Confessions of a Suburban Miser

I just finished a book: Around the House and in the Garden: A Memoir of Heartbreak, Healing, and Home Improvement by Dominique Browning. It was good, in a wealthy, suburban sort of way. Browning writes about the home improvements she made to her home--in essence, the re-creation of her home--after her divorce. And it really is a lovely book. But it was hard for me to relate to Browning's re-creation of home, which involved thousands of dollars of new furniture and home improvements, and the purchase of a second home, a summer cottage in Rhode Island.

With a toddler in tow and another on the way, our family's idea of home improvement has become mowing the lawn. We'd love to do all sorts of things--replace our mission-style furniture in the family room, for instance. We bought it before we had kids, and never realized that the sharply-angled corners of our oversized, solid wood coffee table would pose hazardous to careening babies approaching it at eye level. It worked beautifully in the front room of our Victorian monstrosity in Kentucky, but seems out of place and awkward in our white-on-white new-ish house in Georgia. I'd love to replace our furniture with big, comfy, highly-washable sofas and leather ottomans, hang some sort of curtain that would work to cover our windows that soar 3/4 of the way up our 20-foot ceiling. I'd love to buy some big, colorful pieces of art to hang on our bare walls. Our house, even on the best day, is rather drab and tired-looking, sort of like a dependable yet boring hotel. With cheap, stained carpet and fingerprints on the glass.

So reading about Browning's angst as she repairs her life and her home didn't really touch me the way I think it was supposed to touch me. I kept thinking that the ability to buy out Pottery Barn and Williams-Sonoma might go a long way towards easing my troubled soul. Who couldn't create beauty and order out of those kind of resources?

Yeah, so I'm a little jealous.

I grew up poor. Not dirt poor, but poor nonetheless. I remember days when dinner consisted of canned beef gravy poured over white bread because that was all we had. Of paper grocery bags of staples left on our doorstep by generous friends who knew of our plight, or the Christmas that only happened because some some friends of my parents left a bag of toys and clothes on our front stoop one winter. I remember my mom crying over the monthly bookkeeping, trying to make two impossibly short ends meet. There was never quite enough money to go around, even in times when our financial circumstances grew brighter. There was never quite enough.

In my early 20s, when I moved out on my own, I was still poor. I lived in a 3-room shotgun apartment with holes in the walls. I used my first tip money from my waitressing job to buy the largest container of boric acid I could find to stuff in every nook and cranny of my kitchen, to combat the roach problem I inherited with the apartment. I lived on ramen noodles and the free food I got at the restaurant where I worked. I was a connoiseur of thrift shops and bargain bins. I occasionally dated just for the free dinner. I cried over the monthly bookkeeping.

Then I married a man who grew up in the suburbs, and had always been solidly, staunchly middle class. His parents had been able to afford braces for him when he was young, and health insurance. He shopped in department stores and owned a driveable, dependable car (in fact, one of the first incredibly sweet presents he gave me when we were dating was to ransom my undriveable, non-dependable car from the garage where it was being held hostage until I could pay for the repairs.) He's careful with money and talks about retirement funds and dream houses. Now, 11 years into our marriage, I live uncomfortably in his world. At 37, I'm finally getting the braces I always wanted as a kid. We are solidly, staunchly middle class couple. But still, I'm uncomfortable around money. I still crave it, dream about what I would buy if I had it--just the way I did when I was kid. When I do have it, I tend to spend it quickly, still believing it will disappear, dry up--that money is a feast or famine sort of thing. I careen between gluttony and starvation when it comes to money. I roll my eyes at the comfortably rich and some secret, ugly part of me wants to hate them, to feel nothing but contempt for them for having more than I have--the same part that envies them their wealth and comfort.

In the suburbs, I feel the pull even more to acquire, to have more. It isn't good for me to drive down streets laden with strip malls, with little grassy strips by the curb filled with colorful signs screaming BUY BUY BUY. My husband is completely oblivious to it, but I am not.

I am realizing, slowly, that growing up poor left me with a miser's soul. I begrudge every financial generosity, fearing I might be giving away more than I can afford. I am afraid of waking up with nothing, and it is a binding fear, one that keeps me from truly enjoying what I have.

The question is: how do I get from the fear and this poverty-stricken soul to a place of true contentment and generosity? And how do I get there in the consumption-mad suburbs, which for me is like putting a compulsive overeater to work in a chocolate factory? And finally, why is it that every one of those books on "Simple Abundance" and creating a beautiful life from the ordinary ultimately requires you to PURCHASE SOMETHING?

I'm at a loss. Comments on my predicament are welcome.