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It was Friday afternoon at Laurelhurst Elementary School. Spring break had begun and there was more joy on the playground than usual. Even we usually harried parents seemed relaxed. Maybe we could take it easy because all the major school fundraisers were behind us: Carnival, Sock Hop, and the Laurel Ball. I chatted with a few parents on the playground, making tentative plans with families who, like ours, were home for break.

My younger son, Oliver, and I got ready to leave. As soon as we started walking home, he became grouchy.

“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Are you hungry? Tired?” I tried to reach for his hand, but he’s eight now and often steps away from me when he’s upset.

At home, at the dining room table, with a plate of crackers and cheese in front of him, Oliver finally looked at me directly, his eyes full of tears. “Why aren’t we leaving the country?” His voice was full of accusation.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“Why aren’t we going anywhere?” Oliver was sobbing, but I could tell he wasn’t simply sad; he was outraged. All of his buddies were going somewhere for spring break: one to Mexico; another to Norway; another to Sweden.

“Not everyone goes somewhere for spring break,” I told him. “And you go lots of places. What about all your trips to Idaho and New York?” My husband is from Idaho; I’m from New York. We visit both families each year. Oliver didn’t know how lucky he was. There were seven kids in my family; I was hardly well traveled. “I didn’t even set foot on a plane until I was fifteen,” I reminded him. I’m no longer teaching my sons how to use the bathroom or tie their shoes. I’m teaching them how to live. It isn’t hard when I’m clear about my own feelings and beliefs (politics, ethics, basic human kindness), but it’s hard when I’m unresolved about something. Like money.

“But why don’t we ever leave the country?” Oliver was still sobbing.

“You have left the country,” I told him. “Remember when we went to Vancouver? British Columbia is in Canada!” I knew this was one of those “teachable moments,” and yet I could feel myself switching over to something more deeply rooted than motherly compassion.

“That was too long ago! I don’t remember it!”

“Can you remember a few months ago? Can you remember Christmas break? Remember skiing in Idaho?” My husband’s family has a house share in McCall; we went for a week. Despite the fact that I’ve lived in the West for over a decade, and am myself a skier, somewhere deep down I still associate skiing with the rich kids on Long Island who went to Aspen and Vail.

“A lot of kids went away at Christmas and they’re going away again!” Oliver pushed the cheese against the crackers on his plate.

“Some people have more money than we do!”

During this exchange my ten-year-old son Dan let himself into the house, poured a bowl of Grape-Nut Flakes, sat down at the dining room table, and began reading the comics in the Oregonian.
“Why don’t we have more money?” Oliver demanded.

“Some people make more money than others,” I said. “Some people are doctors and lawyers. Your dad is a forester. I’m a writer.”

“Ollie, she’s right,” said Dan, laughing. “Most writers live in dumpsters.”

“That’s not true!” I wanted to explain to my sons that the inherent value of an activity does not always have a correlating monetary value.

“Listen, Ollie,” said Dan wearily, as if he had figured out the whole thing a long time ago. “If Mom and Dad worked all the time, we might be rich, but then we’d never see them.”

Oliver and I looked at each other. I thought my husband and I did work all the time, and Oliver and I both knew that several of the most well-traveled kids also had stay-at-home moms. Did I have to spell it out for them?

“Some people come from money,” I said. “Some people inherit it from their rich families.” The boys perked up, intrigued by my negative, judgmental tone of voice. “All of your grandparents were basically pretty poor.”

My sons have read innumerable folktales. They know about greedy rich people and hard-working poor ones. Still, what was I saying? That money was bad? That it was good to be poor? I wanted to teach my sons that following their passions and valuing whatever they choose to do or be are more important than accumulating wealth, but what was I doing? It felt like I was teaching them to be bitter.

Ollie started eating his crackers. Dan poured another bowl of cereal. I felt sad for Oliver. He’s competitive, and in the rest of his eight-year-old world, he can compete: he’s tall; he’s smart; he can throw a football really far. I felt sad for Dan, too; he loves to read and is a really good writer. Writers live in Dumpsters? Had I transmitted my anxiety about my work to him?

I thought about the lessons my parents taught me about money: that happiness can’t be bought; that the most important thing in life—love—is free; that money isn’t important. While I counted the first two lessons among my deepest beliefs, I disagreed with the third. “Money isn’t important” was an ideal that wasn’t even true in my own family. Maybe what I wanted for myself and my children was to have a healthy relationship with money.

