I have been blessed

My Mayse grandparents were farmers. They rose before dawn and worked until dark. My grandma washed clothes on a rippled washboard stuck into a galvanized tub on the back porch. She had to heat water pumped from the backyard well on a wood-burning stove in the kitchen, carry it to the back porch, and pour in into the tub. The soap came from a bar of Fels Naptha cut into thin strips and melted into the water while it was hot. Once a week, Grandma sat on the porch and churned for about two hours to get butter. 

Grandpa plowed behind a team of mules, planted seeds with a wooden contraption, weeded with a hoe, and harvested the crops by hand—that is, if drought, bugs, or fire didn’t take the harvest before its time. 

On Saturday night, they brought the tub inside to get their baths so they’d be decent to go to church the next morning. They had no running water, no electricity, no telephone. 

After the Great Depression took hold of the land and dried it up so there wasn’t even hope of a crop, the Mayses migrated to Detroit. Grandpa became a factory worker. They lived in a house with seven children, one bathroom, and a loft set up more like a dormitory than a bedroom, but it had indoor plumbing and electricity. Grandma thought it was heaven. 

My two grandmothers took turns raising me, and even though now and then the lights were turned off for a day or so, and most of our clothes came from Goodwill, I didn’t know we were poor. Grandpa always had a job, and we were never hungry. I had friends who went without eating because there was nothing to be had. To me, they were poor. 

Nowadays, I live in a lovely house and don’t worry about utility bills. Lord knows, I get enough to eat. I still shop at Goodwill for the fun of it, and look for projects like tables or picture frames to be refinished, and angel figurines to add to my collection—things like that, and sometimes clothes. I bought a Jones New York jacket, new with tags, the other day, for one dollar, just for the fun of it. 

I have been blessed.