In the long ago of my youth I recall one of my teachers urging us to be careful about marrying outside of our economic status. Since I wasn’t even sure what my economic status was back then I thought his idea was rather ridiculous. After all I was able to attend a private school with a scholarship that seem to make me equal to my peers. The fact that we wore uniforms made my equality with them even more easy. As far as I remember I never knew much one way or another about the wealth or want of my classmates. It was not something that ever found its way onto my radar beyond what I thought was the most inappropriate bit of advice from that teacher. 

I met my husband at a birthday party for one of my cousins. The two of them had been friends from the time that they were boys. They had grown up in the same neighborhood and attended some of the same schools. As far as I knew there was very little difference between my life and that of my future husband other than the fact that he purchased his clothing at a very exclusive and expensive store while I found mine on sale at lower end retail establishments. 

An uncle who had been friends with my husband’s parents kept assuring me that I would live a life of luxury once I married. He somehow believed that my future husband was in line for immense wealth, at least as measured by the low middle class standards of most of my relations. Of course I was madly in love with the man who would become my husband and none of that mattered to me other than to assure me that we were not going to starve. In truth I had little concept of what it meant to be wealthy so my expectations were quite low and I certainly did not recall the admonition from my teacher to be careful about elevating my status too quickly. 

As it turned out all of the stories of trust funds and inheritances designed to turn my husband into a country squire were pure fiction. It worked for me because I had learned all of my mother’s tricks of the trade for living well on a sometimes less than adequate income. I applied her magic to my meager pay as a teacher’s aide and my husband’s earnings as a teaching assistant. We had little or nothing but still managed to live like kings as far as I was concerned. 

We had a nice apartment and owned the old car that my husband’s grandmother had given to him. We ate a lot of beans and soup but we never went hungry. Mike, my husband, got work in the summers as an electrician’s helper with his Uncle Bob. Those were glory days with good pay and lots of overtime. We were able to save enough to get Mike through college until he was finally working for one of the big banks downtown. 

We had made it own our own with a bit of help now again from our mothers who always seemed to have bags of groceries to give us when we came to visit or a ten dollar bill presented with the advice to “have fun.” Mike also had an uncle who plied us with shrimp, oysters, melons and not a few twenty dollar bills when we went to visit him at his house on Matagorda Bay. In between all of the generous adults in our live we made our way to independence and a very nice life. Somehow I never saw the so called imbalance between the life of my family and that of Mike’s. It has only been since Mike’s father came to live with us that I have realized just how different things had been for the two of us before we met. 

Mike’s dad grew up during the Great Depression in Puerto Rico. His father was a doctor and the members of this family were leaders in the small town where he lived. He relates stories of getting train sets and little cars that he could ride in for Christmas in a time when my mother received a nickel for the occasion. He talks of being at the top of his society and not having much interaction with those who lived down below. His life was so incredibly different from either of my parents that I found myself feeling a bit of awe at the disparities between my ancestors and his. 

I had never before realized the extent to which my father-in-law and I were so economically different. Sometimes during conversations in which he described his past I found myself feeling uncomfortable. and wondering if I reminded him of the souls that lived at the lower end of his society. For the first time in my life I realized what my teacher had been trying to tell us. I realized that my father-in-law struggled to understand the wide gulf between my childhood and his. I began to squirm at his mention of wealthy and powerful people and feel a bit unseen. Then it dawned on me that I was just as proud of who I am and where I have been as my father-in-law is of his story. We are equals sitting at the same table breaking bread. There is no mountain between us and anyone who imposes one is wrong. 

Our economic backgrounds no more define us that any other superficial criteria. The true worth of each person does not lie in money or the number of toys that they own. Some of the wealthiest people in the world are poor in spirit compared to the man who works two jobs to keep his family from hunger. My father-in-law and I have learned this from sharing our histories. Anyone can be born into wealth but it takes a remarkable individual to move up from the bottom. That guy mowing lawns on Saturday after working all week long so that his children may go to college is someone more admirable than the oligarch whose only goal is to become ever more powerful. Our economic status does not define us nor does it preclude any of us from living with and loving each other. 

My teacher was wrong. It is only when we apply false measures to judge one another that there are problems living together. When we strive to truly see and respect the worth of each and every person and then share our own good fortune with those who need a helping everyone wins.