Who decides if I am rich or poor?

As Easter is around the corner, I was reminded of this. No commentary. No insights. I have slightly paraphrased this story written by Eddie (Smith) Ogan. She died on September 23, 2019.

I’ll never forget Easter of 1946. I was 14-years old. I lived with my mother, my 12-year old sister Ocy, and my 16-year old sister Darlene. My two older sisters were married and my two older brothers had left home. My dad had died five years ago.

A month before Easter, the minister at church announced that the Easter offering would be taken to help a really poor family.

We wanted to help, but money was scarce. So we drew up a plan.

• We bought 50 pounds of potatoes to live on for a month and enable us to save an extra $20 for the special offering.

• We decided to keep our lights turned out as much as possible and not listen to the radio, to save on the electricity bill.

• Darlene got as many house and yard cleaning jobs as possible.

• Darlene and I babysat for everyone we could.

• For 15 cents, we bought cotton loops to make pot holders to sell for $1. We made $20.

That month was one of the best of our lives.
The day before Easter, we asked the grocery store manager to give us 3 crisp $20 bills and one $10 bill for all our change. We were so excited we could hardly sleep.

We did not have new clothes for Easter. Neither did we own an umbrella. So we walked the one mile to church in the rain. Darlene had cardboard in her shoes to fill the holes. The cardboard came apart, and her feet got wet.

When the offering came around, mom put in the $10 bill, and each of us kids put in a $20. At lunch mom had a surprise for us; a dozen boiled eggs with fried potatoes. What a fabulous day!

Later that afternoon the minister drove up in his car and handed us an envelope. When we opened it, out fell three crisp $20 bills, one $10 bill, and seventeen $1 bills.

Mom put the money back in the envelope. We didn’t talk. We felt like trash.

We had wonderful parents. We loved each other. Our older siblings constantly visited. We learnt to share our limited silverware and see whether we got the spoon or the fork that night. We had a home. We had electricity. We had a radio. We had food on our table.

We did not have money, but we thought we were rich. I never realised that the world looked at us as poor.

Later at church, there was another call to help raise $100 to put a roof on a church that was dilapidated. Mom reached into her purse and pulled out the envelope of $87 that was handed to us. She put it in the offering.

When the offering was counted, the minister announced that it was a little over $100. He said, “There are some rich people in this church.”

Suddenly it struck us. We had given $87 of that “little over $100.”

So they called us “rich people”. But a few weeks ago they told us that we were “dirt poor”.

Who makes these decisions?

Follow me on Twitter (can’t get used to saying X)

Check me out on LinkedIn