Messages about money are passed down from generation to generation, worn and chipped like the family dishes. Your own memories about money will tell you a lot, if you take that step back and see what those memories taught you about who you were—and whether those memories are still telling you who you are today.
For me, the first message I remember came when I was eight or nine. In the hot Chicago summers, all of us in the neighborhood would go to the Thunderbird Motel to go swimming. It was heaven, jumping into the cold water of that crowded pooi, everyone screaming. It cost a dollar to get in. One Saturday, as usual, I said to my mom, “Can I have a dollar to go swimming?” And she said, “Suze, I’m sorry, we don’t have it.” I said, “But Mom, I need a dollar to go swimming with everyone else,” and she said, “Sweetheart, this is very hard for me to say, and we cbn’t want anyone else to know, but I just don’t have a dollar to give you.”
I could tell that saying this to me made my mom want to cry. I also knew I was not to tell anyone. I felt as if the wind had been knocked out of me. What was I going to tell my friends? I don’t remember what I told them, but I do remember this: I suddenly felt I was different from my friends, that I had less that they did, and therefore they wouldn’t like me anymore.
:‘m not proud of what happened next. Every night when my dad came home from work, he would place his pants over a chair in the dining room right outside their bedroom. He kept his money in the pocket of his pants. At night, after my mom and dad went to sleep, I would sneak into the dining room and take some bills out of his pants pockets. I took this money not to q,end on myself or to save, but to buy gifts for my friends. I really thought that if i could show them that I did have money, they would continue to like me.
Interesting, isn’t it, that the happy memories of the dozens of times I did go swimming at the Thunderbird Motel pale against the agonizing memory of the one time I couldn’t?
Without my knowing it, this memory played itself out well into my adult life. For years, even though I was becoming more and more successful, I felt “less than.” Until I could connect the dots—that who I am today is not the same little girl with no money to go swimming at the Thunderbird Motel—this memory defined how I felt about myself.
A few years ago I asked my mom if she remembered that Saturday, and she did; she still remembers the look on my face when she said she didn’t have a dollar to give me. Ever since then her biggest fear in life when it comes to me is that I don’t have enough money to get what I want and that I am suffering. It doesn’t matter how successful I become, she still calls me and asks, “Suze, are you okay? Now, if you need anything, you’d ask, wouldn’t you?” It’s as if she is still trying to make up for that Saturday.
Now it’s your turn to look back.