Affluency

My mom’s first Starbucks

When I was a young Diva in training and living in my mother’s house, I was poor. Not dirt poor but barely clinging on to a middle class existence.

So whenever I got a present from Bath and Body Works or anything that came from the mall, I cherished it and hardly used it. Not because I didn’t like it but because I wasn’t sure when I’d get a gift like that again. The bottles of Country Apple or Romantic Pear would sit in a drawer, only spritzed on special occasions.

Even Starbucks at one point was a treat. The coffee would be colder than the first day of winter by the time I was finished drinking it. I wanted to look cool carrying the paper cup around.

But that was years ago, before I earned a college degree (first in my family) and got a job where I could get such things with some regularity.

As my mother’s house is being fixed due to damage from Hurricane Ike, I came across a bunch of tiny bottles from Bath and Body and Victoria’s Secret only half emptied…or full depending on your world view.

Those bottles represent how far I’ve come and how far my family has come in our affluency. My mother is the same way with clothes and shoes. Her garments look like new. She was poor growing up, too.

So it was with great pleasure that I’m moving my mom into the “finer” things. A cup of coffee and a trip to the mall to get an actual purse that wasn’t from Wal Mart.

I’m not going to go into the pressures of a first born Latina life. Or how the worries and dreams of a family are on my shoulders. But what I can say is that my heart feels good that there are signs of my family moving forward, together, away from past lives and past philosophies of poverty.

We’re moving into form of middle class and that makes me happy. Surprisingly.