He sat at the table wrapped up in a blanket of spreadsheets, hovering over financial projections tapped out on his cherished calculator, and feeling secure in the knowledge that there was enough money.

Then it started.

“You think money is everything,” I asserted.

“You think money isn’t everything,” he countered.

We were both right - and wrong. It depended on who was speaking, and from what experience each of us spoke. Now we both felt threatened. We were, unknowingly, putting the other person’s sense of security in jeopardy with what we were saying - for the 18th year in a row. I had the extra oomph of that bad dream with me, which I was keeping hidden away.

“If there isn’t enough money, we could starve and end up homeless,” he asserted.

“Money doesn’t cure heartbreak or cancer,” I countered.

The trouble was tempered with one turn left instead of where we would normally have turned right.

My husband grew up in a house that was literally falling down around him. At the tender age of 11, his mother passed. At this, his father shed all pretenses of home repair and parenting. The sudden absence of love, a rapid decline in nutrition, and the ever-growing pile of laundry aside, the lack of money that had at least been tolerable became unbearable. Utilities went one at a time. Cold showers and one meal a day at school became the norm. Because of a leak, and without adult supervision, a young boy turned the gas on at the source only long enough to heat the kitchen so there was a warm place to dress for school.

His father spent what little money there was on his own goings-on, and neglected his son in ways that would now land him in jail. It wasn’t just that there was a parent woefully consumed with his own pain. There simply was not enough money. As an adult, my husband vowed it would never be this way for his own family.

I grew up in a home of conditional love. There was enough food to go around, enough blankets to keep everyone warm, and clean clothes that fit. There was also a looming cloud of discontent that stemmed from my parents’ very unhappy marriage. This trickled down into abuse of us children - and I don’t mean mere spankings and harsh lectures. Even this, though, was at least tolerable until the old man next door got a hold of me. He made it clear what would happen if I told, so I didn’t – for all five years of it, and not for another 20 years. As that child, I could barely stomach the food my mother served and I came to hate the clothes she bought for me. I couldn’t wrap myself up in blankets tightly enough to protect me.