It sounded like a tricky business. Wasn’t I a bit of a striver? Hadn’t I wanted my kids to go to Laurelhurst because it was rated “exceptional”? Wasn’t I secretly glad that they were already skiers, still for me a potent symbol of success? As I watched the boys eat, I remembered a short story I love, “Eleven,” by Sandra Cisneros. In it, Rachel has just turned eleven, but reflects that “when you’re eleven you’re also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one.” In the story Rachel remembers all the things she did and ways she felt when she was younger.

Though I want a healthy relationship with money, inside me still exists a self that believes that not having money is something of a badge of honor. When you don’t have a lot of money, you learn to be tough; you learn to be scrappy. I’d like my boys to have at least a little of that toughness; I’d like them to be at least a little bit scrappy. I don’t want them to take things like traveling, going out to eat, or buying new clothes for granted.

Another self still thinks magically about money. It fears that having money will make me a different person, one that I don’t like as much, one that other, less fortunate people will judge and envy, the way that I have judged and envied, because what went along with not having money (and being surrounded by people who did) was a sense of shame. I’d like to spare my children that. I’d like to be able to say yes to most of the opportunities that come their way, the ones I often had to say no to when I was growing up, because there wasn’t money for art class or acting camp.

The boys were finished with their snacks. “Money is relative,” I told them. “Americans are richer than most other people around the world.” I was still trying to teach them something.

“We know, Mom,” Dan said. They grabbed their basketball and went outside. I felt like I had taught them nothing. Luckily, parenting is a process. There will be no shortage of chances to teach both my sons and myself.

After they left, I remembered a book Oliver and Dan had loved when they were small, Joseph Had a Little Overcoat, by Simms Taback. It was based on a Yiddish folk song with a refrain that went, “You can always make something out of nothing.”

From the Summer 2008 “Class” issue

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Staff, advisors, etc.

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Eloise Holland: Communications/Development Coordinator
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Editorial Advisory Board: Tom Booth; Brian Doyle; Debra Gwartney; Julia Heydon; Guy Maynard; Win McCormack; Kathleen Dean Moore; Camela Raymond; Kate Sage; Rich Wandschneider; Dave Weich

Contributors

Eric Gold

Eric Gold is a freelance writer in Portland and regular contributor to Oregon Humanities.

Kristy Athens

Kristy Athens’ nonfiction and short fiction have been published in a number of magazines, newspapers, and literary journals, most recently High Desert Journal, Eclectic Flash, Diverse Voices Quarterly, and Five Fishes Journal.

Rich Wandschneider

Rich Wandschneider was the founding director of Fishtrap, a literary nonprofit in eastern Oregon, and is now building the Alvin Josephy Library of Western History and Culture at Fishtrap. He writes a regular newspaper column and has written for the Oregonian, High Desert Journal, High Country News, and others. He is on the editorial advisory board of this magazine and on the board of directors for Oregon Humanities.

Ellen Santasiero

Ellen Santasiero is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Northwest Review, The Sun, Marlboro Review, Oregon Humanities, and in a recent anthology from the University of Oklahoma Press. She is at work on a memoir.

Caroline Cummins

Caroline Cummins is the managing editor of Culinate.com.

Jedidiah Chavez

Jedidiah Chavez is a visual artist and writer based in Portland. His work has been showcased in a variety of venues nationally and in the Pacific Northwest. Chavez was awarded a 2010 project grant by the Regional Arts and Culture Council.

Kristin Kaye

Kristin Kaye is a Portland-based writer. Her book, Iron Maidens, was an Oregon Book Awards finalist. She has recently completed her novel To Catch What Falls.

Lucy Burningham

Lucy Burningham is an independent writer and journalist who lives in Portland. She holds a master’s degree in nonfiction writing from Portland State University.

Eric Gold

Eric Gold is a freelance writer in Portland and former communications assistant at Oregon Humanities.

Sarah Gilbert

Sarah Gilbert is writing a book about mothers looking for emotional healing in food. In February, she decided to begin homeschooling her eldest son.

