they walk in the door and already had the food on hand. As indefatigable as a person might be, there is only so much they can do in a day.

Oh, just throw it in the crockpot and let it cook all day!

Which brings me my second point: the assumption that every family has access to the basic tools required to prepare a homecooked meal.

You don’t think about it unless it is not there. If you can barely afford food, it is not a far leap to think utilities might also pose a problem. You have to have running water and electricity to cook at home. You have to have a stovetop and oven to cook, and a refrigerator to store the food. Pots, pans, can openers, meat thermometers, appliances, plates, bowls, utensils. There is a bare minimum required to have the capability of cooking.

Again, with the chicken example: You have to have a dish to cook the chicken in, knife to carve it, foil to bake the potatoes, cutting board to chop the vegetables, colander to rinse the potatoes and veggies, plates and utensils to serve the food, as well as the big expensive appliances.

McDonald’s, you have a wrapper to eat your food on, and a napkin to get ketchup off your chin. That’s all you need.

But say these parents have all the prerequisites and have an abundance of time. Let’s go further and say they even have the knowledge of how to cook and the ability to do so (not all of us are so fortunate).

There is no guarantee your kid is going to eat it.

Food waste is such a huge deal. At current rate of production, we are producing enough food to feed every person in the world--it is not a production problem, but a waste one. Every year, a THIRD of food produced, 1.3 billion tonnes, gets lost or wasted (http://www.fao.org/save-food/resources/keyfindings/en/).

When you have precisely budgeted so you have exactly enough to get through the month based on how many people are in your family, you can’t afford for food to go uneaten. You can force feed the kids, put it back in the fridge and bring it out at the next meal until they eat it, but I am a physical living testament to “You can lead a horse to water”. Ask my father just how long I will go without food before I will eat something I don’t want to.

As the adult, you know what your child requires to grow, to thrive, to even get through the day. You also know what battles you can and cannot handle fighting; getting your kids to eat when they do not wish to do so usually falls outside the realm of what you can handle.

In my case, if Gabriel was eating actual people food and not paper towels and sidewalk chalk, it was a win. I couldn’t worry about sweet talking him into taking just a little bitty nibble of kale please please please. It was more “peanut butter crackers have protein AND carbs, score!” (dutifully ignoring the sodium and fat content).

Then for fun, let’s toss in FOOD TRENDS.

We all get how the economy works--people start buying a lot of it, the price goes up, supply and demand, charge what someone is willing to pay. Yeah yeah yeah.

Health food trends are all the rage nowadays, which cause the crappiest result: healthy foods become more expensive!! (https://bitchmedia.org/post/the-cost-of-kale-how-foodie-trends-can-hurt-low-income-families)

Kale is a good example of this. The leafy green was listed as a superfood, and the price of it shot up by 25%. The same phenomenon can be seen with pomegranates, blueberries, collard greens, and--my personal favorite--quinoa. Quinoa, this grain that is gluten-free AND a complete protein, was once a staple of low-income families, but due to its rise in popularity has risen to a price range that even growers of the crop can no longer afford (http://www.alternet.org/food/quinoa-hot-new-superfood-it-moral-eat-it).

When the trend passes and people stop buying the food, fields of the food spoil and are tossed because no one wants it anymore.

The average payout for family of five on food stamps was $540 in 2015 (http://www.cbpp.org/research/a-quick-guide-to-snap-eligibility-and-benefits). Which sounds like a lot. It really isn’t.

Broken down, that is $18 a day, or $6 a meal. That $14 chicken dinner up there, completely outside the realm of feasibility--it would eat up nearly a day’s worth of your budget.

A savvy shopper, I can now usually tell you exactly what you can buy with a limited amount of money. Push comes to shove, I now know I can take $3 in loose change to the store and make a meal out of it ($0.50 for a pound of white rice, $1.20 for a pound of dried black beans, $0.30 bunch of fresh cilantro, $0.15 fresh jalapeno,  $0.30 for a quarter of a pound of roma tomatoes, $0.50 for a clove of garlic, and I get to walk home with a shiny nickel in change.)

