Grinding poverty.....

Poverty, like anything else, is relative. I've never been homeless. I've never been hungry for prolonged periods of time. I have had warm clothes when the weather is cold. And I've seen my breath inside my house. For prolonged periods of time.

Several years ago, I found myself living in a cheap rooming house. It was above a restaurant in downtown Fredericton. Horrible city. Hate it.

I was one of the lucky tenants. I had one of the larger rooms and it had a refrigerator. I wouldn't have to risk placing my food in the common kitchen. I had recently read the L-Shaped Room by Lynn Reid Banks. I tried to make it seem as romantic as possible. I had known people who had lived in rooming houses and it seemed so cozy, so practical to have everything in one room. I wasn't working at the time and was waiting for my unemployment to start. I'd fallen into quite a clinical depression at this point and was unable to obtain my medication.

Then it started. A Saturday came when I didn't have the money to buy the Globe and Mail. The price had recently gone up and it was now about $2.14 or so.

Since university, I'd always bought the Saturday edition of the Globe and Mail. And coffee cream. I'd make a coffee and spend time with the paper. I'd read all the sections, except for business and sports, and last I'd do the crossword puzzle. In ink. I always do them in ink and I never cross off the clue when I fill in the word. Drives other people crazy.

I tried to tell myself that it didn't matter. It was only this week that I didn't have it. I'd just have to remember to set aside enough change to make sure I could always get it. The coffee cream wasn't that important.

But I knew that wasn't true. I knew this was connected to having to share a bathroom with people I literally wouldn't sit around on the bus. It was tangled up with the Church group that came about every other Sunday. I'd hear them coming downstairs as they went through the halls, knocking on doors calling out "Sandwich and a pop?". My second day here they'd knocked at my door and made the same offering "sandwich and a pop?". Now I just sat quietly in my room and ignored their knocks on the door. Sometimes they'd leave a sandwich and pop for me outside my door. I'd give them to the guy who lived in the room next to mine. I think it used to be a closet. Seriously. It was long enough for a single bed, an 18 inch space and a narrow table that ran the length of the wall opposite the bed.

Then the day came when they left the sandwich and the pop and I didn't give it to John. I put it in the fridge and ate them later that night. I'd seen the word furtively applied to eating in novels before. But until now I never really got what that meant. I ate that sandwich furtively. I drank the pop as quietly as I could. Opening the can sounded like a gunshot going off in that room.

By the time I realized that I'd lost enough weight that my jeans were sliding off my hips, I was ready to face the reality of the situation. I'd been living on pasta noodles with Italian dressing for weeks. I was almost out of dressing. It was time to go to the food bank. By this time I'd cut up towels to use as pads, hand washed underpants with shampoo in the bathroom sink and for 2 guilt ridden days I had only rice to feed to my two cats.

I'm not sure what other people's experiences have been with food banks, but the one I went to could not have been nicer. I went feeling ready to justify why I needed their services. I was wearing the baggy jeans. I never had to justify my need. Not one person made me feel at all like I did. When it was clear I was getting upset, the man interviewing me offered me a tea. He made sure to tell me to ask for anything particular I may need, like toothpaste. I wasn't sure how to phrase the question. He was a grandfather aged man who was very sweet. He guessed what I was trying to ask for and called one of the woman into the room. He told her to get me set up with whatever I needed, then he whispered to me "You can tell Mary what you need dear".

That didn't stop me though from getting heartburn the first few weeks I ate food from the food bank. I knew it was mind over matter and eventually I didn't mind so it no longer mattered.

I came to rely on the public library as a steady source of toilet tissue. They used those huge mutant rolls, so I'd sit there and unroll enough to get me through until the next day. Saturdays I had to remember to take lots - the library wouldn't open again until Tuesday.

But it wasn't all bad.

I met my husband there.