When I was in college in Southern California, I met people who had lots of money. No one ever said, "I'm rich." That wouldn't have been cool. I still remember a guy reacting to one of the then presidential candidates with the comment, "And let him ruin my inheritance?" Weeks later I would sit alone in the TV room and cry as each state's ballots lined up against the $1000 that the loser argued should be granted each American in need. I didn't get it. I still don't.
I'd never thought about an inheritance or what taxes could do to it. And I had one, too, from my grandfather who left each of 13 grandchildren a few stocks to help pay for college. He didn't send his daughters to college, only his sons. He told my mother if she went to college, she wouldn't want to marry or have children. I fulfilled his worst fears. I went to college and graduate school, deferring marriage, while producing words, not babies. Scholarships and work study covered college when my father left my mother and put a lien on the house. Her father never considered how vulnerable he had made his daughters. He had died before his unprepared daughters divorced.
In the cafeteria, I talked to a cute boy who asked where I was from. When I said "New York," he offered me a ride home, if I could get myself to Ontario. That's where he kept his plane. I didn't have a car. Uber didn't exist. I don't recall buses even going there. I remember hitching to L.A. once, a bad idea. There was a ride board. I rode with the kid from Maryland who drove a Vega.
My high school boyfriend's family had moved to Los Angeles from New York, where he and I grew up on different ends of town. The television business moved west, and his family went with it. Working for television paid a lot. They had a nice house, their mother didn't work, and my boyfriend was given a new Mustang for graduation. We drove to his new Beverly Hills home in it.
A decade later, when I returned to L.A. with a group of students from Kansas, the now ex-boyfriend, a television writer himself, drove up to our student-friendly cheap motel in his Porsche. My Kansas students were impressed when the flashy car picked up their teacher. He and I went to lunch, and he mentioned how his father just didn't get as much out of the industry as he should have. I wondered what his own house looked like.
I was teaching in Kansas, for $18,000, a little less than what I started with at UCLA, but a third more than what I got paid in Sewanee, Tennessee. Wages for faculty have risen in most places. So has everything else. I bought my house in Kansas for the same amount as my yearly salary. The mortgage was $171 a month. No faculty or student ever offered me a ride in an airplane. Student weddings served nuts and lemonade. There were more horses than people; my neighbor took me to his ranch to count cattle. He referred to himself as horse poor. I've never understood that expression. Horse poor was my unfulfilled aspiration.
Being a middling paid teacher provided an excuse for not having things. Kind of like COVID-19 offering a temporary reprieve for non-huggers. When I lived in L.A., having a small apartment could be ascribed to the crazy cost, rather than to idiosyncratic preference. The lack of furniture, too, could seem an adaptation to one's salary. But the fact is, I liked having a mattress on the floor. The one available chair didn't seem anti-social, or a tactic to keep anyone from sticking around, it seemed frugal. After a while, visitors brought their own chairs, even though my apartment was up a flight of stairs.
The ascetic life was inexpensive. After I'd settled into my first teaching job, in Tennessee, I got a frantic call from the young couple who lived below my old apartment in Indiana. They were stuck somewhere. They asked to borrow three hundred dollars. I never thought to ask why they didn't call their parents or their friends. I don't recall how I even got the money to them.
They never sent me any money to repay the loan. I called. I wrote. Then I tried Small Claim's Court and got a reaction, a call that began with, "You didn't have to do that." But, "You didn't even write back or call. Nothing." To my surprise, a check appeared the next week. I needed it then more than I do now. I was still paying off college and graduate school loans.
Though in college I had expected to become a lawyer, the incident with small claims—the paperwork, the intimidating officialdom I can't imagine I would have followed up on—reassured me that I was more suited to teaching than suing people. Intimidation exists in both, whether intended or not.
When a lifeguard I saw nearly daily sent a Facebook request for loans, I sent $100. I didn't expect to be repaid. I had learned to loan only what I could afford to lose. He had moved to Mississippi. He never had to save me. We'd talk as I waited for a lane, or after I got out of the pool. I helped him write a small claims suit against his landlord.
My grand-niece wants to be a poet. After a year at public universities, both with writing departments, she dropped out. She applied instead to an art school that offers poetry degrees in another state. Her mother asked me to co-sign a loan for $37, 000. When I went into the system, the loan was listed at $40,000. But more disconcerting were the estimated payments totaling $140,000. I had done all the paperwork but forgot to sign the document. I get regular emails from the loan agency asking for my signature. The mother, my brother's child, didn't want to compromise her credit rating. Her estranged husband wouldn't pay the bills or sign for any. Her brothers are engineers; her mother's still alive. Why me? It seemed familiar, no matter the shuffling in amount and degrees of separation.
I left a check for the first $10,000 deposit when I last visited. I just sent another $10,000, more than the value of the AT&T stock my grandfather left me, which I hadn't needed to cash out. Still, I think it's him and his daughter, my mother, who are underwriting two years of an education in creative writing—one that is unlikely to pay off in dazzling job offers or even publication, with or without payment. The discipline and demands of writing, though, may lead to discovering a job she hasn't yet considered, to falling in love, to becoming what she yearns to be—with or without children
Me? It's what I have left of the dead. Mother. Father. Grandfather. Their gift is what I lay on my brother's grave.
His children held a celebration of his life ended by a hit and run. I didn't go.
As a child, he asked me to save his money for him. I did. I wouldn't give it back until the exact date he pointed to on the calendar.