Banking on buying the cheapest option available--prices reflecting that of where I live in Texas and not nationally; Colorado for example being considerably more expensive--let’s talk breakfast.

Large eggs are $1.40 a dozen; chorizo (an inexpensive meat I like), $1.50 a chub; russet potatoes $2 for five pounds; shredded cheese, $2 for two cups; salsa, $2 a jar. Total is $8.90. I have to buy all of it at once, but I will only use partial amounts--half the eggs, five potatoes, half the cheese, cup of salsa. $3.95 for breakfast.

Or a six-pack of off-brand poptarts are $1. And require exactly nothing to open and eat.

“Why We Get Fat” by Gary Taubes is a great read regarding the issue; there are also the links I attached above.

My point is that it is not so cut and dry as “eat healthier”, especially when the food options presented are usually of the “pick your poison” variety. Once we moved to Abilene and Michael started working for the university, our diets took a drastic change. Michael's parents provide a significant amount of meat to supplement our groceries, and our budget restraints have been lighted considerably.

With some of the burden of grocery cost eased off of me, I was able to buy better quality foods, adhering to my standard of “less than five ingredients on the label” for the majority of my purchase.

Sorta off topic, sorta on; it was what I was thinking about this week. We'll wander a bit closer to Michael's departure from AT&T next time :)

--Andie

Intermission

As much fun as this trip down memory lane has been, I have decided to hold off on the next post for this week. Writing it all down has been cathartic, but it has also got me pretty twisted. I needed a bit of a break.

So if you're here for that, you'll have to give me another week--next up is the birth of my sweet Gabriel; tune in for that on the 24th.

Even knowing how the story turns out, or more accurately how it has turned out thus far, I have anxiety about the whole deal. Remembered stress maybe.

A couple of years ago in our Bible class at Monterey, one of my favorite teachers of all time (Eric Robinson) asked for us to think about and share our salvation story. How we personally came into our faith, what led us there and kept us there, what doubts or struggles we had along the way. What did we believe and how did we arrive at that place.

I can be a bit of a know-it-all in classes, perpetually the one raising my hand because I know the answers. Or think I do. The trick is that I only respond to factual memorization questions; when it comes to personal reflection or interpretation, I am much more reserved. Subjective answers reveal too much about you as a person, I think. Maybe I am just afraid of being wrong. I certainly hate people looking at me, so drawing attention to myself is something I rarely seek out. Either way, over the years I have sunk further and further into my own quiet observations during biblical discussion, absorbing what everyone else is saying and mentally adding my own ideas.

Besides, writing has come far easier to me than speaking, and I am much more comfortable expressing myself here.

The story that I have been telling about the life and times of the Wearden family partially informs the particular brand of faith that I have. It is the origin of my hope, the birthplace of my unwavering confidence. Today, it is my refuge when I need a break from the darker chapters of our tale, and I figure a fine conversational buffer post.

My first church service (if my baby book is to be believed) was when I was ten days old.

I was born on a Friday, Mom had a tubal ligation that kept her in the hospital for three days. We got out Monday; the following Sunday, likely wearing the frilliest of ruffly dresses, I was at worship service.

Growing up, it was my favorite place in the world. My grandparents and uncle and aunt went there; there was an elderly lady that gave me spearmint gum. The singing was beautiful, the classes were fun, sometimes there was food; it was just a happy building for me. I remember lying to my mother once about being sick: I told her I was feeling fine so that I wouldn't miss Wednesday night service. If the doors were open, I wanted to be there.

One of my favorite songs growing up was "What a Friend We Have in Jesus" because I had trouble making friends, and the idea that Jesus and God were always there, wanting to play with me, was very comforting.

My relationship with God at that point was an ongoing conversation. All day long, I told Him everything--what I saw, did, ate, thought, felt. I was known as an exceedingly quiet child; I did not talk much for a long time. Nearly all of my thoughts were directed in a never-ending prayer. At the end of the day, I would end with Amen, sort of "hanging up" on a very long distance call, but that was really the only real similarity to prayer.

I attributed everything good to Him--cool breezes right when I needed them, the sun peeking out of the clouds, extra tater tots at lunch and reading a good book and a friend being nice to me. Everything was interpreted as God's little signs of love.

