When I was young my parents both worked full time jobs, and they were pretty good jobs. But it often happened that ends didn't quiet meet.
I vividly remember one time, some bill had shown up that we weren't prepared and had to be paid. It was a Saturday and the next paycheck wasn't until the following Friday. I was maybe in sixth grade at the time, but my parents didn't have the luxury of hiding our problems from the kids.
I remember my mom figuring out if she would have enough gas to get to and from work all week so she could get paid, and was probably going to make it. But she would have to cash her pay check at lunch and so she could have gas for driving home Friday. There wasn't public transportation to take her from home to work, nor money to pay for it. So we would all be hoping she didn't run out of gas.
My older brother and I started getting all the food in the house out. Everything was put on the counter so we could figure out how to eat for the week. I remember getting meat out of the freezer that was pretty badly freezer burned, but we decided to make a soup with it. There were strange cans of vegetables (probably from previous trips to the food pantry) which we would figure out what to do with.
But I most vividly remember a huge can of cooked apples. I have no idea why we had this can, again it probably came from the food pantry at some point. But wasn't used because it was really meant for making pies.... but we didn't have the things to make pies. So it had sat in the pantry waiting, until this moment.
We didn't have much fresh fruits or veggies left in the house, and they would all be used over the weekend. So for the following week we packed those apples in little tubberwares to go in our tiny lunches. We added cinnamon and sugar to make it seem like a treat. But the reality was by the end of the week, my lunch was half a peanut butter sandwich (because we were running out of bread), and those apples. I didn't play with my friends at recess and lunch because I was hungry and running around made it worse.
We made it until Friday, mom had enough gas to get to work, got her paycheck and we survived another disaster. We probably celebrated the victory with pizza.
To this day if I start to worry about food, I think about those damn apples. Slimy, overcooked, they weren't meant to be eaten on their own. But I ate them merrily everyday, pretending it was a "special dessert". The facade was for school friends who I didn't want pity from, for my younger siblings who didn't yet understand what was going on, and for myself so maybe I didn't worry as much about the next meal.