Food stamps...somewhere on my bucket list between Leprosy and a maximum security prison. Euphemistically called an "Independence Card" - as if there is any freedom involved. Don't get me wrong - I am fully grateful to have the extra assistance in feeding my children and myself. Illness and circumstance beyond my control have left me financially not where I ever thought I would be. I sat for the requisite 4 hours in social services, clutching proof of my poverty in bills and lack of income. After receiving the maximum allowed for my family ($310), I joined the millions in learning how to use my new independence. Food stamps will buy any kind of food, but only food - no toilet paper, tooth paste, soap. If you can't eat it, you can't use your card to buy it. Fortunately or not, my kids are picky eaters and most of what they eat comes in a generic bulk form. Still, I can't help comparing the trips to the store in days of old, when I did not hear each blip of the scanner as a pin prick to my central nervous system, when a new lunch box was not a luxury, when I fed my kids as we shopped just to survive the excursion, when my kids felt justly put out by denial of junk food because I was a tough mom, not because they knew we couldn't afford it. There is a certain hunger to shopping with a food stamp budget that no food can appease - it comes from wanting to be able to throw that extra item in the cart, knowing that I cannot, a different kind of hunger. I am a careful shopper - and probably always will be. But when my daughter holds up a candy bar and in a shrill 6 year old voice asks "Will food stamps pay for this?" I have to stifle the urge to scream. We eat simply. We simply need to eat.
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