Smashing open my childhood piggy bank showed me how to live courageously

This First Person column is written by Anna du Plessis who lives in Calgary. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ.

My mom and my brother eyed my chubby ceramic piggy bank. I met their gaze and nodded my head. Even at roughly six years old, I had a strong sense of duty toward my family. It had to be done. I got to do the honours — SMASH!

My little piggy was in a million pieces. 

This sounds like a sad story — like we hit rock bottom. But it wasn't sad for me. I felt hope, the possibility of freedom. 

That smiling piggy I haggled for at a flea market taught me that I had agency, that I could change my circumstances. It was where my adventure of independence, optimism and courage began.

I grew up poor in an abusive, alcoholic household and fought my way from dingy bars in South Africa into boardrooms here in Canada.

The kind of poor I endured is not the kind of poverty you might see on the international news from a war-torn village plagued with disease and starvation but rather a self-inflicted scarcity. The mismanagement of money fuelled my dad's addiction and keeping up appearances had dire consequences.

My parents were teachers with modest salaries. But all our money went to my dad's booze buddies — drinks were always on him or lending someone this and then owing someone that. As a child, I spent many hours in the bar with him. But when the drinking stopped, that's when the shouting and fighting began. His anger was aimed at my mom.

My mom tried her best. She loved us and kept us fed. She took on my dad's debt, hid his drinking problem from everyone else and worked extra jobs.

I did not want to be a martyr like my mom.

The first time I saw that piggy bank at the market, it was sitting on a table amidst all kinds of other second-hand goods from kitchenware to ornaments. I was only about four years old, but somehow I had the thought that it was going to make things better and that's why I had to have it.

Then for two years, I saved — everything from my birthday money from my granny to fishing out leftover coins in slot machines at the bar to money I was supposed to put in the collection plate at church. In my child's mind, I figured Jesus knew we were poor, too. 

We smashed the piggy bank in the middle of winter, when our electricity had just been cut off again and the pantry shelves didn't have a single cracker or soup can left. My mom didn't tell me to do, it but I volunteered.

I remember wrapping the piggy in a rag and smashing it on the kitchen table. I don't remember my mom's face, but I was proud. It had South African rand roughly the equivalent of $200 CAD today — enough to put gas in the car and buy groceries, plus some candles for light.