Courtney S. Campbell

Courtney S. Campbell is the Hundere Professor of Religion and Culture at Oregon State University. You can try friending him through his Facebook page.

Barry Johnson

Barry Johnson has written about the arts since 1978 when he started writing about dance for the now-defunct Seattle Sun. He has edited arts sections at Willamette Week and The Oregonian, where he recently finished a twenty-six-year stint. You can find his up-to-the-minute thoughts on the arts at http://artsdispatch.blogspot.com.

Dionisia Morales

Dionisia Morales is a freelance writer and teaches writing at Linn-Benton Community College. Her essays have recently appeared or are forthcoming in CAYLX, Brevity, Cream City Review, and Silk Road.

Wendy Willis

Wendy Willis is a poet, Conversation Project leader, and the executive director of the Policy Consensus Initiative and the deputy director for Research and Development at the National Policy Consensus Center at Portland State University. Her book of poems, Blood Sisters of the Republic, is forthcoming from Press 53 in fall 2012.

Carl Abbott

Carl Abbott is professor of urban studies and planning at Portland State University. A specialist on the history of cities, his recent books include Frontiers Past and Future: Science Fiction and the American West and Portland in Three Centuries: The Place and the People.

Monica Drake

Monica Drake is the author of Clown Girl (Hawthorne Books),which was optioned for film by Kristen Wiig. Her next novel, The Stud Book, is forthcoming from Hogarth Press in February 2013.

Tara Rae Miner

Tara Rae Miner is a writer and freelance writer and editor, former managing editor of Orion magazine, and author of Your Green Abode: A Practical Guide to a Sustainable Home. She lives with her family in Portland.

John Holloran

John Holloran lives in Portland and teaches at Oregon Episcopal School. His last essay for Oregon Humanities was “After the Fall” (Spring 2011).

Rebecca Hartman

Rebecca Hartman is an associate professor of history at Eastern Oregon University. She received her PhD in history from Rutgers University in 2004. Her current research is focused on twentieth-century U.S. rural history.

Dmae Roberts

Dmae Roberts is an award-winning independent radio producer and writer based in Portland.

Jennifer Ruth

Jennifer Ruth is a professor of English literature at Portland State University and the author of Novel Professions, a book of literary criticism.

Richard J. Ellis

Richard J. Ellis is the Mark O. Hatfield Professor of Politics at Willamette University. In 2008 he was named Oregon Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and in 2007 he was chosen as Oregon Scientist of the Year by
the Oregon Academy of Science. His book The Development of the American Presidency is forthcoming from Routledge in January 2012.

Leigh van der Werff

After ten years in Oregon, Leigh van der Werff now lives in central California, where she runs a record store with her husband and their dog, Edgar. When she’s not at the shop, she’s writing essays and music criticism.

Joanne Mulcahy

Joanne Mulcahy teaches creative nonfiction and humanities classes at the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, where she is codirector of the Documentary Studies Certificate Program. Her writing combines memoir and personal essay with ethnographic exploration. Her book Remedios: The Healing Life of Eva Castellanoz was published by Trinity University Press in 2010.

Marion Goldman

Marion Goldman has passed through the social worlds of Rajneeshees, Jesus People, and Nevada prostitutes. In her latest book, The American Soul Rush (forthcoming in December 2011), she describes how a small group of 1960s seekers at California’s Esalen Institute cultivated and spread spiritual alternatives ranging from transpersonal psychology to yoga to Zen golf. She is professor of sociology and religious studies at the University of Oregon.

Guy Maynard

Oregon Humanities editorial advisory board member Guy Maynard is the editor of Oregon Quarterly, the magazine of the University of Oregon, and the author of The Risk of Being Ridiculous, a historical novel of love and revolution set in Boston in the the late 1960s, into which he managed to slip several Red Sox references. He lives in Eugene.

Kambiz GhaneaBassiri

Kambiz GhaneaBassiri is an associate professor of religion and humanities at Reed College in Portland. He is the author of A History of Islam in America (from which this selection is excerpted) and Competing Visions of Islam in the United States. He was also a faculty member at the Oregon Humanities Teacher Institute in July 2011.

Tim DuRoche

Tim DuRoche is a writer, jazz musician, artist, and cultural advocate. He works as the director of programs for the World Affairs Council of Oregon. Tim hosts the The New Thing, a weekly jazz program on KMHD-89.1 FM in Portland, is currently developing a program on jazz and community values for Oregon Humanities’ Conversation Project, and is the author of the recently published collection of essays, Occasional Jazz Conjectures.

