My mother and father had so many ups and downs and stayed with each other and helped each other. My mother took in ironing and she was a waitress. My father was working in the factory and he did people's tax returns.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
My mother stopped working when she had my brother. She was a full time mom until I started getting heavily into ice skating lessons, and it got to the point where they really needed my mom to earn an income.
My mom was a working woman. She made more money than my dad. Both my parents worked. And this was in the '60s.
Like so many families, we were dealing with limited means. We weren't poor at all, but we had some challenging times financially. When my stepdad got laid off... we were really trying to find our footing for a couple of years.
I wasn't really aware that my father was working for quite a while. I thought it was my mother who had all the money!
My mother was a very wonderful woman. When she and my dad divorced, she moved to California and worked two jobs in the cannery at night and as a waitress during the day. But she saved enough money to establish a restaurant.
I had time with my mother, but I really lived with my father. One time he gave all his salary so I could travel to a training camp. He couldn't pay the rent, but he did that.
My parents were working class folks. My dad was a bartender for most of his life, my mom was a maid and a cashier and a stock clerk at WalMart. We were not people of financial means in terms of significant financial means. I always told them, 'I didn't always have what I wanted. I always had what I needed.' My parents always provided that.
My father, who was jailed for stealing on more than one occasion, just abandoned his fatherly responsibilities and disappeared. I grew up working from the time I was nine years of age. Money was a big issue everywhere I lived.
My mother, who graduated from high school at sixteen, had no hope of affording college, so she went to work in the local post office for a dollar a day. She was doing better than her father, who earned ten cents an hour working at a nearby grain elevator.
My mom had a job, and she also took care of us, and she also took care of Dad - I always saw her pulling triple duty, doing more than I ever felt like she needed to. I made a promise to myself that it would be more of a team effort in my family someday. And because of that, I became more independent.