The family farm

Wisconsin was cold in the winter. I think that's probably the most oft repeated phrase I hear from my paternal grandparents. As small children, my brother and I were always told:

"No kids, we can't visit you in Maine in the winter because we have bad memories of being cold in Wisconsin" or, "Come to California for Christmas, sorry we can't make it to Maine because of the snow." David and I soon stopped asking for them to come visit after September. As we grew older, it felt like we were protecting them by refraining from talking about the winter.

Both Dave and Janet Coleman were born and raised in Wisconsin in the 1940s. They grew up isolated on different farms and struggled through each winter, close to nature and the poverty line. Both the first people in their family to attend college, my two grandparents met at the University of Wisconsin and with a degree in engineering for my grandfather, and a degree in nursing for my grandmother, they sold their respective family farms and moved to California. It had been their dream and their reward.

Growing up, my grandparents used to give my brother and I: “Fun Money.” Although not wealthy at all themselves, my grandparents compulsively saved money in anticipation of their grandchildren. David and I were expressly told not to spend the money on anything practical. Written in my grandfather’s meticulous handwriting on the checks, in the bottom lefthand corner inside the ‘for’ line was the phrase: for your fun. So we were encouraged to buy candy and boardgames and anything that was purely for fun and not for school or work.

My grandparents give their grandchildren this “Fun Money” because they never had any excess money themselves. When prodded and cajoled my grandfather would sometimes talk about his childhood. 

Each birthday we would split one chocolate bar seven ways. You’re grateful for the fun money now right Rachel? We got three new chickens each year and named them: Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter. Get it? 

The trauma of my grandparents’ respective childhoods was vicariously experienced by their own children. My father to this day compulsively cuts out coupons, saves his shoelaces and tries to wear his clothes until they have holes in them. Each winter my father checks all three of our backup generators in Maine before the first snow because he has heard his father’s stories; he does not want his children to ever be cold the way his parents were in Wisconsin.