The legend of the Christmas Happy Apple
But it's really a story about the enduring effects of poverty
Every Christmas, my mother reminds me of the Happy Apple toy that she keeps in special place in her bedroom cabinet.
She recalls with passion the story of my first Christmas. Me, an 11-month old baby living with my mom and dad, who had recently migrated to Kansas from Arizona in search of a better paying job. That took some time, but he managed to find some odd jobs to make a little money.
We were so poor, the story goes, that we lived in a chicken coop that had been converted into a house. We couldn’t afford a Christmas tree, so my dad went down to the Arkansas River and cut down a shrub pine. We made some homemade decorations to put on it. My parents didn’t have money to buy each other presents, but they scraped together enough to buy me one gift - a Fisher-Price Happy Apple.
My Mom has kept this toy for 48 years, and she reminds me of its value to her every Christmas. She’s getting older now, and the conversation has turned to how, out of all the trinkets and collectibles in her care, this Happy Apple is the one I’m supposed to keep and care for the most after she’s left this earth.
I decided to bring her on the podcast to talk about this Happy Apple and why it means so much to her. I know the story, but this seemed like a good way to try and get a better understanding of why this meant so much to her.
My initial thought was that it would be, to her, a reminder of a very sad and difficult time in her life. But I was wrong - instead she found this time to be very fulfilling, and happy, despite the things we couldn’t afford. In the podcast she explains that she felt more stress as our family began to earn more money, gather more things, and carry more responsibility. To her, those early years were positive, I think because there was a new future in front of her.
For some additional context, I think it’s important to share part of a conversation I had with my Mom after the recording. The level of poverty we experienced in my first year of life was markedly better than the poverty she experienced in her childhood. Her parents were products of the Great Depression. They took whatever jobs they could find, where ever they could find them. She recounts that her folks would go to the landfill to rummage through things others had thrown out, take them home to fix them and then give those out as Christmas gifts.
And though I won’t go into details, it’s important to know that family life for my Mom and her siblings was not at all pleasant.
All of that to say that while this Happy Apple represents a pleasant time in my mother’s life, in my view that’s partly because it was incredibly better than what she had experienced before. She had a new family, and a renewed hope for a better future, and that gave her a perspective that made her poverty seem less bad.
But it also likely felt less bad because she had been conditioned to tolerate so much worse poverty in her life. And that, too, shaped her perspective.
One of the things I really wish people - particularly policymakers - understood about poverty is its enduring effect on mindset and perspective. In another, unrelated conversation with my Mom, she indicated that no one in the family ever really bothered to make plans for their lives.
“Why would we?” she asked. “We never knew what was going to happen, and we had be ready to just go with the flow.”
That is what happens when someone is in a constant state of survival. There’s no capacity to wonder what life might be, or what could be accomplished. There’s just the knowledge that one has to find a way to survive - in whatever way possible - in any situation that is presented.
The past two episodes touch on this dynamic of poverty. In the previous episode, I visit with Marla McKee and Anthony Frischenmeyer with Circles of Hope - an organization that does fantastic work to help families find stability and direction in life. It’s model allows the families, called Circle Leaders, to direct their progress while partnering them with Allies who help them learn the ropes of middle class life.
You can find that episode on your favorite podcast player - Episode 54, Circles of Hope. I think you’ll learn a lot from their insights.
To listen to my Mom talk about her long-standing care and affection for my first Christmas present, visit Salt City Sound or listen on your favorite podcast player. To find all available platforms, go here and click on That Podcast in Hutch.