One of the most unique things about my family at least in the Western world is, that it is a big family of 15 siblings 8 boys and 7 girls I am somewhere in the middle with two girls before me and one after, in my early years I was sharing a room with my two older brothers being the baby and all that goes with it, once they were off to school I was stuck sharing a room with two of my younger brothers.
generally speaking it was like growing up in an institution with lots of kids to play with, but of course not too many toys or games. so we would just utilize whatever we found. we had a attic for a playroom -it wouldn’t be considered very safe in today’s world since there were open insulation, parts without floors, nevertheless it was our playroom. the window was usually shattered for some odd reason but we just covered it up with some heavy plastic and a gun stapler in the winter and in the summer left it open for a breeze to enter the choking hot attic. there were times when raccoons occupied our “playroom” so we just had to play in the rest of the house. and of course in those years being mid-80s to mid-90s there was no computer to play on, at some point though I’m guessing it was somewhere in the early 90s one of my brothers picked up some old computer from god-knows-where with those big black floppy disks with some games I can remember playing snake and Othello.
we had a backyard and front lawn, not really much grass since we were all running around there and nobody took care of it, in the summer my father would build a sandbox with a few pieces of wood on a piece of concrete we had in our backyard and buy a few bags of sand, that’s about as far as the investment went for our play materials. in the front of the house we couldn’t really play since it was very steep and going down into a main road.
my father was working a nine-to-five job in a warehouse he would leave the house every morning around 9 and be back around 5:30. he never had a car he didn’t even have a drivers license, he would always get a ride to work with one of the other workers. if the family needed to go somewhere we would either walk or take public transportation which was pretty scarce in our little town unless we took the bus to the city to visit our grandparents. in rare occasions if there was no other choice we would take a taxi.
clothing we would pass down from one to the other or from our cousins. we had some closets in the basement and drawers in the attic full of old clothing and shoes, that we had to search thru if we needed something. we would rarely get a “present” which was defined as something possible to live without, if we did, it would be something we begged for, for a very very long time given that it didn’t cost too much, and by too much i mean a few dollars. we never had allowances etc…
my mother just stayed home having babies, and I mean having not taking care of. once the baby was done breastfeeding he or she was on their own. she would either lie in bed reading books, mostly new books that my father would bring her from work. or she would be on the phone with her mom or sisters, she never had many friends.
From when I can remember it was my sister that was cooking and cleaning at home she would work all day and then come home preparing supper & quickly cleaning the house. – the story goes that as soon as my oldest sisters turned 8 & 10 my mother gave them a choice they would need to either cook or clean, from which they of course chose cooking, but since my mother didn’t keep her part of the deal they ended up doing the cleaning as well -. but at least for the most part we had supper to eat, and it was quite good i must say. otherwise or other times if we would be hungry we would make pizza bread in the broiler underneath the oven or blintzes, scrambled eggs in the frying pan with raw materials found in the closet and fridge.
we never really bought any ready food or take out, and very rarely had anything to Nosh on in the closet, and never really had a snack to take to school. two things we did have though was whole wheat bread in the freezer which we would always get a delivery of, and fruits and vegetables by the case. we had an entryway closet that was pretty cold in the winter and in the summer…….
my mother’s rules were, if you are 8, you are allowed to turn on the fire on your own and cook, if you are 10 you can cross the road on your own.
if we would complain too much about how bad the house looks my father would let us buy raw materials like wallpaper, paint, floor tiles, and let us install it. when the dining room was too small, we just took off the wall. then a few years later when it was again necessary, we took off another wall.