CSotD: A little valve-uplifting humor
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Not sure where this story arc in Agnes is going, except that Agnes is one of those strips that, when it suddenly heads off somewhere unexpected, you jump in and hang on, because you know it won't be a waste of your attention.
I do know that Agnes and her grandmother are headed off to visit an aunt whom Agnes has never met and who was described in yesterday's strip as "mean-spirited, rude and very outspoken," so either we're about to have a Christmas Carol Experience or simply introduce a new foil for a little girl who is rude and out-spoken but never mean-spirited. Probably some of each.
But, while I always like to alert readers to a story arc in time for them to latch on, what attracts me to this particular strip is how matter-of-factly Agnes's grandmother deals with poverty.
She doesn't spend her time brooding and railing against the forces and personalities that put her there. And she doesn't sit endlessly obsessing over unlikely plans to lift them into luxury.
Agnes does the latter, but Agnes is a kid and, when she hits adolescence, she'll either focus those dreams into something that works or give up and retreat into brooding and railing over her fate.
I have faith in Agnes. I picture her as the kid who comes back to the high school reunion a success, not in a flashy, show-up-in-a-limo sense but happy, self-confident and living a good life, so that those who knew her at all will begin to think back and fit the pieces in. "Yeah, she was always pretty bright. Yeah, she always had ideas. Yeah, she was always pretty positive. I guess I can see it. Good for her!"
And those who didn't really know her will be flummoxed by it all. "How did that happen? Why her and not me?"
Meanwhile, her grandmother embodies the motto of the working poor, "Keep on keepin' on."
Is it risky to trust the old truck on a trip this long? Yeah. But it's been 30 years since she's seen Arthena and now it's time and this is the vehicle we have.
So it's off we go and if the linkage holds up and the valve lifters keep lifting, we'll get there, and, if they do it all again in a few days, we'll get back. And if they don't, we won't, but we're going and this is what we've got.
Although my own family was comfortably middle-class, many of my friends growing up were working poor, I've had working poor friends since and I've even studied and written about the working poor.
There is a difference that is sometimes hard to define between accepting your lot in the sense of giving up, and accepting your situation in the sense of saying, "This is what we have right now, this is what we can do at the moment."
After all, the phrase "your lot" goes back to the gambling practice of "casting lots," and your lot is your immutable fate.
Your situation is different. Your situation is simply where you're at. It can be improved, and, in the meanwhile, it can sometimes be finagled and there is always the possibility that things will work out by happenstance. wotthehell, arch, wotthehell.
Yes, Agnes, it's a sad world that has a special prayer for valve-lifters, but it would be a far sadder world that did not.
I did a story on the working poor once that included an in-depth look at one family where they had a bundle of kids and very few prospects. They had a sound but old mobile home which was set up for free on an outlying parcel of land of the farmer for whom the husband was working as a laborer. They had needed to put in a well and septic and run an electric line, but the lack of lot rent was a major savings.
The mother stayed home with the kids because the cost of child care would have wiped out any wages she might have earned, and because they liked raising their kids themselves. She often volunteered at their Head Start.
She admitted to some luxuries: A swing set for the kids that her mother had given them, a video game set for the kids that they had splurged on, for bad weather days.
And there was a dead car on the lawn which she explained: When you are poor, you can only spend so much money on a car, but you need one in today's society, because stores and doctors and the world in general all assume you have transportation. So you keep an eye out for a bargain, for the magical car that maybe looks like hell but that runs well.
But mostly what you get are cars that will get you through for awhile before they throw a rod or drop a transmission or, yeah, need a valve job or new steering linkage. And you can spend $600 or $800 or $1200 that you don't have to fix the car you do have, or you can spend the $300 or $400 you can scrape together to buy another car that will, eventually, become lawn sculpture but will get you through for a little while longer.
It's not a matter of "accepting your fate." It's not a matter of not aiming at a better life.
It is a matter of knowing what your situation is right now and dealing with that.
And if your granddaughter asks questions for which you don't have a truly reassuring answer, you tell her that there is a special prayer for this, and a novena for that, and hope that either Jesus or Santa Claus or somebody will get you through the next section of life's highway, not for your sake but to maintain her faith that the road will one day stop being so bumpy and uphill all the time.
Well, and maybe to maintain yours, too.
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