Small Ripples of Uncertainity

When news of the government bailout initially broke, I’ll admit it, I wasn’t too alarmed. Generally I’m an optimist, plus, we didn’t get in over our heads with a gigantic unaffordable mortgage. And we certainly didn’t rack up tons of credit card debt.

But suddenly global markets are crashing, our own state economy is downright shaky, and I’m hearing horrific stories about final acts of desperation:  Of people killing themselves and their children. And although not nearly as dire, I began to witness small ripples of the affects of the economic uncertainty here in the Silicon Valley, a place supposedly cocooned in its own untouchable bubble.

On the same day of the market collapse, I get a notice from my silicon valley, neighborhood gym.  Closing their doors, in less than a month. “We just don’t know anything” says a twenty-something girl, who looks as if she’s holding back tears when I ask her whether she and her co workers will get job transfers. And then, even worse. I realize I haven’t seen the janitor there in weeks, if not months. Every morning at 5:00 a. m while pushing myself on the elliptical, he’d come over to me, do the Obama bump and shout with enthusiasm, “You're doing it man!”

We’ve always wondered if this guy wasn’t homeless, or a drifter. Typically I run into him everywhere, not only the gym, but at the park, Peets coffee, or even the super market.

But nobody can tell me where he is.

And I’ve witnessed little acts of desperation. Lately it seems I’m hearing about more acts of vandalism or home invasions in my neighborhood.

Just last week while at the grocery store (ironically, located in the same complex as the gym), a clerk had his tire stolen from his car while it was parked in the parking lot. “Probably because someone really needed it,” says my father, a retired cop when I asked him later why someone would do such a thing.

And as I watch high tech stocks go down and companies such as EBay trimming staff, I realize that Silicon Valley may not be immune; as Goggle’s stock descends, it seems no one is safe from the economic fallout.

Like everyone else, I pay extra close attention to prices at the supermarket. I noticed that the organic milk I usually buy just shot up to $7.29 at our local grocery store.

I caught myself scolding my daughter this morning when I tell her not to waste milk, and I realize that I hear echoes of my grandmother’s voice in my own. A child of the great depression, I recall the time she chided my uncle at dinnertime for not eating every single bite of his chicken, because as the youngest child of six, she was given the worst part of the chicken to eat, the neck; or even worse, sometimes she and her family would resort to eating squirrel. At the time I cringed but still didn’t understand her extremeness in frugality.

I think I’m beginning to now.

I begin saying “no” to the little things we used to take for granted. Extra treats at the supermarket. This Christmas, we’ll be scaling way back.

And as a parent I’m confronted with this delicate task of trying not to scare my children but at the same time making them realize that our country is facing hard times, and we all need to make sacrifices.

And so I do all the things they tell me too, cut back on spending, trying shut out all the horror stories and focus on conveying hope rather than fear to my children, and telling them to appreciate all that we do have, since others are not so fortunate.

All the while bracing myself—because I know that even here the Silicon Valley—in our supposedly untouchable bubble—we are not immune. And this bubble may burst at any time.

This is an original post to Silicon Valley Moms Blog.