Rasppp

After significant accounting, historical research, graveyard excavation and gnawing introspection, I have come to a decision that has shoved my world off its axis, and is still rattling my bones.

I am worth $6.99.

This discovery was prompted (in all its complicated monstrosity) by a punnet of raspberries. A “punnet” is the packaging size of fresh raspberries here in Australia – a fragile, tiny plastic clamshell to carry your hairy rubies home… if you pay about $6 for the ransom privilege.   The punnet weighs about 125 grams (a quarter pound), so it’s not a whole lot of bang for your bucks, so the cost:benefit ratio has always been hugely ridiculous… until a couple of weeks ago.

Previously, every time I saw them I’d stop, look at their plumpness, (stealthily suck in the scent of them) and – weighing up a running tally of and scrolling logarithm of if/then/else/and/therefore, continue past to more sensible fare.  But that particular week, raspberries were on special, and their siren call was spectacular.  So I bought a punnet, babied it through the cartons of milk and bags of potatoes required for the feeding of giants, into the car then ate every single one before I got home 10 minutes later.

Home, where I had raspberry breath and guilt thick around my shoulders. What on earth was going on?  History, that’s what.

I was raised poor. Every dollar counted, was wrestled and stretched by one parent, squandered in advance by the other, the two behaviours painfully related.  We had no feast, just famine, with times of not-famine.  I learnt the practical value of tallying the grocery cost as you go, the reality of not having friends over around meal times, and knowing the taste of pride and charity are very similar, one just slightly more charred and bitter.  I vowed to do better, do more when I had money, with no idea how to do it… but not marrying a jerk seemed like a good place to start.

I did marry, to someone who came from abundance and from want of nothing, which certainly generated some intense arguments and mutual disbelief that “that” was the other’s experience and approach.  Now, I’m the single parent to two giants, and while I’m frugal, it’s not the painful gnawing of my past because I am doing my absolute best to keep my vow of better financial management.  But still, I struggle with the things I was taught in my youth – teachings learnt by watching and experience, and not just fiscal.

Raspberries, it seemed, as far as my internal judges were concerned, were not acceptable for now.  Not just because of the price (cue algebraic formulae of how many loaves, milk litres, apples and combination thereof for $7) – I was hesitant to buy them even at a hefty discount.  A luxury.  An edible luxury… the thought of which boomed and blew phosphorous fireballs of other (painfully negative) memories and experiences absorbed decades ago.  My algebra didn’t consider the health:sugar rations of a punnet versus a tub of ice-cream, or the songs I let my sons buy, my budget or the books and pocket money they each receive.  NO, said my reflex, heavy and sour with history, raspberries are not for you.

LIKE HELL, I said, and went back the next day for another punnet. It was just as stunning; fuzzy soft pops of awesomeness that lingered on me all day, laced my dreams… and spiked hard in my head and asked cranky questions.

It took days to lose the nauseous feeling I got digging though my memories of why a punnet of raspberries was so defiant.  It took weeks to untangle and cut away the knots and tripwires of the emotions and frankly consider the mess and damage I’d taken as the lesson in “what to do with money” my parents taught, however unintentionally.  We are counselled in scripture to train up a child in the way we want them to go, and this whole raspberry patch has shaken me; what am I teaching my sons inadvertently?  Sometimes the traditions (or habits, or lessons) of our fathers should be cut away, cast off, even set fire to.

And if they taste like raspberries, all the better.

Have you re-evaluated something you learnt as a child or teen? Do your parents’ example and experiences with money influence your own? What is something that you know you are worth?


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