With the bad things, He was a place to hide, someone to hold me until I didn't hurt any more.

It feels silly now, but when big tragedies occurred like the Columbine shooting or 9-11, I hurt FOR God; I felt like His heart broke to see those things, and I talked to Him about how sorry I was that it had happened.

God I never had any hesitation believing in. I felt all of creation and all of me, everything that ever is or was, spoke out to God's existence. In all things, I sensed Him. Probably because I was looking for it; a lot of people will argue that it is an inherited belief, passed down from my parents before me. That's okay, really. I don't feel the particular need to defend why I believe as I do. It is just something that is and always has been a part of me.

Jesus was another story though.

Wasn't so sure how to read on that whole story. I felt that required a bit more faith than God, honestly. More prayer, more study. I don't know why I approached the Father instinctively and the Son logically, but that is how I needed to process it.

Controversially, I didn't get baptized until I was older, though I was raised in the church. There was a lot of confusion and distress at my choice; many tried to persuade me, bribe me, reason it out with me. When I dig in my heels, they have since learned, there is nothing that is going to sway me--I remained undunked until the ripe old age of 18. I don't really want to touch on my reasons for my hesitation here. It wasn't a lack of conviction though.

When I was young--11 or 12--Danny, my dad, got sick. He spent the next couple of years in and out of hospitals, far more often in than out. We were told to prepare ourselves, and several nights we went up there to say goodbye because the doctors were sure he would not last the night.

It would have made sense for me to be mad at God then, I suppose. Not to say I have never been angry with God. More frustrated than really furious, I think. There have been times when I stomp my feet and grouch and argue and sulk, but He has always been more of a venting place for frustration that is not really directed at Him than an actual source of my ire. Sort of like my husband. Michael is usually not the reason that I am angry, but that doesn't exempt him from having to watch my temper tantrum.

I wasn't mad at God for Dad being sick, though. Just a crappy situation, and I needed my Friend to help me get through it.

One night, later in the progression of the sickness, I remember we had been called up there. It was a Wednesday night; we stopped to get dinner on the way after worship, my grandparents buying us something from a sandwich shop. Several of my friends were up there, all from the church. Dad was in ICU, as he had been for months at this point. I think only family was getting to go back and see him, and even then only two at a time. The toxins had built up in his body from his defunct liver so he couldn't even see me, but he stroked my hair and told me he loved me.

Sitting on the cold linoleum of the hospital floor, waiting to hear that he had passed on, I loved God more. Because He had performed a miracle...,just not the one I had been asking for.

He made it okay.

I had been praying nonstop for years at this point--so many people had been all over the country, praying that God lay His healing hands on Danny and, if it was His will that He make Danny whole again. Of course, we didn't mean that, not really. We weren't really interested in His will; we wanted it to go our way, the way we thought it would. Faith of a mustard seed, no room for doubt that God not only could but WOULD heal my father.

Miracles come in all shapes and sizes. The good ones--like Dad getting a transplant just a couple months later, him still being alive to this day, medicine advancements even progressing to the point that they have since cured him of the disease they knew would kill him in 1999--are the ones we are always hoping and praying for. They're also the ones that can be explained away by science and medicine and very logical justifications that have little or nothing to do with the one I believe made them happen. And I am still so glad to see them, still know from where they came, and praise God for them.

The little ones, though....the peace that came to tell me that it would be okay if my earthly father passed away...those are the ones that are where He shines for me.

I don't expect bad things to stop happening. I do not believe in karma, just that we notice what we are looking for. Good and bad and life and death and sickness and disease and heartache are going to happen to all of us in turn. Not everything happens for a reason; I wish it did. God can work any situation for the better though.

One of my other favorite teachers (Wes Crawford) said that when Adam and Eve sinned, they brought sin into the world, it broke the original perfect bonds between God, man, and creation, and maybe the tragedies we experience are the pains of us crying out to for the return to how it was supposed to be. The whole Bible, a perfect story told through imperfect people, show glimpses of the constant progression God is coaxing us through back to that relationship, the original plan.

