Douglas Family: November 2021

Monday, November 29, 2021

The c word

So, so much to say about the events since March 2020, so many times I thought, 'I should blog about this.' For now I will just post some pictures to document some of the things we saw & experienced.

In town for a "teacher parade"

Fun from the internet

Grandma Anne teaching her students remotely...Penelope & Brynn doing their schoolwork

Advice from California

We sewed masks before school started in the fall

Why our grandparents were all poor - Life Lessons

My grandparents were all poor. They told us about how they were too poor for storebought clothes. Too poor to go to the doctor, so they had their babies at home. Too poor to know what a staycation or a girls weekend was. When I got married, I found out Wayne’s grandparents were also poor. The more people I knew, I realized that pretty much everyone’s grandparents or parents were….SO POOR! Let me guess, your grandparents were poor too?

We do have it pretty good living in a modern country in the 21st century. Most of us are able to acquire a job, healthcare, or a loan in less than a day. There’s no arguing that in many ways, we have it way better than our parents and grandparents did. However, it used to rub me the wrong way that the older generation glorified being poor. It’s like it was a contest to see who walked the furthest to school without shoes or ate a worse tasting varmint disguised by some cutsie named ‘stew’.

After pondering this for several years, I’ve come to realize that - while some were truly poor, the majority of our grandparents weren’t poor. They just acted poor. They pretended to be poor, so they could save up and buy a car(without a loan). They felt poor because they were disciplined enough to save for a rainy day and put their children through college. They acted poor because they valued what a person did, and not how they looked. They lived poor because they read and believed the Bible - which says the ‘debtor is slave to the lender,’ ‘a wise man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children,’ and, ‘there is one who pretends to be rich, and has nothing, and one who pretends to be poor, and has great wealth.’

Our grandparents didn’t sew their own clothes because they really liked sewing, or had too much time on their hands before there were cell phones. They just realized that they wanted their future selves and future generations to have more abundance, than what they would have if they spent every dollar they saw.