A year later Elizabeth did get work. She was hired as a dishwasher at a popular restaurant in St. John's. She works six days a week and makes minimum wage, just like when she was a girl living at home with her mother. Joe still drives the school bus and his house repair business is starting to come back. Two of their children have moved away from home. Their last boy is finishing school.

Elizabeth's job is exhausting. It takes forty minutes just to get to work and then she stands washing dishes for seven or eight hours at a time. She works shifts so sometimes she drives home, grabs something to eat and drives back to work again. Elizabeth is the oldest person working at the restaurant. The other employees don't talk to her very much. Most of them are high school or university students. They spend their money on clothes or dates. They don't have much in common with a 41-year-old mother of three.

Elizabeth still takes in sewing. She still makes the family's bread. She and Joe never turn on the electric heat.

Elizabeth doesn't know how long she will have to work as a dishwasher. She doesn't really care. She and Joe almost lost everything they had worked for. She says if they just keep working something good is bound to happen. She still hopes the fishery will come back. She would love to go back to the fishplant.

"People used to complain about working at the plant. They didn't like the water and the mess. It's true sometimes we'd be up to our ankles in cold water and up to our arms in ice and fish," she says. "But we were part of something, something big in our town. We were treated well because we knew everyone. I miss it. I'd never have given it up."

This is the song of Elizabeth's life. This is the ballad of her private struggle against poverty. How will it end? Elizabeth says she doesn't know. But she is hopeful. "We are not on that edge now. We are pulling ourselves back. Slowly, slowly our bills are being paid down, our debts are being paid," she says quietly. "And our children never went hungry, not for one day."