With all my heart, I believe that God loves us all equally. Humans are so caught up in right and wrong, and I think we should be at least on a personal level supposed to struggle with morality. We categorize everyone though into good or bad, subconsciously dividing who is and is not worthy of God's gifts and love. In my own personal theology, it is my job to love every person alive with the same love He has shown me, unhesitating, uninhibited, and unceasingly. I think He wants me to be happy when good things happen to anyone, and to mourn when bad things happen, not stopping to consider first of whether or not they "deserved" it.

God works through people. Not exclusively, but I have to leave myself open--generosity of spirit. I tell Emerald that our family works so well because Mommy worries about Daddy and Daddy worries about Mommy, so everybody's needs are met; if we all worry about one another, we are all getting what we need. If we all worry about ourselves, everyone leaves this place a little poorer. When I feel moved to help someone, I know that I can give whatever I have because God is looking out for me. My needs are going to be met because He loves me and He is watching over me.

My whole life's story has been a testament to that. Not that "one door closes" bull, but the calm assurance that if I keep holding on, God will lead me out, on to greener pastures, better things.

Pere Callahan of the universe of Stephen King said that hearing God's voice is like concentrating on a whisper in the middle of a hurricane. Something to that extent at any rate. Whether is the echoes of the stories and lessons that have been so firmly instilled in me since that first Sunday, or actually the Holy Spirit whispering comfort to my heart, the messages I have received through the years have not changed:

Trust. 

I have never asked you to walk alone. 

--Andie

God Is My Strength

*Continued from "Sometimes You're the Windshield"

I was still part-time at the pet shop, my condition hardly limiting my work as my bump was small and my energy reasonable. There wasn’t anywhere to sit during my shifts, but at around six hours, it was manageable. One night, while I was walking around the store, I tripped over a box that was left on the floor and landed hard on my stomach.

At first, I was a little shaken up but fine. A short while later, cramping and bleeding, I asked Michael to come pick me up and take me to the emergency room.

Pregnant patients are given priority in ERs, so we were taken back very quickly and left to sit for quite a while. Medicaid luckily paid for the visit. A sonographer had to be called in, as they did not appear to have one on staff that late at night. My abdomen hurt a lot and I was worried.

The naming process with Emerald had been so discouraging to me that I didn’t want to have anything to do with it the second time around. I told Michael that he alone would know the gender of the baby, and he alone would choose a name. I didn’t care what he named it; it could come out Gurpgork and I would have been fine with it, as long as I didn’t have to choose the name.

That night, convinced as surely that this was a boy as I was that Emerald was a girl, I was scared my baby was going to die nameless. I called my still, quiet little one Gabriel. Angel baby, “God is my strength”.

Obviously the baby was fine. I was suffering from a combination of upper urinary tract infection and a bad case of malnutrition. They gave me multiple shots and injected things into my IV, and we went back home with a small stack of prescriptions to be filled.

The semester rolled over and I arrogantly decided to try online classes for the semester I had the baby. I had gotten cocky with how much better it was this time, and I didn’t want to fall too far behind. With the experience of Emerald under my belt, I felt I would bounce back much quicker.

February finally arrived, and I was ready for that baby to be OUT. 

I didn’t really have a firm idea of what I wanted in the future, if we were going to have more kids or if we were done. Heck, I was 21 years old--I was supposed to be drinking too much or traveling the world and making (minor) bad decisions, generally having fun, not trying to plot out what I was going to do for the rest of my life.

Medicaid would pay for a tubal ligation, but with current policy, women must wait 30 days after signing the written consent form to obtain a tubal. Honestly, I did not want to make permanent sterility decisions when I was barely old enough to legally buy alcohol. I felt I could always have that choice, but once it was made, there was no going back. I didn’t know how I was going to feel in ten, fifteen years.

The projected Elective Repeat Cesarean Section (ERCS) was tentatively scheduled for February 10th, 37 weeks gestation. With the gestational complications I had, I am at increased risk for stillbirth the longer I gestate, so their general practice is to pop it as soon as the little fetus showed signs of readiness.

The amniocentesis revealed severely underdeveloped infant lungs.

