by L. A. Hardt

Created on: November 13, 2008

In hard times when you are filled with despair, something comes along and fills your heart with hope. That's how I felt when I was about twelve years old, my family was going through such hard times. Money was scarce and so was food, at the end of the month choices were made, to pay the rent on time or to buy food.

There were four children counting myself, and then there was my mother, father, along with my grandmother who also lived with us. My dad lost his job, and my mother worked fulltime, in fact she ran a huge lath, but in those days women didn't make as much as men. My mothers' meager salary was stretched to the limit, my father did small jobs here and there trying to make the loose ends meet, and unfortunately the loose ends never touched.

Things got so bad that my father became a merchant seaman, so that he could get work, and then he was shipped out to sea. It would be well over a month, before a check would come. In the meantime bills were piling up, and there was no money to cover them. My brother and sisters got use to eating soup, in fact we were grateful to have it, there were times my brother, my mother and I went without eating so that the two youngest along with my grandmother could eat.

We were proud and didn't discuss what went on in the house, I went to school without lunch and would pretend I forgot it, in those days they also served hot lunch that you could buy in school, I would also pretend that I hated what they were having, as I sat there talking to my friends while they ate. The family did what we could to make sure that the younger siblings had lunch. Very often that included my mother writing a note asking permission to give them lunch promising she would pay them the following week.

It was only four days to Thanksgiving; my father was gone a little over two weeks. The weather was cold, there was no way there was going to be a celebration for the holiday in our home. The woman, who lived downstairs, would say hello to us when she passed, but she was busy with her own family getting ready for the holidays. I was twelve years old, and I felt sad for my family as I watched other families move along in holiday spirit.

Don't get me wrong we loved all the special shows that they had on TV. We watched them and we felt excited too, but I knew that Thanksgiving would not be celebrated with any sort of family feast. I walked with my mother four towns away to an aunt's house, and I heard my mother ask if she could borrow money. It seems that

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