Walidah Imarisha

Walidah Imarisha is a founding editor of AWOL, a national political hip hop magazine and has toured nationally and internationally as part of the poetry duo Good Sista/Bad Sista. She has taught in Portland State University’s Black studies department and leads three Conversation Project programs for Oregon Humanities on hip hop, the history of race in Oregon, and reenvisioning the prison system.

Kim Stafford

Kim Stafford is the founding director of the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College and author of a dozen books of poetry and prose, including The Muses Among Us: Elegant Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer’s Craft. This essay is a section from his book-in-progress, 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do.

Debra Gwartney

Debra Gwartney is the author of the 2009 memoir Live Through This, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Oregon Book Award, and the PNBA award. She is currently working on a memoir about growing up in the West and the heritage of Narcissa Whitman, a project for which she received a research grant from the American Antiquarian Society. Debra lives on the McKenzie River with her husband, Barry Lopez, and is on the nonfiction faculty at Pacific University.

Susan Meyers

After growing up selling corndogs and cotton candy at carnivals up and down the West Coast, Susan Meyers extended her gypsy lifestyle by spending several years in Latin American before coming home to the Pacific Northwest. Her work has recently appeared in CALYX, Dogwood, Terra Incognita, and The Minnesota Review, and it has been the recipient of several awards, including a Fulbright Fellowship. She teaches writing at Oregon State University.

Matthew Stadler

Matthew Stadler is a writer and editor in Portland. He writes about cities and urbanism for journals including Volume, Netherlands Architecture Bulletin, Domus, and Camerawork. His book about urbanism, Deventer, is forthcoming from 010 Uitgevrij, in Rotterdam. In 2009 he cofounded Publication Studio (http://www.publicationstudio.biz) in Portland.

Amanda Waldroupe

Amanda Waldroupe is a freelance journalist living in Portland. Whenever she fails, she buckles down and tries, tries again.

John Holloran

John Holloran lives in Portland and teaches at Oregon Episcopal School, where he is the chair of the history department. His last essay for Oregon Humanities was “Under a Spell” (Summer 2009).

Todd Schwartz

Todd Schwartz is in reality a very serious and reserved person who divides his time between being a Calvinist minister and a funeral home director. Wait…wait! A funeral home director and a Calvinist minister walk into a bar…

Scott Nadelson

Scott Nadelson’s most recent book is The Cantor’s Daughter. A new collection of his short fiction, Aftermath, is forthcoming from Hawthorne Books in Fall 2011. He teachers creative writing at Willamette University. His latest essay for Oregon Humanities was “Go Ahead and Look” (Spring 2010)

Courtenay Hameister

Courtenay Hameister is the host and head writer of LiveWire Radio, the co-creator of “Road House: The Play!,” a screenwriter and filmmaker. In her spare time, she likes to imagine what it would be like to have more spare time.

Ariel Gore

Ariel Gore is the author of seven books including Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), from which this selection is excerpted. She is also the founding editor of Hip Mama, and editor of the Lambda-award-winning anthology Portland Queer. She teaches creating writing online at the University of New Mexico and The Attic in Portland.

Jamie Passaro

Jamie Passaro lives in Eugene, where she is a freelance writer and an editor for Northwest Book Lovers, a blog produced by the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association. Her last essay for Oregon Humanities was “Driving Mrs. Spacely” (Summer 2008).

Andrew Guest

Andrew Guest is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Portland. When not watching, playing, coaching or writing about soccer, he does research on youth developmental and educational experiences through sports, arts, and service activities.

David Bragdon

David Bragdon served on the Portland regional Metro Council for nearly twelve years and was elected president in 2002. The major accomplishment of his service was an expansion of the regional parks and natural areas network known as the Intertwine. He resigned from the Metro Council in September 2010 in order to accept New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s appointment as director of the Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability.

M. Allen Cunningham

M. Allen Cunningham is the author of Lost Son, a novel about the life of Rainer Maria Rilke. His first novel, The Green Age of Asher Witherow was a #1 Booksense Pick and was shortlisted for the Booksense Book of the Year. He’s the recipient of an artist fellowship from the Oregon Arts Commission and a Yaddo residency. His third novel, set partly in the Pacific Northwest, is forthcoming.

