Several times a year in school they would send a note home for us to give to our parents asking to collect for the food drive. My mother would laugh and say, “We’d just have to go pick it up later…”

I suppose you are only poor if you think you are poor. We never did.

We had an old blue station wagon. It started to rust around the wheel areas — Minnesota! My mother taught herself (without the internet) to sand it down, prime it, and paint it. We needed it to last. So she did the “body work.” And it did.

I suppose that’s why I write. I remember the stories, sand them down, paint them for all the world to see. Because they are our greatest assets. The lessons. The love. The work. They keep us rich, and, oh, how I, we, need them to last.