I’m 43. I work the morning shift at a little grocery store on Main, and honestly? Most days it feels like I’m just trying to stay upright while the world spins a little too fast. Some mornings I stand by the loading dock, watching the sun pull itself over the rooftops, and tell myself that sometimes, showing up is all you can do — and that has to be enough.

It’s not glamorous work and it’s definitely not the kind of job anyone writes down in a yearbook under “future dream,” but after everything we’ve survived as a family, I’ve learned to love one word more than any other: stable.

Stable means the fridge is full.
Stable means the lights stay on.
Stable means my daughter has a real shot at a future.

I used to want more — big goals, big plans. Now I just want enough. Enough time, enough warmth, enough peace.

Dan, my husband, works full-time doing maintenance at the community center. Leaky pipes, busted toilets, flickering lights, broken windows — if it’s cracked or clogged, he’s the one they call. He comes home with stained sleeves, sore shoulders, and a quiet kind of strength in his eyes. He never complains. Not once. We both know the stakes. We both know what it looks like when there isn’t enough.

Our daughter Maddie just turned 16. She’s bright. The kind of bright that makes you both proud and a little terrified. Straight A’s, obsessed with biology, always talking about cells and genomes and research labs like they’re just around the corner instead of miles — and thousands of dollars — away.

She’s already made a list of universities. Most of them are nowhere near our tiny town and nowhere near our budget.

“Mom, I just need one good scholarship,” she’ll say, eyes lit up, staring out her bedroom window like the stars are giving her private advice.

And maybe she will get one. But scholarships are like catching dandelion fluff in your hands — possible, but slippery. We don’t say the scary part out loud. We just work. We save. We hope. I’ve started skipping lunch more than I admit, telling myself I’m “not that hungry” as I tuck away five extra dollars in her mental college jar.

We’re not destitute. But we’re always one unexpected bill away from that thin edge. Every month feels like trying to solve a math problem where the numbers keep moving: rent, gas, groceries, meds, school supplies. Everything adds up faster than our paychecks do.

We don’t do vacations unless they’re cheap day trips. Eating out is reserved for birthdays, and even then, Maddie orders fries like they’re some rare luxury. Still, we’re steady. We love each other. We haul the weight together. That counts for more than almost anything.

It was a Saturday in early November — cold enough that my breath showed in the air on my walk to work. Saturdays at the store are always chaos: cranky toddlers, half-awake parents, carts clattering like it’s doomsday on Sunday. By 10 a.m., I’d already spilled coffee on my apron and broken down a pallet of soup cans.

That’s when she stepped into my lane.

She looked about my age, maybe a little younger. Her jacket was too thin for the weather, and the kind of tired in her eyes wasn’t about a late night — it was about months of worry. She had two kids with her. A little boy, three or four, clinging to her hand and rubbing his eyes. A girl, maybe eight or nine, staring at the apples in the cart like they were something rare and precious.

There wasn’t much in their cart. Bread, milk, cereal, apples, a few cans. No treats. Nothing extra. Just survival basics.

I smiled, made the usual small talk as I scanned. When I gave her the total, she froze. Not dramatically. Just this tiny flinch, like the number hit her harder than she’d prepared for.

She reached for her wallet like it hurt.

Then, in a small voice, she said, “Oh… can you take off the apples? And the cereal. We’ll figure something else out.”

Her voice cracked on “figure.” It was the sound of someone who’s been pretending everything is okay for far too long.

The kids didn’t whine or argue. They just… went quiet. The kind of silence kids only learn when they’ve seen that money worries are heavier than they are. The little girl looked down at her shoes, like she already knew how these moments usually ended.