A Positive Outlook Carries One Family Through Difficult Times

By Nancy K. Crevier

(It is not always “Nicer in Newtown.” For pockets of the community, living in one of Fairfield County’s wealthier towns is challenging; but those residents persevere for a variety of reasons. One couple, who will be referred to as Mr and Mrs M to preserve their privacy, agreed to share their odyssey of making do in Newtown in a time of economic crisis.)

Mrs M used to shop without a plan, tossing items into the grocery cart without a thought as to how it fit into the budget. Every week she would get her nails done and her eyebrows waxed. She had regular eye exams and wore costly contact lenses rather than glasses. She dressed sharply for her job. But all of that changed when her two teenage children from a previous marriage moved to Bridgeport, where she and her new husband lived, following the unexpected death of her former husband.

“We realized pretty quickly that Bridgeport schools were not going to do the trick for my daughter,” said Mrs M. “She was getting ‘A’s’ without even trying and was completely unchallenged by the curriculum. So we started looking at other towns for a better school system.”

They liked what they saw in Newtown. “We liked the teachers, the smaller class size, and it was an accredited high school. We felt it was a much safer school environment for the kids, too, in Newtown,” said Mrs M.

They sold their home in Bridgeport and moved to Newtown three years ago. Even though the rent they were paying to live in Newtown was three times the amount they had been paying for their mortgage, they were not too concerned that the move would be unmanageable.

“We were both working full-time,” said Mrs M. “My husband is self-employed in construction and mechanics, and I was working as a paralegal in Bridgeport,” she said. “We were doing okay. We knew that the move to Newtown meant tightening our belts a little, though,” she said.

“We were okay at first,” Mr M said. “The first year was really wonderful, then it started going downhill,” he said. Construction work began to peter out, landscaping jobs became scarce, and he was soon finding no regular work at all.

Then Mrs M had her hours cut to part-time and the full cost of the move became apparent. She has applied for other full-time paralegal positions when they have come up, but for many she has been told she is overqualified, or the position is not close enough to home.

Added Expenses

While her daughter is old enough to hold a driver’s license, the family has been unable to afford the extra cost of the more than $600 it costs for driver’s education classes, or even just for the required alcohol and drug education class and permit costs if they were to take on the behind-the-wheel responsibilities. Newtown’s lack of public transportation means that both of the high schoolers have to be driven everywhere, including the library where they could use the computers, and that is not always possible.

“When you’re here and have the kids, there are a lot of added school expenses, for instance, that we didn’t have in Bridgeport. Here, you pay for school breakfasts and lunches, and we didn’t even know about the reduced lunch plan until the middle of last year,” said Mrs M. In Bridgeport, the students have access to school-owned calculators, but both of her children were required to purchase a $100-plus calculator for math classes at Newtown High School, and are expected to have certain computer programs on their home computers in order to complete school work. “They cost a lot for us to purchase and install on our computer,” said Mrs M.

The high schoolers also discovered that many school activities were too expensive for families on a very limited income, and that even the cost of yearbooks far exceeded what they had been used to paying in the Bridgeport schools.

“There is a lot of pressure on kids here to ‘fit in’ and have the ‘right stuff,’” said Mrs M. The “right” clothes and the “right” shoes were quickly out of the question for the family as they struggled to make ends meet. A computer purchased as a Christmas gift for their son was the highlight of the holiday season, she said, until his friends deemed it inferior. “Now he complains about it all the time, and there is no joy in it,” Mrs M said, “because his friends tell him it’s no good.”

The M’s discovered that the cost of food in Newtown supermarkets was priced higher than what they had paid in Bridgeport, as was the cost of gasoline.

Compounding everything was the need to move out of rental homes twice in the past three years, when those homes were sold. In addition, for the past two months her boss has been ill and has not paid her at all. “It’s not the first time that has happened, and he always catches me up eventually,” admitted Mrs M.

They have endured having the Internet and phone connections turned off when they could not make payments. “It’s always about making a choice,” said Mrs M, “about what we will and won’t have.” It is possible that there are social or school services available to assist them, but they are not always aware of what those might be, or know where to inquire about them. Using social services is not something they have ever had to do, and the idea is somewhat foreign and awkward for them, said Mrs M.

