Growing up poor

Here's a little piece I wrote as a letter to the editor for a local paper in the Comox Valley years ago: 

The thing about growing up poor that is not understood by people who haven't grown up that way is that some of the fundamental baselines are different.  The non-poor take for granted certain underpinnings of life:  you'll have a roof over your head next month;  you'll eat lunch every day next week;  when your shoes wear out, you'll get new ones;  nobody will come and take your furniture away.  For the poor, these are not givens, but variables.

There are also less basic, but no less significant, givens:  you'll get something for Christmas;  you'll break the monotony of everyday life by going on a vacation or to summer camp;  you'll go to college;  if you work hard, you'll get what you want. 

The non-poor live in a firmer, more dependable world.  It gives them a degree of self-assurance that they are not even aware of, because they have never known the absence of the conditions that cause it.  They don't have to take gravity into account every time they take a step, because gravity has been a constant throughout every moment of their lives.  But the poor don't get reliable gravity.  Sometimes you go to take an ordinary step and find yourself spinning off into space.

It makes you different in a way that the people who don't share that difference can't understand.