The Best Investment

Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in.

Robert Frost

When I was newly married, my uncle, a successful real estate broker, told me that the best investment a young couple could make was to buy a house. It took a couple of years, but we saved a down payment and bought a little house in Bozeman, Montana, where my husband had his first post-college job running a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise. It was a tiny two-bedroom which was almost empty the night we moved in because we only owned a couple of pieces of furniture, and we were too tired to unload our little trailer. We slept on the floor in the ‘master’ bedroom and made Daughter #1, barely five months old, a tidy little nest on the floor in the room next door.

You can imagine my new-mom panic when I went in to pick her up the next morning, and she had disappeared—an empty baby quilt lay in the spot where she should have been sleeping. There was literally nothing else in the room to hide under or behind. She wasn’t old enough to crawl. So, of course, kidnapping was my immediate conclusion. I yelled at my husband for help. He was irritatingly calm and pointed out that kidnappers didn’t usually take the children of parents who are dead broke and have thousands of dollars of college debt. Two more minutes of searching found the baby across the room hidden in the closet. Somehow the tail of the blankets she had balled up around her when she rolled in her sleep had pulled the door shut after her. That was the moment I realized my uncle was mistaken. The best investment I, personally, would ever make was sound asleep and snoring gently on the floor in front of me.

My husband’s job had a narrow profit margin, so he dedicated long hours everyday to keep labor costs low. As a result, Daughter #1 and I went to church most Sundays by ourselves. A new mom in a strange place with almost no acquaintances, I sat unnoticed in the back of the chapel until one morning when the Bishop—in a move of desperation, I’m sure–called me as the chorister. I abandoned my regular seat in the rear and moved up to the front row. Every Sunday I would walk up to music stand next to the organ where I could keep an eye on Daughter #1 playing or dozing in her infant seat as I led each hymn. That worked for a couple of months. Fortunately, as she grew, she was willing to sit on the floor with a squishy toy and stare up at me till each hymn was over. Unfortunately, we were in the middle of a sacrament hymn when Daughter #1 decided to learn to crawl. Tottering on hands and knees, she headed straight for me—right across the pedals of the organ. The startled organist looked down to see a cubby little blond cherub assisting her with the bass line of the hymn. After that, everyone in the ward knew us.

As in any serious investment, kids are a pricey venture. And time consuming. And exhausting. Some folks spend a lifetime praying for an opportunity for children which never comes, and some are reluctant to dip a toe into swirling waters of parenthood over which they may have no control. My husband was an only child and an only grandchild. He had never held a baby until he held ours the morning she was born. He confessed later that he was terrified her arm or leg would fall off when he wasn’t looking. That  threat was avoided until the birth of Son #1 who regularly tried to take his sister apart with his bare hands. He still carries the scar in his palm where he came after her for some long-forgotten grievance, and she threw a fork at him. It bled very nicely.

People often ask us, “what were you thinking, having eight kids?” My husband always answers, “we weren’t thinking at all.” There’s some truth to that. Long hours, unreliable workforce, and never a moment to catch a breath before the next crisis arrives. It’s easy to forget why we ended up in “this soap opera,” as my husband often calls it.

Then I remember the day three of my sons and a son-in-law spotted the roof of my backdoor neighbor’s shed threatening to take flight in the face of a fierce windstorm. They dropped their loaded plates of Sunday dinner and sprinted out the back door, leaping the fence, and anchoring the slats of roof until the storm passed. Or the day of Daughter #2’s wedding at our celebration luncheon when she sang a love song to her new husband. Or grandchildren lying spread out wily/nily across the living room floor on Christmas afternoon reading to one another the new books that they’ve just received at our annual Cousin’s Book Exchange.

Every long term investment is a chancy proposition. It takes time and courage to grow a healthy portfolio and demands a steady hand when its value seems to dip so precariously, it might never rise again. Families are like that. I am reminded of Paul in 1 Corinthians who said, “for now we see through a glass darkly.” Having children is a step into the clouded mist of the future. They require a lifetime commitment without guarantee of any dividends down the road. But the rewards. Ah, the rewards. That’s what Thanksgiving is all about.