I am the middle class. The experience is like being on a teeter-totter, which means hovering around the elusive and precarious pivot point. One moment you are up and the next your butt is being slammed into the ground.
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Unlike days of old, new teeter-totters keep you balanced in the middle. At least we recognized the dangers of jarring fluctuations on that front.
I’ve spent the last few days in a familiar fear induced stupor that fluctuates between counting my blessings as compared to those “below” me and counting my deficiencies as compared to those “above” me.
On the one hand, I live in a modest house with an incredible view and access to walking trails that lead into a national park and designated open space. My kids go to good public schools and my oldest is leaving in less than 2 weeks to start college at a prestigious east coast school. I have food in the fridge, a car with gas in it, and I was able to wake up this Sunday and read the New York Times while drinking tea and eating toast with lemon curd. I also sat on my couch with my iPad and watched a Facebook clip of children injured by the latest bomb blast in Gaza. I wept. A rush of sorrow mixed with gratitude washed through me as I looked at my spouse and daughters sitting near me, safe and sound, immersed in their own electronic devices. Things looked pretty darn good.
On the other hand, Friday I got an email from our landlord saying he is raising the rent. This happens to coincide exactly with the arrival of my daughter’s prestigious tuition bill and my other daughter’s orthodontics bill for the braces she’ll be wearing in two days. This too made me weep and brought on a rush of fear mixed with gratitude. I am terrified by the sixteen thousand additional annual dollars we must find in our overstretched income. At the same time I am grateful that I also received an email from one of my three student loan servicing companies saying that my economic forbearance was approved for another year. Despite bankruptcy and foreclosure, my spouse and I still carry close to $140,000 in student loan debt. The two bachelor’s, three master’s, and all but dissertation PhD degrees between us have yet to pay off. Things are pretty darn precarious.
On Saturday afternoon I called an old friend and learned her son, who’s my age, is currently homeless and hasn’t been heard from in weeks. When I hung up, I took a deep breath and felt gratitude for my life just as it is. That night I had a new friend and her spouse over for dinner. Really pleasant and inspiring people who have lived and worked internationally. But after hearing about his appointment by the governor to a high-level position, her choice to turn down philanthropy work and pursue graduate studies in creativity, and seeing them off in their dark blue Tesla with vanity plates that remind me how much carbon my car puts out, my teetering middle class life felt wholly inadequate.
This year we made the decision to cash in the life insurance policies we were required to buy when we built our first house by hand 16 years ago. It didn’t amount to much, but it was enough to give us some breathing room, contribute a few more paycheck dollars to my spouse’s retirement program for a few months, and to take our first family vacation before our oldest leaves for college.
For the last few months I haven’t had to make a choice between having the brakes on the car fixed or buying groceries. I haven’t had to use a credit card to go to the movies. On top of the precious trip to Hawaii, I’ve had the pleasure of impulse shopping at the grocery store—that $6 drinkable vanilla yogurt with the necklace of crushed almonds, chia seeds and granola was just too good to pass up, especially on an empty stomach. I have been able to sit down at my desk and pay every bill knowing there is enough money to cover them all. I’ve been free from the crippling worry about whether or not we are actually going to make it. My life insurance became my life assurance. I relaxed. I breathed deeper. I wrote some poetry.
This is what I want. I want to live in the sweet spot of balance between too much and not enough. Both sides are equally weighted by the middle point, the fulcrum where the laws of the physical universe hold you in a suspended state of magic, a place of equanimity. This place has been the promised land of this country, now it’s the danger zone.
In one of the articles I read on Sunday, “The Squeeze on the Middle Brow,” A.O. Scott examines the rise of inequality and its effects on culture. It raises many important issues, perhaps to be discussed in future posts, but I was particularly amused by a chart published in Life in 1949 which “neatly divided American taste [/fusion_builder_column][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][and class] into four echelons”—high brow, upper middle brow, lower middle brow, and low brow. The middle brow had two designations—a high middle which could be distinguished from a low middle by the presence of avocado in a salad, a dry martini instead of bourbon and ginger ale, and volunteering at the local Planned Parenthood versus the PTA.
As Scott points out, the significance of the chart is that, “every brow-holder is assumed to be able to afford furniture, clothes, reading material and other amenities, and each is assumed to have leisure time in which to enjoy them. They also all have jobs; no one is living off income from capital.” This applies to the high, the middle, and the low classes of society. That certainly isn’t what we have today.
We are in uncharted waters now. The middle ground is unclear. The only chart I have is a map of uncertainty. I’ve come to learn how to live here in the place between upward mobility and the downward plunge. It is the ambiguous space between. It is the magical moments where sorrow and gratitude mix, or an evenness of mind arrives where my eyes aren’t looking for more, better, different and they just see what’s actually around me. Sure, there are going to be more jarring fluctuations. I’ve reluctantly come to accept that, but the middle ground I am going to claim is the precious place of tender trust between. Here I know that no matter what comes next I will survive. I have before and I will again. And here there is freedom, some big breaths, some playground squeals and giggles, and a few more poems.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]