One of the (many, I have come to learn) side effects of gestational diabetes is delayed lung maturation. My file had been mistakenly filed as “passed” instead of failed for one of the later GTT’s; I didn’t know to be watching my diet, so his little lungs were assaulted by an excess of glucose. I was given a couple of shots of steroids in my hip to promote accelerated lung development and sent back home to let the baby bake another ten days.

Because of the delivery confusion, my parents were unable to be at the birth. For all that I was now a married woman about to give birth to my second child, I was still so young, and I needed my mom. I didn’t want to be in the hospital having surgery with her eight hours away.

Emerald fell ill that week, getting the flu, RSV, a double ear infection, and a yeast infection. We were told to keep the newborn in isolation away from his disease-carrying sister for eight weeks after he was born.

The stress was starting to wear on me. I was pretty much dutifully ignoring my online classes; I am not sure what I thought would come of it, but it was more than I could handle so I just wasn’t thinking about it. My hands were full with trying to keep up with sweet baby Emerald and the housework and the twice-weekly Nonstress Tests and everything else.

My first c-section, I was confident and calm. Ignorance is bliss, in that regard. 

This time, however, I knew exactly how sore I would be afterwards, how the staples would itch and pull on my skin. The surgery wasn’t bad, not for me at least. It was actually the preferable of the two options presented to me--c-section was relatively quick and effortless, the pain completely manageable, and hardly anyone was looking where I didn’t want them to. Not a bad alternative, in my book.  

What I was dreading was being immobilized.

Generally, this is how it goes:

After paperwork and signing in, you are checked into a room where they snap a bunch of identifying bracelets on your wrist that say your name and your doctor and that you cannot have penicillin (if you are me). You wait around for a little while for an operating room to open up.

The nurse wheels you down the hall, you kiss your spouse goodbye. 

You’re taken into the OR where you sit on the table. You arch your back like a cat, the anesthesiologist scrubs near your spine with iodine. Injects you with a local. Sort of stings, kind of like being stung by a bee. Then you feel pressure as a hollow tube is inserted for the spinal block.

You’re laid back as your legs get warm and heavy. The nurses strap your arms down and bring a sheet up between your breasts and your bump, stick an oxygen tube in your nostrils. Then your spouse gets to come back and stroke your hair and hold your hand while they rip you open and wrench your infant free.

Still a bit barbaric, what can I say.

It was that interim time that bothered me--the time between Michael kissing me goodbye in the hallway and the time he would be standing beside my head, whispering quiet encouragement during the surgery. I was absolutely petrified of being unable to move from the ribs down, alone in that cold metal room.

In the hallway, sitting in the wheelchair, my teeth chattering and my whole body shaking, I told Michael “I don’t want to do this. I want to go home.” His heart was broken, listening to his terrified wife beg him to save her.

They took me away, everything proceeding as planned...until it came time to put the curtain up.

My legs already completely useless, I sat up with surprising abdominal control and attempted to use my arms to drag myself to “safety”, insisting to the nurses that I wanted to stand up. I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t want to be there, I wanted to go home. Another day, I’d come back and we could have the baby.

The doctor came in, my trusted friend, and tried to soothe me. I just kept shaking my head no and telling him that I wasn’t doing this, not today. Bad day to have a baby. I wanted to go home. 

He nodded sympathetically and patted my shoulder, harshly whispering behind my head to the anesthesiologist, “Why haven’t you sedated her?!”

“I already did! Twice!” was the reply. Three nurses were attempting to hold me down, lest I wrench my IV out.

It was quickly discovered there was a kink in the line, a problem that once corrected sent a flood of sedatives into me. 

Michael, who had been in the hall growing increasingly concerned as time ticked by with no updates, was brought in for just the few minutes as the popped the baby out, got his APGAR score, and sent them both on their way.

I was so drugged that I couldn’t even open my eyes to see my son being born. I just remembered Michael holding him next to my face and saying, “Meet your son, Gabriel Lynn.” My eyelids struggled to open, but before they even left the room, I was out cold and didn’t wake up until well into recovery.

Gabriel was 6 pounds, 9 ounces, the exact same weight his sister had been, but 19 inches long, a full inch longer. Emerald had slight hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) when she was born, as well as some slight jaundice.

