Life is But a Dream....

  I know that sometimes life can seem more like a nightmare than a dream....we all have those days, weeks, and sometimes longer when daily life becomes a real challenge.  As the saying goes... 'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger', and I know some folks that must be extremely strong by now. 

    The poverty of today has a different face than it did even just 25 years ago. Used to be that you could tell how difficult of a time a family might be having making ends meet simply by what they were doing without. These days it's not so easy... the choices people make don't always coincide with what we might expect. Though it can be difficult not to make judgements, we have to remember that poverty comes in many flavors and it consists of many ingredients. Changing or removing an ingredient may change the flavor but it won't turn a casserole into a cake. 

    I was fortunate to grow up in a family with two loving parents who worked hard to provide for us a better home environment than they had experienced as children. Having both come from large families during the depression years, they had an appreciation of hard work and simple pleasures that can be hard to understand in today's world.  

    As a kid listening to my parents describe what it was like living in a family of  9 children in a little 4 room house with a path instead of a bath, I remember thinking even then..how did people live like that? I did get to experience the 'path' when I was small and would go stay with my grandma, but at least it was summertime and at night they would have a chamber pot inside so you didn't have to make the trek down the path in the middle of the night. Still, ...really? How lucky was I to be born after indoor plumbing was pretty much the norm in town. Granny had a hand pump beside the sink in the kitchen to pump water inside from the cistern....and that sure beat having to carry it in from outside, even if you did still have to boil it to use it. Of course if you lived in town at that time, you would have had indoor plumbing and running water, but it took a lot longer for these luxuries to make it to the country. In the late 1950's wood stoves and kerosene lamps weren't unusual in the country either. Seems strange when you think of it now and realize that was just a little over 50 years ago.

     Kids today can't imagine what life must have been like when we (now the grandparents) were their age. Black and White TV with an antenna that might pick up 3 channels that were clear enough to watch; a movie theater that had only one screen and the movie would change once a week; a phone attached to the wall in the kitchen where everyone could hear your conversation, and if you weren't home you weren't reachable at all. We had a party line too, so there wasn't any such thing as a private conversation on the phone. As kids we could play outside until dark and our parents didn't worry much about our being abducted. We could ride our bikes and go exploring and we knew that if we did anything wrong our parents would know about it before we got home. Supper was at the same time every night and even though both parents worked, we would still manage to sit down and eat together.   

     There was both security and freedom in the consistency and limitations of the time. Would I wish to live without the technology and conveniences that we have today? Not necessarily...I do love my iphone; but I wish we could bring back some of the simplicity, and even more of the humility from those days.      

I'd be happy to hear your views on this; what attributes of your childhood days would you like to see more of today? And what efforts would you like to see incorporated to help alleviate poverty without fostering dependence as an inheritance to the next generation. No political comments please....just your original ideas.

Till Next Time -

    The Bee-gals  (Ramblings, or Roaming Without the Motorhome)