Should we be hungry and homeless? What do we care about?

Summer in Stratford, photo by me. Like my native town - small and cosy.

   I grew in a small town in Latvia. As in any small town people knew each other. My mother was an ordinary schoolteacher. She taught some elementary school kids until she grew tired of it, got another diploma in mathematics and started teaching high school kids; it was more difficult and more rewarding.
   She knew most of the people in our town. After 35 years of teaching, you could say that she taught 90% of population of our small town. She was very good as a teacher, and kids and their parents loved her. She always tried to do her best professionally and to help students in her class to succeed. My mother never had much money (teachers at that time in my old country were paid very little). But, if a student in her class did not have a winter coat and his parents could not afford to buy, she would go and buy it for him/her and pretend, that school bought it for him. She did not want any personal gratitude, just to help. It was not fair for a child to be cold in winter.
   Society was very poor at that time. People struggled just to survive. There was no social help in any way. If you are sick and cannot support yourself and your children that means, you are pretty much down the drain. It is very nice, when society gives sick and needy people a lot of support, the problem is human nature, I think. If you can get something for nothing, you start abuse it and then there is not enough for those  who really need it. You would probably say: what’s your point? Well, I cannot help thinking: In that nice and clean and civilized country I live now we have such a diversity of social positions and such abundance of everything. Just go to the nearest shopping mall with lots of lights, sea of colors and smells and things you can buy or taste or just enjoy looking at. Among all that abundance why there is still hunger and poverty? Is it our negligence or helplessness? Where are all our numerous charities? Is somebody really helping people? I do not know.
 When my kids and I came to Canada I had just $5 dollars in my pocket and we really struggled at first. Never ever anyone from a single charity came to us and said: here you are guys, here is some relief for you, some help for your kids. But they where knocking on the doors very often, asking to give money for charities! Well, we survived, we never lived on the streets homeless or without food or clothing. I worked any job I could possibly put my hands on and I am not bitter now, just curious. May be I do not understand something, may be I am too stupid or naive. I do not know. But same as my mom I think it is terribly unfair, when money goes first.
   Nobody in a civilized society should be hungry or homeless, or abused, never mind what circumstances are. It looks like in this country if you have a problem, you have to cry pretty loud before somebody will hear you and even louder before somebody will listen. Again it probably sounds too pessimistic and bitter and I do not want it to sound like that. Still correct me if I am wrong.
  People used to worry about their reputation. Now they are worried about their credit score! As long reputation. Now they are worried about their credit score! As long as your credit score is above 680 and you are paying your credit cards off on time, you are a good person. You can rent a nice clean apartment with air conditioner and nice view. You can even buy a house, even without a down payment sometimes. You can buy or lease a nice car with good loan attached to it. With a new car you can find a nice new job if you try. The rest is to follow. Okay, another scenario: your credit score is bad, very bad. You somehow made a terrible crime: lost your credit for some reason.You cannot buy a car: they do not want to give you a loan. Of course you can always buy some old rusty junk on wheels, but what about your image? You cannot possibly go to a good well-paid job driving that falling apart piece of you know what, can you? You see my problem, I am sure. Money somehow always scores. You cannot rent a good apartment, they checked you credit score: no, sorry. Money goes first and nowadays credit score goes before that. You have to be “clean”, or society is not going to trust you.
 So where is the way out? Some suggestion: rob the bank; poison your rich uncle (no uncle? Get big insurance on your husband/wife and make it look like an accident), pretend that you have money, work 2-3 jobs at once, die working, or get a stroke like me, do not buy toilet paper, kick your kids out when they are 16-teen, let them take care of themselves, you have enough worries of your own! Have 10 credit cards, pay 20-30% interest on time, check your credit score every month, sue your neighbor, sue Tim Horton’s, sue somebody. Pretend that you are sick and feeble and get disability and work 2-3 jobs at the same time under the table… Did I miss something? No? Good. Is there still some place left where you still can talk about enjoying life, about pride, dignity, generosity? You are not interested? No time for that? I thought so. Thank you. Have a great day and don't forget to check your credit score and your bank balance at the end of the week.

How to survive when your life takes away everything from you, even lemons...

   Now it is summer of 2019. I was seriously ill, have been at the hospital for some time, almost said good bye to my life but here I am still alive and kicking. Life goes on so far and so is my blog.
   What should I write about? I want to speak about difficult times. What should you do when bad things happen to you? And they do happen sometimes unfortunately.
   When my husband had a stroke at 2006 I  thought my life was over. In a way it was. That life I had before was indeed over but a different one started. When you are still breathing and walking you have to do certain things, you have to survive. Even if you think you cannot tolerate your life anymore. But you have to survive if other people depend on you. You get up and go and do what you have to do and when you cannot stand it anymore you just ... write poems. That's what I was doing then. I would sit or lie down with a piece of paper and a pen or pencil and I would write limericks and do not ask me why. It was my way out. My tiredness and negative emotions would dissolve in my creative outburst and my creative outburst would give me some relaxation. Funny how life turns around unexpectedly sometimes.

There lived one old dame in Siberia,

Every night in her dreams she saw Beria.

Doctor gave her some pills, after swallowing that

She was dreaming about her young neighbor instead,

That silly old dame from Siberia!

   That creative writing helped me to survive my husband's disease, my 3 jobs I had to have before I started getting disability payments for my husband and lots of other stuff your broken life presents you with. I could start smoking or drinking as some people do when they have unbearable problems in their life but instead I created something that normally I didn't do and couldn't do.

There lived that peculiar Miss Yvette,
 She imagined herself as a pussycat. 
She grew up some whiskers and sewed up a tail, 
Tried catching a mouse and completely failed, 
That unlucky cat, Miss Yvette!

Recently I found those limericks and collected them in one place on my computer. They remind me about bad times but for some reason I cannot delete them. So, what do you do when your life takes away everything from you, even lemons? You create something you've never had before. It's not lemonade but might help. It helped me for sure.