HAPPINESS ON LAY-AWAY

Some years ago Patricia told her sister Jane that we had our happiest times when we lived in Florida, not for the last reason because we were quite poor, but content with our lives, because we just had each other, our family. We didn't go out much, because we couldn't afford it, Pizzahut was the fanciest we could do.

We went once a week, just the two of us, to Walmart to browse in the store and to eat some hot dogs in the store's cafeteria, meanwhile discussing our dreams for later, how I would make a career in the coming years and bring us lots of money to buy a house and anything we want. We called it our Walmart outing and I still cherish the memory of those times, being together, dreaming of better times.

That time we found some fancy bed linens from Martha Stewart which both of us really liked, but over our budget as usual, "You know what, we will buy it on layaway" Patricia suggested. I had no idea what that meant, so she explained:

layaway 1 of 2noun lay·​away ˈlā-ə-ˌwā Synonyms of layaway : a purchasing agreement by which a retailer agrees to hold merchandise secured by a deposit until the price is paid in full by the customer

I thought that was a great idea, so we brought the stuff to the service counter, and we paid the first bit, on the way home we calculated when it really would be ours and we felt rich because we bought such fancy linens!

A couple of years later we moved back to the Netherlands, and that meant starting all over again, building a new life in a new country. Most of our money went into flight tickets and moving all our stuff back. I found a job and we rented a house. After painting the house we did not have enough money to buy a carpet for the living room floor, so we lived on a concrete floor for a couple of months.

That evening we all had a spaghetti dinner in the kitchen and our 5-year-old David said out of the blue: "Papa, we are very rich, aren't we?"

"Yes Dude, we are very rich!".