JONTILLMAN.COM | part of the problem since 1976

I come by my frugal and yearning for simplicity honestly. My mother instilled it in us (there are three kids) early, out of necessity, and it has always been with me, even when I drove myself crazy, literally, trying to spend my way as far away from it as I could. Now that I am recovering a bit from my stupidity and settling into a comfortable but far less lavish lifestyle, I know I couldn’t have taken to it this easily, or be enjoying it this much if I had been raised any other way.

My mother will tell you that she grew up “…poor, female, and Southern. The only thing I had going for me was that I wasn’t Black.” Now, she didn’t mean that in an ugly way, but as an honest evaluation of the economic and social situation in rural southern Georgia in the 1950’s. When the richest man in town is the preacher, you’re too poor to be racist - everyone is equally poor and you all have to work together just to make it. (That may be one of the great untold stories of the pre-Civil Rights South; the colorblind nature of extreme rural poverty)

My mother grew up in a house where “reduce, reuse, recycle” were a matter of survival, not a grade-school slogan, my grandmother’s generation not needing the plethora of names and titles (and government programs) for what they could sum up as “thrif” and “prudence”. My mother carried all of these lessons in frugal and “making do” with her into her marriage and then into her role as mother.

Without ever formally teaching us anything (like we would have ever listened anyway), she imbued us with a certain way of doing things, of looking at things, that I have only recently rediscovered in myself. Merely by being around her, living in her house, I learned how to shop on a seriously tight budget, how to combine whatever few ingredients you have into something tasty and presentable and how to hang laundry.

She showed us how to make our own clothes, and though my sister rapidly became an expert, I was never any good at it. She showed us how to make a home beautiful without spending money, and with my father, how to turn a foreclosure on the brink of condemnation into a respectable home. I could probably go on for pages and pages.

Suffice it to say that as I am waking up to what truly is important in life, I am also waking up to the fact that I wouldn’t know how to appreciate them if it were not for my mother. Thanks Mom!