My Gabriel was perfect though. 

He didn’t cry, didn’t fuss, such a contented, darling little baby. The pediatrician even commented that Gabe slept through his circumcision, which relieved me as I was apprehensive about the procedure.

One notable difference between the births was that when I was covered by Medicaid and in the hospital, any time I was given pain medication, the nurse had to thoroughly check my mouth after to ensure I had swallowed the pill. They assured me that it was common practice and they did it to everyone, but I had a baby at the same hospital two years before and two years after. Neither of those times did I experience that particular policy.

There wasn’t a baby shower the second time, but Rhonda’s work delivered meals for the first couple of weeks, as well as dropping off a lot of diapers. I may prefer that; we had so much left from Emerald’s birth like the pack-n-play, the swing. Food and diapers we really needed though.

Emerald was curious about what was going on; we didn’t know enough to even explain to her what was happening. One night she went to sleep in Mama’s arms, the next mom was gone and didn’t come back for three days. My grandparents came up for the birth, able to take Emerald for part of the time. The rest, she stayed with Michael’s parents.

The recovery was much easier the second time around, even with my stubborn refusal to stop picking up Emerald and incessant picking at my surgical tape. It may have been the day of or day after I had gotten home from the hospital, making it 4-5 days after having major abdominal surgery, that my bottle of painkillers was lost. Insurance refused to refill it, so I just went without for the rest of the recovery.

Without the medicinal haze that had accompanied Emerald’s first few weeks at home, I had a significant amount of clarity in which I got to know my newest. Were boys always this different? 

He was so...quiet. Almost unnervingly so. He didn’t cry if he was wet, dirty, hungry. Emerald was hardly a fussy one, but she had this high pitched squeak she would make when she needed something. Gabriel never made a peep.

And why didn’t he sleep?!

I swear that kid was always watching me. Well...sort of. His eyes would be fixed on you until the moment you tried to make eye contact, and then they’d slide off to look at the fan or the cat or really anywhere else. Unnervingly alert.

Nursing Emerald had come so readily and naturally, and I still hated it. With Gabriel, the only one that seemed to dislike it more than me was him. He spent the entire time trying to use his ineffectual arms and legs to propel himself as far from my radiating body heat as humanly possible. Expressed milk was a reasonable substitute, but he still didn’t want you cradling him in your arms. Laying on your legs with his feet against your belly was doable; bouncer or swing was better.

It wasn’t a fight I was willing to have. If he didn’t want to nurse and I didn’t to nurse, I wasn’t going to force the issue. After seven weeks, six being the least I was willing to try, we approached WIC again about formula.

This time I was much more confident, firmly and politely insisted that formula was the route I was choosing to go, refusing to give reasons. I had discovered it was much harder to argue with a person that refused to engage. They relented, and we got that expense covered.

I had tried to potty train Emerald to no avail before the new baby arrived, so we now had two children in diapers. The average child will use 2,700 diapers in the first year alone which can add up to more than $550 annually ($46 a month), plus $240 for wipes. For two children, it is just under $1400 for the year. (http://www.investopedia.com/articles/pf/08/budgeting-for-baby.asp)

There is no program to help with diapers, not at that age at any rate. We discovered that the community health center where I got my prenatal care would give you a Walmart sack full of diapers if you needed it, but it was more of an emergency, once-in-awhile situation, not intended to be used consistently.

Emerald’s daycare cost us $50 a month, on the scholarship. Gabriel would not start going until the fall, when he was a bit older and less vulnerable to sickness. With baby clothes and diapers and all the things we were going to need, we were looking at spending significantly more on household expenses.

Michael was making decent money at AT&T; nothing extravagant, but we were making it. During our stint in The Dank, it was so tempting to get credit cards to help make it through, but we agreed that it would just start a dangerous precedent. With Michael working again, the food stamps we were receiving were scaled down to a little over $200 a month.

At the call center, they have a points system. Every time you call into work or miss a day, you receive a point against you. When you have reached a certain number of points, you lose your job.

We apparently filed the wrong paperwork or filled it out in the wrong way regarding the time off for Gabriel’s birth, which we did not know until three months later when Michael takes a sick day.