“At first it seemed like we could handle it,” said Mr M, but one small thing after another, piling on top of the big items, makes every day a daunting task of survival.

“The simple solution would seem to be to move out of Newtown, to a less costly town,” said Mrs M. “But we don’t want to uproot our kids from the school system. For all of its problems, it is still a great school system,” she said. In addition, the unexpected loss of his father has been difficult for her son, and she is loathe to move him out of a system in which, despite the peer pressure, he has found a comfortable niche.

It is hard on her children socially to not be able to take part in expensive activities in town, Mrs M said, but her daughter, in particular, appreciates the good education she is getting and is able to look beyond the pettiness of teenage society. Her daughter works to take care of her own “extras,” and is supportive of the sacrifices the family must make.

Some sacrifices that the mother and husband make so that the teens can have the basics, taken for granted by most families in Newtown, are more difficult than others. Those include putting aside their own need for new clothing, or for food.

There is always more month left at the end of the food budget, said Mrs M. That means that some nights, the adults forego dinner. “I just tell them that I’m not hungry, or that I’m too busy to eat,” she said. It means that both children can have full meals. “My daughter was upset when she realized what was going on, but my kids come first. I wheel and deal with coupons and where I shop for groceries so that I can save enough to do things like buy my son the sneakers he wants. They are our kids. Sacrifice is a part of being a parent,” she said. “I want my kids to have it better than I have it.”

The couple has also sacrificed their social lives. It is hard, they said, to connect with the other parents in Newtown. They feel like their situation is unique, and that most families cannot relate to their situation. “I think our social life was better in Bridgeport. We don’t do anything or go anywhere in Newtown. We used to do takeout or eat out once a week, but now we’re lucky if we can do that even once a month. It’s a treat for us if we can buy soda — but never the brand names anymore. I’ve learned to like the store brand cola,” said Mrs M.

Winters are the worst time for the family. Two winters ago, the M’s received fuel assistance. “I had no idea how to deal with social services. It’s not something I dreamed I’d ever use. Newtown was great. It was a little embarrassing, but it was not a bad experience,” Mrs M said. “We did pretty good this year, though. At least the phone service wasn’t cut off,” she mused.

But she has not been able to bring herself to use the town’s food pantry or the FAITH food pantry, reasoning that there are others in worse situations than their family is. “I don’t want to take away from anyone who has it worse. I watch the news, and I know there is no funding for support services,” she said. “It’s bad enough to ask for fuel assistance. It’s just too hard to ask for food at the pantries.”

Getting Through It Together

Never in a million years, said the M’s, did they expect to be in this position. What keeps them going, though, is that they are generally optimistic people. “We don’t fight,” said Mr M, “even under a lot of stress.”

They look at the bright side of what this challenging time in their lives can teach them. “You can sit here and cry and be depressed, or you can do the best with what you have. This experience has shown our kids the value of the dollar, and appreciation. When times are good, you take things for granted,” said Mrs M. “Now, there’s a lot more respect in our house for things, for food, for what we do have,” she said. Seeing that adversity can be overcome will make their children better people when they are out on their own, they said.

Not being able to afford vacations, going out to first-run movies, or taking part in town and school activities that add up quickly for a family of four, the M’s have found that they can make their own fun.

“We play games together, watch movies at home together, or go to Edmond Town Hall to see the movies,” said Mrs M. They go fishing as a family, and laugh to recall the craziest thing they have done — a water fight in the house. “It was a bit of a mess, but we laughed so hard,” said Mrs M. “Financially, in Bridgeport we were better off financially and socially, but here in Newtown, we are better off as a family. We’re a lot closer,” she said.

“I think we’ve been through the worst,” said Mrs M. Work is showing signs of picking up again this spring for Mr M, and Mrs M has a lead on an administrative position with full-time hours and benefits.

“I didn’t think I’d have the strength to get through this when things first started going badly,” said Mrs M. “The thing is, I don’t think others realize that this could happen to anybody. You have to be willing to make sacrifices, and most of all, be honest with each other and work together when times are not good. You find that you laugh a lot, you cry a lot, and then you laugh so hard you cry. Mostly,” said Mrs M., “you see the world is a good place.”