This 2-pound box for sale at Harry & David
It’s coming up on cherry season. There will be cherries in the Kroger for about a month and a half. During this period of time, there will be 1-3 weeks when Rainier cherries are available. They’re those weird-looking yellow ones. To me, they are like the pearls in oysters: oysters are great, but pearls are fantastic. Maybe that’s not the right analogy; think of Rainier cherries as that little mini-segment in every navel orange.
A thread by @ErynnBrook got retweeted onto my feed and got my attention. It was a beautiful thread with a lot of accurate information on the difference between being poor and being “broke.”
You can see the level of reaction (Retweets/Likes). Among other things, the whole thread was translated into Arabic. Amazing what can happen these days.
In reality, only people who have been truly poor can make the distinction fully. There were a couple of outliers, but there is one place that most everyone seems to remember when they first realized they weren’t poor anymore: the grocery store.
Oddly, that was the place where I realized how poor I really was.
At my rock bottom, I was in a grocery store. It was Rainier cherry season/week. My mouth actually watered thinking about how good they would…or could taste. I needed other food, though. That "ate up" the cash I had on hand. I was unsure where the next funding would come from. This was really it.
Somehow, this seemed important to me: I should at least taste what things used to be like. If I remember correctly, I had 78 cents left. (I probably don't remember that amount correctly.) Weighing carefully, I determined that I had enough money for seven (7) cherries. That was a long walk from the checkout to my dad’s 1990 Silverado, my only transportation and occasional housing. It was my biggest fear realized: I was done—but not dead. This is poor. Confusion. Hopelessness. Survival. Non-survival. You have no idea how you will eat in 3 days, no idea if you have a place to sleep tonight with a roof, no idea how you get out of this situation, no idea if it will ever happen…
…no idea if it should happen.
One thing that got me through was a story told by the Buddha. A guy is about to die, but he takes time to enjoy a strawberry first. Thus, I should only focus on this moment. Fear of the future was futile; I stood as living proof of that. Predicting your demise doesn’t make you survive. It just makes everything before your demise worse. For that one moment, I had enough food for 3 days and seven cherries. Those were the best-tasting cherries I had ever eaten. Those will remain the best-tasting cherries I ever have.
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(Gotta Fast Forward—I can’t watch this next part right now.)
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In October of 2016, I received my first paycheck. When I went to the Kroger store, I realized that I could make decisions based on what I want to eat this week, not what I can afford. There were logical limits of course. (Nobody’s buying BEEF or anything—I’m not stupid!) But it felt much different. I knew about how much the total would be, but not the actual total. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I remember that feeling—the feeling of being broke. That sense of relief, even if you don't trust it just yet.
Things would become more “broke” in the next few weeks. I went to the doctor in November, and I had health insurance. I bought a modest gift for someone else. I scraped together enough for a plane ticket, too. From the outside, it looked like a normal lifestyle.
The fact is, I don’t know what “normal” is, anymore. But that Twitter feed certainly gave me pause to open my mind to the good things that I have…and even some good things that I had during the hardest times.
Like seven fantastic cherries.
(...)
I cried when I wrote this song
Sue me if I play too long
This brother is free
I'll be what I want to be
--Steely Dan