The next morning, he was unceremoniously fired.

--Andie

Sometimes You're the Windshield...

September of 2008, we celebrated Emerald’s first birthday.

It flooded in Lubbock that day, so it was a small event attended by in-town family and friends. We didn’t have any money to throw a “proper” party. I made a funfetti cake that I decorated; of my many skills, cake decorating is not one of them, and it looked truly awful.

Rhonda hosted it at her place and bought a smash cake, a concept I had never even heard of. The birthday girl delicately scraped icing off using one finger, daintily licking it off. She wasn’t much of a messy girl. I was painfully self-conscious of the fact that we couldn’t afford balloons or decorations or even a gift.

I was enrolled in school again as a full-time student that semester, having a relatively smooth pregnancy comparatively. Emerald was going to a Mother’s Day Out on a scholarship at the same church whose benevolence center we had visited months before. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, she and I went to school.

At the end of the school year, Michael had not renewed his contract with the school; he simply was not making enough to support a family of four on. Through the summer, he worked with a temp agency trying to find permanent placement somewhere. They got him a job working at an AT&T call center, but the position did not open up until December.

In the meantime, he managed to land a job installing hardware in classrooms all over the state. They paid well, but he was gone for days at a time, leaving me in our little apartment all alone with Emerald. I couldn’t drive--I had never gotten my license--so I was pretty much confined to wherever I could comfortably walk with Emerald in the stroller.

October was a stressful month.

The thirty-six hours surrounding the eviction were...pretty crappy. Michael had been gone for four days on a job; I had a doctor’s appointment just before he came back into town, so Michael’s grandmother (who worked on campus) watched Emerald for me in her office.

Michael came in looking devastated--while he was gone, the company had hired a full-time employee to fill his temp position; he was no longer employed.

Distraught, disheartened, and thoroughly depressed, we loaded up in the jeep to go home...and the damn thing broke down. Right there on the side of Slide Road.

His mother came and picked us up; we just had to park it and hope it would be a really cheap (preferably free!) fix. Rhonda drove us home, where we found a bright pink eviction notice taped to our door.

I mean, it is almost laughable, how comically tragic our lives had become. Maybe God wanted to completely rip the bandaid off all at once--propel us into big change, but give all the awful stuff all at once so we could get it over with. Maybe He was tempering us for the trials we were to continue to face in our lives.

Whatever it was, those two days completely and totally SUCKED.

Michael was absolutely crushed. He was the provider, a job he took so seriously; every time we struggled financially, he took as a personal failure on his part. Now he had this young pregnant wife and infant daughter whose futures were uncertain and to him, it was all his fault.

He still had the job at the temp agency, who he called several times a week, but they had no positions open until the call center in December. We dropped applications off absolutely everywhere, but this was right in the heart of an economic recession--nobody was hiring. Michael was beating himself up for not returning to the school; it wasn’t great pay, but it was at least something.

For almost three months, the only money that was being brought into the house was by my part time position at the pet store, making minimum wage.

I applied for food stamps again; Michael trying to find work with the temp agency helped a great deal; they approved us for $600 a month. It saved us--the property manager did not charge us for rent in the last month that we were there in an attempt to relieve the financial burden, so as long as we could keep the lights on, we would be golden. We had to work out a payment arrangement to get those remaining bills handled, but for once, food was not an issue.  

Those three months Michael was not working would accrue a debt that would take us years to recover from.

Nearly every quad was occupied when we got the eviction notice taped to our doors. November 1st, all utilities to the building were to be cut off. Michael, my ever-persuasive and charming new husband, was able to work out a deal with the electric company and property manager that would allow us an extra week of lights so that we could move our belongings out. Now we just needed to find somewhere to live.

It wasn’t that we wanted to stay. Our time at the dark and dank little apartment was laced with disquieting moments of strangers looking in through our windows in the middle of the night, neighbors knocking on the door at midnight to see if we had any weed, news that the taco restaurant down the alley was being robbed at gunpoint. While pregnant, I had waddled across the street to get avocados (they were sold four for a dollar, and I had such a craving for them), and was backed into a corner by a strange man; I knocked over a display of cans and scootled away as fast as my cankles would allow while he was distracted. After that, I waited for Michael to escort me to where I needed to go. We never felt fully safe and relaxed there.

