In the last post, I introduced you to my 12 year old self and the trials my family was facing. The next preparedness lesson is post-trauma and finds me at 14, living in a single parent household.
My mom is the star of this experience and I have to expose a little of her history to provide a clear picture here. When she was a young girl, my mom had a very bad case of rheumatic fever. It left her with a damaged heart valve and chronic fatigue and today she lives with a multitude of health issues due to that. At the time of my dad's passing, my mom was 33 years old. She hadn't worked outside of the home during their marriage. It's safe to say she had some major adjustments to make in her new life as a widow and sole provider for three children. After the initial shock, she did what a lot of people in her circumstances do, she made a drastic change. I'm sure she needed to define herself.
So, one sunny day during the school summer break, she packed us all up in a car that didn't always get us across town and drove us 1,000 miles away for a new start. We spent three long days on the road and pulled into Amarillo, Texas, tired and hungry. By the time we got there, our money was almost gone and I could see the exhaustion on her face. She found a cheap furnished apartment for us to dump our belongings and then we headed out to find a grocery store. She spent almost her last dime on a bag of cornmeal, a bag of sugar, and a tub of margarine. She. Was. Done.
Once we got back to the apartment, she stayed in bed for several days. It turned out she had developed a wicked sinus infection. We all knew she had to get busy and find a job, but she had to get well first. In the meantime, we lived on cornmeal mush for breakfast and fried mush for lunch and dinner- every single day. It wasn't long enough for us to worry about starving but (at 14 years old) the experience of being in a strange place, not knowing anyone, with no phone, and not sure if the bag of cornmeal is going to last until the next grocery trip, left an unshakeable unease that I've carried with me for 41 years.
