Kaching$$ Gabriella Day 5

Day 5 Kaching! Gabriella

We were poor when we began our new lives in Canada but I did not know that. As a pampered only child of two Holocaust survivors and a grandmother who held the steaming cup of hot chocolate to my lips every nigh, I lacked for nothing.

There was always a full fridge. Watermelon in the summer and goulash soup in the winter, bread, butter and little pink cakes on Sundays from the Hungarian bakery. My neighbourhood teemed with life from every corner of the planet: Ireland, Jamaica, China, Poland and Italy surrounded me with the cadence of sound and the aroma of cooking pots.

My clothes came from Honest Ed’s, the immigrant’s mecca, and I fit in with the rest of the DP’s. We were all well fed. Our respective parents carried the hunger gene across the ocean and were determined to provide for their young by toiling, saving and admonishing us with sentences that made no sense.

“Why are the lights on here when there is nobody in the room. You think money grows on trees.’

“Close the door. You are letting the heat out. Who will pay the bill? You?”

“Why you need 25 cents? Movies are so expensive. You went last week no?”

I was flagrant and sailed through the world on a carpet of care.

My dad sold chachkas in Kensington market, blowing on his cold hands during the harsh January days and turning brown beneath the July sun. Every night he came home with the takings of the day and counted the bills and coins at the kitchen table. The amount that he tallied would determine the mood of the dinner talk.

“Ah, this business is shit. Nobody buying anything.” He waved his arm in dismissal of all people who were not at the table.

“Haha, good day. See this.” He spread the money out, with a triumphant turn of his mouth.

I was oblivious to the suffering that they endured so I would just whine, beg and get my pocket money for Hostess cupcakes, tennis shoes and Archie comics.

The bountiful river of silver and gold came to an abrupt end when I left home, at the tender age of 16, not very concerned about how I would survive until life splashed cold water on my face. I found myself alone in Istanbul, having run away from the kibbutz that my parents had sent me to in order to teach me some responsibility (the most regrettable decision of their lives as I heard over and over again), with a whopping $70 in my pocket, It seemed like a small fortune to me at the time, but trains and cheap hotels add up and soon I found myself living on sweet buns and chocolate milk. I had no idea how to make money and when I look back on that time I am astonished how I coasted on a miracle because I can not remember working.

They say that more marriages dissolve due to money problems than adultery. Our relationship to cash is as intimate as it gets. We often don’t realize how our special dance with our pocketbook affects those around us.

I would eye the people who had beautiful homes with longing until I had my own home. Home has remained a focal point of security for me, despite my wandering feet, and the bedrock of my existence. Somewhere to come back to that was mine. But homes cost money and I have done many, many different jobs to maintain my lifestyle. Some legal and some less so.