It was also very small--two bedrooms, one bath. I had just learned that for such little people, babies came with a lot of stuff. There were flies in the summer, the air conditioner went out at least once a month and stayed off for nearly a week every time, which was scarcely pleasant in the triple-digit days. Our “backyard” was a shared dog-run, a grassless stretch of maybe twenty feet.

We weren’t jumping up and down to stay there, but we didn’t know where to go.

The university I attended owned some houses in the area; my mother-in-law, who worked in the education department of the college, got information about a house for rent for us. It was a beautiful buttercream yellow, three-bedroom, one-and-a-half bath house with a big backyard. It was on a quiet street and boasted a giant tree that shaded the front lawn. It would cost us $600 a month, plus utilities. Barely more than we had been paying at The Dank, the name we affectionately assigned our first apartment, and it was much, much bigger and nicer, in a reputable neighborhood patrolled by the university police.

With the eviction date looming ever nearer, it was an answered prayer.

I have no idea how we were able to convince the school to let us move in there--we had no money down, no deposits, and no income, but Halloween 2008, five months pregnant with our second child, we moved into our new home.

Michael was primarily in charge of the move--I helped where I could, specifically with packing, but it fell to Michael to get everything transferred one truckload at a time to the new house.

December, Michael started at the AT&T call center. He went to training weekdays for the first six weeks, steady 8 to 5 gig. Once his schedule kicked in, it was four days on and three days off. He left at 9.30am to get to the call center across town for his 10am shift, then worked until 10pm. Work was exhausting for him, and most days we saw him only for breakfast.

They did pay him better there, and he would be able to put us on his insurance after he was finished with training, for a reasonable $50 a month; we seemed to be on an upward trend. We would be able to afford our pretty little house, our pretty little life.

One blessing that Michael and I had: we rarely, if ever, fought. Never about money. Hard to fight about something you don’t have, and our resources always went to required areas--bills and food.

Our biggest fights always stemmed from feeling unappreciated. I felt like I was home all the time, alone, trapped in the house with the baby. I was expected to go to school and take care of Emerald while he was at work, plus being responsible for all the cooking and the cleaning and the laundry and all things relating to house and child, on top of being pregnant.

There are preconceived notions, I think, about what our roles in marriage are supposed to look like.

To Michael, whose mother was in charge of all household things and whose father was responsible for the outdoor things like yard work and handyman duties, it must have seemed natural to him that I slip into that role of homemaker. After all, he was the breadwinner, and I was physically IN the house more often than he was.

I am sure that was not his actual train of thought; it was more of an unconscious expectation that I was consistently failing to meet.

My family on the other hand was more of a commune--if you didn’t work, you didn’t eat. With my father in the hospital so consistently during my formative years and my mother working long hours to cover his medical expenses and provide for the family, the household responsibilities were divided between the four children.

In the end, Michael ended up resentful and frustrated that the house was not as spotless as his mother’s had always been, and nothing was getting done because I was flailing under the insurmountable work I had laid on me.

He and I were both feeling taken for granted, him working at a job where customers are unspeakably rude and spiteful, me with how much I felt he was unjustly putting on me. It wasn’t a spoken thing; we didn’t really have a name for this discontentment that was brewing just beneath the surface of our marriage. There was so much stress in our lives living paycheck to paycheck, that we assumed it was circumstantial and not actually a fault in our relationship.

At this point, I was 21 years old, and he was 23. Emotionally, we were barely ready for a commitment of this magnitude, and we had already been married for a year. When you’re growing up, you fantasize about the wedding, but everything after is a mystery peppered with vaguely concerning Bible verses about submitting and obeying your spouse. Going into it, we didn’t know what to expect, what to do, how to make it work. It was almost like playing house, our understanding of marriage was so infantile and incomplete.  

November 24th, we celebrated our first anniversary. Dinner at IHOP and eating the top layer of our wedding cake that his grandmother had so thoughtfully saved for us, we retired early so the preggo could rest.

Around that time, I had an accident at work.

--Andie