two kinds of poverty

There are a lot of different ways to be poor. Mabel told me about one of them today.

Mabel has had a stroke and can talk, but doesn't talk much. Maybe she never has talked much-- that's possible. She has a quiet voice and a way of smiling with her head down, looking over the corner of her glasses at you that makes me think she's a little shy. She does like to be visited though, and is content to watch her shows on the TV along with her visitors.

The program she was watching today, until her favorite quiz show came on, was America's Top Models. We talked about the clothes they wore and which dresses we liked best, and she said she'd love to wear the filmy yellow one if she had it.

I asked her if she remembered any favorite dress she'd ever had, and she thought a minute. "I remember one my aunt sent me from California. I think it was yellow too." She didn't look like she had a clear picture of it, and she went on to say, "My aunt had a girl who was older than I was and she sent me all her clothes. Otherwise I just wore striped overalls."

"You probably didn't have a lot of places to wear fancy dresses," I said, knowing she grew up in the country. "And you probably had plenty of work to do around the farm," I said.

"It wasn't exactly a farm," she said. "We didn't grow anything. And I didn't have any chores to do or any thing like that." She looked very sad. "There were just us kids, and our mama, and she had to work. " Suddenly I pictured an old house with a dirt yard and no parents around, and I felt sad too.

Then she remembered, "There was a blue dress I had, that Mama bought me herself." She didn't have anything else to say about it, but she was proud.

The house she lives in now belongs to her granddaughter. It is in a run-down part of town, but her family has done a wonderful job of remodeling. It has a big, airy kitchen with pots and pans on hooks and a big butcher block in the center. The walls between bedrooms no longer go all the way to the high ceilings, and there are ceiling fans to increase the air flow. Mabel has her TV in her bedroom, and a comfortable chair next to the window. She watched a magpie pick on a neighborhood cat and enjoyed their little drama in her driveway.

Another woman, Stella, in another town is dying, inch by inch, and will probably still be giving orders with her last breath. Her house is authentically old and far from tidy. They heat with a wood stove, and the living room where she holds court from her hospital bed is always cozily warm and smells of wood smoke. When I knock on her door, I am always greeted by no fewer than three small, noisy dogs who do what they can to protect Stella. As does everyone. Family members and neighbors are constantly in and out, and the respite between peals of barking is short. The most ferocious of the dogs, a Chihuahua, retreats to Stella's bed, walking all over her bony frame beneath the blankets.

The bed has been moved recently to make room for a slot machine with bells and flashing lights. Stella likes to watch people play. She has a glass candy dish next to her bed that someone gave her, and it's filled with what looks like sayings from fortune cookies. They are scripture citations, and she asks each person who comes in to "pull" one, look it up in the Bible and read it out loud. The social worker and I do the reading, because few of her family members are able to, for various reasons including illiteracy. The Bible was a gift also, along with the scriptures, and is a book that Stella is not very familiar with but loves.

On the wall are framed photos of family members from several generations, and Stella has a wealth of stories to tell about them. She was married to one husband twice, and shouldn't have married him the second time because he beat her; but she did so to keep him from leaving the state with their young son. The son is in his forties now, and looks as if he's had a serious head injury at some time; but he remains positive and works hard in a local restaurant, hopes to run one of his own some day. Stella's significant other has been taking care of her for years now, and he is devoted. He is kind and generous of spirit, and works hard to understand how to deliver her medicines and treatments. He is a dandy.

If poverty meant just a lack of money, this family is one of the poorest I've ever met, but their lives are rich with love.