While we hang in the limbo of the newly unemployed, I'd like to discuss something: Just what does it mean to be middle class?
I'd say my family was middle-class because our income was around the US median household income. We were in the middle, better off than half the country, looking up at the other half.
But I don't know how accurate this label is. I have a certain image of the middle class, and it doesn't include buying groceries with coupons, or sharing a car in a car-dependent city, or having grandparents pay for our child's preschool.
It definitely doesn't include cleaning up poop for a living.
I was born in Eastern Europe under communism. I remember our apartment of maybe 300 square feet. I remember the food shortages, the ration cards, sending my grandfather for bread because disabled veterans went to the front of the line.
Nevertheless, we were well off. Both my parents were educated professionals, and we even owned a car! When we immigrated to the US, not knowing any English, my father became a laborer and my mother cleaned houses. It was hard on them. I know because my father has told me so, and I know because my mother has never talked to me about it.
Over time, my parents built a successful business, but that early period had an outsize effect on me. One of the families my mom cleaned for allowed her to bring her kids. We got to play with their Nintendo, swim in their pool, and read from their wall of books, all while our mom disinfected their toilets. The experience left me confused, simultaneously grateful and wondering how it can be that these people are so much better off than us.
I mentioned in my previous diary that I have a small service business. That service involves cleaning up animal poop. A few times my childcare arrangements have fallen through and I've had to take my child with me to work. In a dark sense, my life has come full circle.
It's not that I think this work is beneath me. It's that I hate to be the one to disillusion my child, to rub her face in the fact that other kids have nicer houses and fewer chores. The old joke says: Under communism, everyone was equal – equally miserable. It is true. But at times I question whether this alternative is more humane.
My mom's life has also come full circle. Her business was hit by a natural disaster, and soon afterward the whole industry imploded. She's been barely hanging on for years. She tells me she's never before felt this poor. Her standard of living is not bad, actually, but she speaks to a deeper truth. My mother, who raised children during food shortages and martial law, has never felt this insecure, this stressed, this afraid. She's never before stared down such a fine line between a comfortable future and losing her life's work.
And we, my husband and I, now find ourselves on the wrong side of that line. We'll keep you updated on how that unfolds.