Bette Lynch Husted

Bette Lynch Husted lives and writes in Pendleton. She is the author of Above the Clearwater: Living on Stolen Land (OSU Press, 2004) and At This Distance: Poems (Wordcraft of Oregon, 2010). Lessons from the Borderlands, her collection of memoir essays about teaching, class, gender, and race, is forthcoming from Plain View Press. She is a 2004 Oregon Book Award and WILLA finalist and was awarded a 2007 Oregon Arts Commission fellowship.

Bob Bussel

Bob Bussel is associate professor of history and director of the Labor Education and Research Center at the University of Oregon. He has published numerous articles on labor history and contemporary labor issues, including a history of the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries. He is currently working on a book about working-class citizens.

Dave Weich

Dave Weich is the president of Sheepscot Creative. The Portland-based company fosters engaging and profitable communication among businesses, consumers, colleagues, and fans. Weich is on the editorial advisory board of Oregon Humanities magazine.

Camela Raymond

Camela Raymond is a Portland-based writer whose work has appeared in Modern Painters, Plazm, the Oregonian, and elsewhere. She was previously an editor at Portland Monthly magazine and the founding editor/publisher of the Organ. She serves on the editorial advisory board of Oregon Humanities magazine.

Scott Nadelson

Scott Nadelson’s most recent book is The Cantor’s Daughter. He teaches creative writing at Willamette University.

Karen Karbo

Karen Karbo‘s three novels, as well as her Oregon Book Award–winning memoir, The Stuff of Life, have all been named New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Her most recent book is The Gospel According to Coco Chanel: Life Lessons from the World’s Most Elegant Woman.

Lisa Radon

Lisa Radon has written about art and design for Portland Spaces (as associate editor), Portland Monthly, Surface Design Journal, SHIFT (Japan), FLAUNT, Hyperallergic, and ultra (ultrapdx.com). She’s written a handful of catalog essays and is working on her first book.

R. Gregory Nokes

R. Gregory Nokes has worked as a reporter and editor for the Associated Press and the Oregonian. His reporting about this incident has resulted in a formal designation of the massacre site as Chinese Massacre Cove. He lives in West Linn.

Christine Dupres

Christine Dupres is the former director of the Office of Sustainability and Community Engagement at the Native American Youth and Family Center in Portland. She is a freelance writer and an Oregon Humanities board member.

Apricot Irving

Apricot Irving is a writer and radio producer whose most recent project, Boise Voices Neighborhood Oral History Project , brought together elders and youth in Northeast Portland. She has lived in Haiti, Indonesia, and the United Kingdom, but currently calls Portland home.

Lucy Burningham

Lucy Burningham is an independent writer and journalist who lives in Portland. During the past decade, she has traveled on assignment for a variety of newspapers, magazines, and Lonely Planet guidebooks. She holds a master’s in nonfiction writing from Portland State University.

Vicente Martinez

Vicente Martinez lives in Portland and works at a fast food restaurant.

Susan W. Hardwick

Susan W. Hardwick is a professor of geography at the University of Oregon. Her research and teaching focus on the geography of immigration, identity, and place in the Pacific Northwest. She is the author or co-author of nine books, including Russian Refuge: Religion, Migration, and Settlement on the North American Pacific Rim (University of Chicago Press, 1993). This article is adapted from Hardwick’s Commonplace Lecture that she delivered for Oregon Humanities in 2007.

Sarah Gilbert

Sarah Gilbert is a writer and photographer who lives in Portland with her husband and three little boys. She writes about food and finance for several web sites, including DailyFinance, WalletPop and Culinate, is cofounder of the Portland parenting resource urbanMamas.com, and keeps a blog, cafemama.com.

Kevin Nute

Kevin Nute is a professor of architecture at the University of Oregon. He is the author of the American Institute of Architects award-winning monograph, Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan (1993) and Place, Time and Being in Japanese Architecture (2004).

Brian Doyle

Brian Doyle is the editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland, and the author most recently of Thirsty for the Joy: Australian & American Voices, from One Day Hill Press in Melbourne, Australia.

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Why some kids go to Europe and other kids stay home

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