We were certainly never in poverty and my parents definitely aren’t poor now, but it’s due to my dad working his ass off and my mom working the household savings to move up the socio-economic ladder.

I remember a few “family meetings” called to the kitchen table when I was younger. These type of memories are just brief snapshots; retained due to the emotional impression they made.

There are many pleasant memories, but also a few where my mom would tell us - while my dad sat at the head of the table silently - that we needed to help them save money. Only eating at home, no “Friday night movie nights” (in the days of blockbuster, simply picking out one movie to bring home with my brother and sister was half an evening of activity) for a few months. There were other measures, but this is the one relevant to this question.

The killer was spaghetti night. I loved (and still do) spaghetti with meat sauce. It’s one of the most comforting dishes that I enjoy.

To save money we cut out the ground beef and sausage. It was purely spaghetti and tomato sauce.

But here’s where my mom is a genius: she pivoted Friday night movie night to “world culinary night” where we would have “authentic” dishes from around the world. And voila! All of a sudden the downgrade from meat sauce to tomato sauce was actually an upgrade to “authentic marinara.”

French night wasn’t some high-brow pretentious BS, it was french onion soup (do you have any idea how cheap that is?)

Basically we went from a fun dinner and a movie night, to eating European peasant dishes and loving it (when was the last time that you were looking forward to preparing and eating a meal of seasoned boiled potatoes?) because my mom made it fun.

Having a young son now, and focused on family savings goals makes me realize how simple happiness is.

One of my parenting goals is to bring out the joy of imagination with my son like my mother did for me, my brother and sister.

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Side note: One of my earliest memories (one of the many pleasant ones is my dad bringing home 2 lobsters. He had just gotten a HUGE promotion. Like a multiplier on his salary and an additional order of magnitude on his bonus. I don’t know the specifics, but I just remember my dad coming home with a styrofoam box, and super excited. My mother was confused then elated and kissed my dad, then confused again because she had to figure out what to do with the lobster. I didn’t even know what a lobster was. I was confused about a large beetle being the focal point of the evening and why that was associated with the celebratory mood my parents were in.

Point is - it was a generally confusing evening but I was also caught up in the excitement of my mom and dad being so happy.

I’ve had lobster twice since then. I don’t remember the taste from that meal, but that is my favorite memory that involves eating lobster.