i feel so extravagant and overprivileged when i say that.
i'm not.
actually, growing up we were pretty fucking far from it.
okay maybe not THAT far from it, i've been pretty fortunate, but i did not, by any means grow up in a wealthy family.
i grew up in a family where most stress and arguments between my parents surrounded funds.
i kind of resent my parents for that. it's the last thing a kid needs to hear constantly.
about how there's only two dollars in the bank.
how this christmas isn't going to be like last year.
about how some sort of trade was going to have to be arranged to pay the violin teacher this week.
it's a lot for a child to take. i don't think parents realise how much children take on.
we always pulled through. i always knew we would.
i think i was made to believe (unintentionally) that we were a lot worse off than we were. we always made it, and i believe that's all i needed to know.
don't get me wrong, i think it was important for me to know that things weren't always easy and that my parents had to work very hard for what i had, and, i had a lot, considering. growing up surrounded by a lot of wealthy people in my community also didn't help the situation either for myself, or my parents. but i don't think it was necessary for me to be made to feel bad for wanting to do and have all the things my friends had.
my parents money qualms weren't always solely surrounding mine and my brother's material demands. it was not knowing where money for groceries was going to come from. or how they were going to fill the gas tank. i didn't need to know that. all i needed to know was that there was food on the table. and there always was.
when my dad was building our house (which he did all himself), my parents couldn't afford to rent a place as well as subsidise the construction, so we lived in a tent for two and a half years. all four members of my family. i was between the ages of 6 and 8. my brother between 3 and 5.
it wasn't, by any means a camping tent. my uncle is a locations manager for movies and owns his own company and has a number of quonset hut-like structures which are used on set to house and feed crew, so he gave my family one of these "tents" to reside in for the duration of the building. it sufficed. my dad is a wood worker and quite the handyman so he installed three plywood walls and a plywood floor. one wall was in the very front and one in the back of the tent to make for sturdier ends and then one in the front section as a divider to enable my mum to have a fully functioning kitchen. he even built a front porch. the tent came complete with one wall, which was more of a canvas flap with a zipper down the middle, already on the inside towards the back end of the structure which created a bedroom for my brother and i.
(we had one dreaded babysitter, wendy, who, once, was annoyed with my brother and i not going to bed at 6:30 when she requested, and so she tied one of the tassels from the living room rug to the zipper. a sort of makeshift lock. it ripped off and the tassel stayed there for the duration of our living in the tent).
quinn and i had bunk beds. i slept on the bottom and because the wall was not flat, but curved, and my bed didn't rest against it, i woke up on the floor between my bed and the tent countless times. my parents slept in the living room.
it wasn't huge, but it was cozy. we had a kerosene heater for winter and i still find comfort in the sound of hard rain slapping against canvas. my dad erected our old wood shed from our previous house next to the tent and installed a shower and hot water heater. every time i was forced to take a shower in the 'shower shed', i would throw a fit. my parents often reminisce on how 'difficult' i was.
we had (and still have) an outhouse in the woods at the back of our property. i hated using it because my dad, in its construction, had overlooked the need for a door. for nights we had a 'chamber pot' of sorts but if a 'number two' came along, we would wake up one of my parents (usually my dad) and he would (begrudgingly) lead us, flashlight in hand, to our outdoor latrine. i once dropped the flashlight down the hole. dad then told a story about someone he knew as a kid who did the same. his father wasn't kind enough to fish it out himself and instead held his son by his ankles and dangled him down the toilet to grab the torch. i never dropped the flashlight down the shitter again.
i grew up in the middle of the west coast rain forest and so windy nights weren't so safe for my family in our little canvas dwelling. my dad, being a carpenter/cabinet maker at the time, owned a large dodge ram van and so he and my mum would wake my brother and myself up, and the four of us would pile into the vehicle, sleeping bags in hand, and drive down to roberts creek beach where we would park the van and sleep in the cul-de-sac, with the sound of the wild ocean crashing against the rocks to lull us to sleep. we probably did this at least a dozen or so times in the two and a half years we spent in the tent. i remember the police coming on at least one or two occasions and pounding on the back door of the van, peering in with their flashlights, but once they learned what was going on, they left us alone.
i'm not exactly sure why i wrote about that. it was kind of off topic, but when i tell people that my dad bought a boat, i kind of feel the need to explain the situation. it's not something that they could really afford. my dad's dream always was to get an airplane. in recent years though, he's come to realise that it was a serious pipe dream and so he switched, still unrealistically, to boats. but, since the 'economic downturn', water craft has been hella cheap, and my parents both have pretty solid jobs, and this guy cut my dad a pretty sweet deal on his boat, yadda, yadda, yadda, and although i think my parents may have had to take a second mortgage out on the house, papers were signed...etc, etc, and now, as my dad said, "we've got a yacht".
(sorry bronia and donna. ken and dan, i guess the race is on?!?)
it's an older boat.
it needs a little work, but is, by no means, a fixer upper.
28' long.
room for four to sleep.
nice little deck at the back.
i like the curtains.
my family still isn't wealthy.
but they've come a way from living in a tent.
i don't know why i feel i need to make people aware of this fact.
but i do.
mum said dad is spending all his time at the boat (called the raven...mum wanted to change it to bob...thanks yvonne) fixing 'er up.
i don't remember him ever being this happy.
congrats daddy.
i hope i get to live at least one of my dreams one day.
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