My husband lost both his parents when he was very young. His mother died when he was 8, his father three years later. My husband had aunts and uncles, quite a few in fact, but they argued about why they shouldn’t be the ones to take my husband and his brother. “So-and-so has more money, he/she should do it.” Or “I already have four kids, etc., and so-and-so only has two.”
The end result was that nobody took the boys in and they ended up in a Chicago Catholic orphanage, back in the 1960s when there were such things.
If you think these were terrible people, you would be right, and I’ve already wasted enough keystrokes on them. Anyway, my husband grew up in an institution; when he was 18 he got accepted at a state university. He moved out of the orphanage and that was the beginning of his adult life. Maybe his unfortunate childhood made him what he is today, I don’t know.
I’m telling his story because you might be able to guess how he survived those years (his parents left no money.) He lived on Social Security survivors’ benefits, which back then lasted until his 22nd birthday. It was a modest but dependable mainstay, and combined with his hard work he got an education and made his way.
When we had our own children they obviously learned that they had no grandparents on that side. As they grew older we talked about how survivors’ benefits had supported their father, how he couldn’t have lived without it, and how he was thankful for that money.
We told them that Republicans, though, had a too bad for you mentality and they wanted to “starve” government. They didn’t care about the poor, the disenfranchised. If you weren’t born rich, white, straight, male and Christian they had little use for you. It didn’t matter to these people that parents die, it was just too bad for you. Not our problem.
With help my husband made a life for himself, so that today we can all joke about my husband’s Poor Orphan stories (and he has a lot of them). Okay Dad, we know that’s a poor orphan story (said with eye rolling but also affection). But it’s good, he made it out to the other side. With help.
Our kids have seen family layoffs and job losses, and they learned that unemployment benefits were a godsend. Illnesses. They know how we can have a good year where things are going pretty well and then the next year where it all crashes.
We all talk about politics, government and elections all the time, so our kids have gotten an earful over the years. Our daughter has always been quite liberal. Our son had a slight libertarian streak for awhile, but when it came time to vote he voted Democratic. And the quarantine has given us a lot of time to talk about Trump’s gross mishandling of the COVID-19 crisis.
The last year both kids became enthusiastic Sanders supporters. They urged us to vote for him (we didn’t, though). Unlike some of their generations (millennial and Gen Z) they got themselves out to vote. And though they saw it coming, they were disappointed when Sanders lost the Illinois primary.
We said we were sorry Sanders lost, and sorry today that he dropped out of the race. When we started talking about November, they each made it quite clear that they would vote, they would vote Democratic, and that Trump had to go. No ifs ands or buts. No other choice. They wouldn’t sit out, they wouldn’t write someone in.
Fortunately they seem to know what’s at stake. If “poor orphan” stories contributed to their worldview, I’m fine with it.