Out of Pocket

“Today’s a good money day,” my mother would say to our small bodies at a checkout counter. Or, “In a couple weeks we can buy that, okay?” tucking away a magazine cut-out.

Mama and Papa’s backs hurt. They are fading, with grace, like retired monarchs. Stage lights haven’t illumined their faces in years. Their reverence from the ballet world is lost in translation. There are no 401K plans, no formulaic influx to college funds. The studio inhales and exhales cash like a lung on its side, so Mama keeps firing the teachers, stretching paper thin to take on all of the teaching. Papa growing introverted in his exhaustion. They keep training their students, hour after hour, until their aching feet go home at 9 PM and they laugh it all off over dinner and a game of “Name that Composer.”

I remember standing on the beach cliff where we would camp for a few nights when we needed to rent our house for funds. “Why can’t we just go home? I want to have a sleepover with Ellie,” I said, my chin tucked into the collar of my fleece jacket.

“Look down there,” my dad pointed to the ten-story wooden stair-case that crawled down the cliffside. The two bottom stories were concealed by churning water. “There’s a King Tide this time of year,” my dad explained, “it’s a special time in the year when the earth, moon, and sun are aligned. The water comes flooding in from the ocean.” Two tourists are spazzing out halfway down the staircase, realizing the beach is three feet under. “Some families have a King Tide of money all the time. But we have the dry parts too.” He pulled his colored beanie over his ears, nodding slightly as he watched the sea.

But we weren’t just riding the waves. We were drowning, and then surfacing, and then swimming, sometimes floating—limbs suspended, spines buoyant, seven sets of sun-cracked lips and crevice eyes bumping gaily into one another, before the sea needed to cough and the salt drained out and the King Tide subsided, sucked into its volcanic crevice far off the wheezing coastline. So we’d clamber up the cliffs, crabs who knew the way, making camp from a lookout to wait it out, hoping the sea would vomit again and send us spinning in all of our salty glory.

*****

My parents were the top ballet dancers of their day, but didn’t reap the rewards of their success past the age of 35. From there it was a scrappy, self-made, and constantly undulating financial situation. I have passed my entire life as an economically sound person by attending a  string of elitist schools. The dead horse that’s been beaten with my reflections on how experiences with poverty “shaped me as a person” has helped me ride into these schools on a saddle made of scholarship money. A saddle of papier-mâché dollar bills from people who felt bad for me, or believed in me, or both.

I never pretended to be rich, but I kept quiet. No one likes a complainer—or an outfit repeater. My sisters and I bartered with one another, trading wardrobes like passionate merchants. The extreme wealth around me was more dizzying than dazzling. Deep down I was soothed that I didn’t scale marble stairs to my bedroom to plan my creepy 18th birthday party on  a yacht. But a vibrant green envy did snake around my ribs when my best friend’s mom picked us up from school, glowing from her post-work yoga class in her Nissan Leaf. I sat in the back seat, staring, as she lifted her matcha latte to her lips that was not too hot, not too cold, but just right, the skin on her face pulled tight by her Lululemon headband.

What would it be like? To see my mother or father adorned with the little tokens and treats of a comfortable life. I couldn’t really picture it; it was too alien. For them, nothing came close to the highs of a substantial art based income. The months when we thrived off of my parents’ earnings from their sheer talent to train impeccable dancers felt infectious. To cash in on their passions was iconoclastic. We didn’t have to be like everyone else to be okay. Home was: music first, build the raft second, and then dance on it third and hope it won’t break—which it often did.

One day, my siblings and I will ordain my mother and father with the respite that they deserve. It will have wicker rattan furniture, a pottery wheel for my dad, a stereo for my mom, a built-in rack with labelled spices, a stove with four burners, a freezer that never breaks and melts my dad’s pistachio gelato, a small closet of soft clothes, a laundry room with organic detergent, a little brown dog with pet insurance, and a yard with an herb garden. I’ll take them to a dentist and pay out of pocket. They’ll walk from the office, hand in hand, and flash their glowing teeth, blending in, alas, on the streets clogged with sharks, and behind their little door, creatures of their own breed, they will pity those who aimlessly hunt.