My parents have never had very much money, and I think that's one of my favorite things about belonging to this family. That's because when there isn't much money, everything instantly becomes more meaningful. Trips to the library when I was little, gadgets from my eye doctor's toy box, clothes that weren't from yardsales, books from the book fair at school. I always got to pick out one toy - but only one toy - on all of our Wal-Mart trips. I also think it's due to my family's lack of money that I've always imagined the smallest places to be the happiest. Little wooden cottages seem most appealing. Places filled with only the things we need and maybe a select few, very-loved extras.
F. Scott Fitzgerald describes exactly what I'm talking about in The Ice Palace:
It was a large room with a Madonna over the fireplace and rows upon rows of books in covers of light gold and dark gold and shiny red. All the chairs had little lace squares where one's head should rest, the couch was just comfortable, the books looked as if they had been read-- some-- and Sally Carrol had an instantaneous vision of the battered old library at home, with her father's huge medical books, and the oil-paintings of her three great-uncles, and the old couch that had been mended up for forty-five years and was still luxurious to dream in. This room struck her as being neither attractive nor particularly otherwise. It was simply a room with a lot of fairly expensive things in it that all looked about fifteen years old.
The nice thing isn't the poverty, though; it's the simplicity. The joy of knowing everything you own has some sort of story. That it means something.
All I want is a tiny house filled with meaningful things and meaningful people.
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