It has been returned.
I wear the Garmin he gave me. Recharging is erratic. He ran long and hard. Everyone moves on at their own pace, they say. I send money.
I'd never thought about an inheritance or what taxes could do to it. And I had one, too, from my grandfather who left each of 13 grandchildren a few stocks to help pay for college. He didn't send his daughters to college, only his sons. He told my mother if she went to college, she wouldn't want to marry or have children. I fulfilled his worst fears. I went to college and graduate school, deferring marriage, while producing words, not babies. Scholarships and work study covered college when my father left my mother and put a lien on the house. Her father never considered how vulnerable he had made his daughters. He had died before his unprepared daughters divorced.
In the cafeteria, I talked to a cute boy who asked where I was from. When I said "New York," he offered me a ride home, if I could get myself to Ontario. That's where he kept his plane. I didn't have a car. Uber didn't exist. I don't recall buses even going there. I remember hitching to L.A. once, a bad idea. There was a ride board. I rode with the kid from Maryland who drove a Vega.
My high school boyfriend's family had moved to Los Angeles from New York, where he and I grew up on different ends of town. The television business moved west, and his family went with it. Working for television paid a lot. They had a nice house, their mother didn't work, and my boyfriend was given a new Mustang for graduation. We drove to his new Beverly Hills home in it.
A decade later, when I returned to L.A. with a group of students from Kansas, the now ex-boyfriend, a television writer himself, drove up to our student-friendly cheap motel in his Porsche. My Kansas students were impressed when the flashy car picked up their teacher. He and I went to lunch, and he mentioned how his father just didn't get as much out of the industry as he should have. I wondered what his own house looked like.
I was teaching in Kansas, for $18,000, a little less than what I started with at UCLA, but a third more than what I got paid in Sewanee, Tennessee. Wages for faculty have risen in most places. So has everything else. I bought my house in Kansas for the same amount as my yearly salary. The mortgage was $171 a month. No faculty or student ever offered me a ride in an airplane. Student weddings served nuts and lemonade. There were more horses than people; my neighbor took me to his ranch to count cattle. He referred to himself as horse poor. I've never understood that expression. Horse poor was my unfulfilled aspiration.
Being a middling paid teacher provided an excuse for not having things. Kind of like COVID-19 offering a temporary reprieve for non-huggers. When I lived in L.A., having a small apartment could be ascribed to the crazy cost, rather than to idiosyncratic preference. The lack of furniture, too, could seem an adaptation to one's salary. But the fact is, I liked having a mattress on the floor. The one available chair didn't seem anti-social, or a tactic to keep anyone from sticking around, it seemed frugal. After a while, visitors brought their own chairs, even though my apartment was up a flight of stairs.
The ascetic life was inexpensive. After I'd settled into my first teaching job, in Tennessee, I got a frantic call from the young couple who lived below my old apartment in Indiana. They were stuck somewhere. They asked to borrow three hundred dollars. I never thought to ask why they didn't call their parents or their friends. I don't recall how I even got the money to them.
They never sent me any money to repay the loan. I called. I wrote. Then I tried Small Claim's Court and got a reaction, a call that began with, "You didn't have to do that." But, "You didn't even write back or call. Nothing." To my surprise, a check appeared the next week. I needed it then more than I do now. I was still paying off college and graduate school loans.
Though in college I had expected to become a lawyer, the incident with small claims—the paperwork, the intimidating officialdom I can't imagine I would have followed up on—reassured me that I was more suited to teaching than suing people. Intimidation exists in both, whether intended or not.
When a lifeguard I saw nearly daily sent a Facebook request for loans, I sent $100. I didn't expect to be repaid. I had learned to loan only what I could afford to lose. He had moved to Mississippi. He never had to save me. We'd talk as I waited for a lane, or after I got out of the pool. I helped him write a small claims suit against his landlord.
My grand-niece wants to be a poet. After a year at public universities, both with writing departments, she dropped out. She applied instead to an art school that offers poetry degrees in another state. Her mother asked me to co-sign a loan for $37, 000. When I went into the system, the loan was listed at $40,000. But more disconcerting were the estimated payments totaling $140,000. I had done all the paperwork but forgot to sign the document. I get regular emails from the loan agency asking for my signature. The mother, my brother's child, didn't want to compromise her credit rating. Her estranged husband wouldn't pay the bills or sign for any. Her brothers are engineers; her mother's still alive. Why me? It seemed familiar, no matter the shuffling in amount and degrees of separation.
I left a check for the first $10,000 deposit when I last visited. I just sent another $10,000, more than the value of the AT&T stock my grandfather left me, which I hadn't needed to cash out. Still, I think it's him and his daughter, my mother, who are underwriting two years of an education in creative writing—one that is unlikely to pay off in dazzling job offers or even publication, with or without payment. The discipline and demands of writing, though, may lead to discovering a job she hasn't yet considered, to falling in love, to becoming what she yearns to be—with or without children
Me? It's what I have left of the dead. Mother. Father. Grandfather. Their gift is what I lay on my brother's grave.
His children held a celebration of his life ended by a hit and run. I didn't go.
As a child, he asked me to save his money for him. I did. I wouldn't give it back until the exact date he pointed to on the calendar.
It has been returned.
I wear the Garmin he gave me. Recharging is erratic. He ran long and hard. Everyone moves on at their own pace, they say. I send money.