For those who had to start out on their own, without a whole lot of assistance from their families, do you remember your first year or two on your own? Living with makeshift furniture and secondhand castoffs so bad even the thrift stores don't want them? Making curtains from extra sheets and pinching every penny until it screams? Driving a car that was a few rusted bolts from becoming a pile of scrap metal?

I do, and it was not anything I would begin to describe as "fun".

I was reflecting on the past year and realizing that, for us, it has been in many ways exactly like that. Only with five children in tow, instead of "on our own". When we arrived in town last October, we had $1200 in cash and had to buy a car and pay deposits to get set up. What belongings we were able to bring with us fit in the ten checked bags Greyhound would allow and the personal carryon luggage we could squeeze in. We had income to tide us over for the next few months in the form of my unemployment checks...but noone wants to sit around doing nothing, and I had work within a week.

The problem is, there are no jobs in our area that fit my work experience that I can obtain. And my body has been a little too torn up to get into oilfield work or the various manual labor jobs and expect to retain them for any length of time. So that means starting over in terms of income as well.

Fortunately, we have the benefit of several years' experience in frugal living. And that has assisted us immensely. We're on our fourth car since we arrived, and this one finally appears to be mechanically sound enough to carry us through until we move up another notch. Every car has been progressively better (the way it should be), and we're slowly filling our house with furniture to make it a home. As for books, my life's passion, no problem there at all. We have three sets of encyclopedias, most of my "essential" booklist restocked, and a fair sampling of classic literature to the tune of about 2-3,000 volumes of books. And the price I have paid for all of them has been absurdly low. We have about 50 DVD's (we do not rent DVD's anymore, we buy them), most of them budget priced DVD's, but about 20 "feature" titles, and again, we have restocked most of the "essentials". And we have enough change in jars around the house to purchase 2-3 weeks worth of groceries if things get really thin, not to mention small but extant checking and savings accounts.

All in all, not bad for being a year out from starting over.

So when I see residents of south Florida or the Gulf Coast lamenting that they, too, must start over, I DO feel for them. Really I do. And even though they are starting over on somewhat firmer footing (FEMA relief checks, government assistance out the wazoo), there are still some things that can't be replaced. Favorite toys, pets, quaint pieces of furniture, books, records...the list is pretty endless. Some of these items will only exist in their memories for the rest of their lives.

There's a tendency to criticize, to mock, to shout "well, you're getting a government check, so your lives are better off than they were". And in a very small percentage of the cases that may be true. But for the majority, they're a long ways from rebuilding their lives to what they once were.

I look at what we have, and I'm thankful. For all the struggles we've had to get by, we have never missed a meal. Not once. Not every lower income family in this country, let alone the world, can claim that. And I can only hope that these hurricane survivors will learn to be thankful, too.