A reader writes:
My wife says I should write this down because every time somebody at church asks how we managed, I tell it wrong and leave out the bad parts. So here it is, bad parts included.
Two years ago my younger sister got a chance to work overseas. Good job, proper contract, the kind of thing she had been praying about for years. The catch was she could not take her two boys with her at first. Their father is not in the picture. Our mother is in her eighties and already has sugar and bad knees. So one Sunday after dinner my sister sat at my table and asked if Jermaine and Andre could stay with us “for about a year, maybe a little more”. Jermaine was eleven then, Andre was seven.
I said yes before my wife could answer. That was my first mistake, and I apologised for it later. She would have said yes too. But she should have been asked.
Our house is a three-bedroom on a small lot outside Mandeville. We built it in stages over about twelve years. One bathroom, a kitchen that two people can stand in if they like each other, and a verandah at the front. We have two children of our own, a girl who was fourteen at the time and a boy of nine. Do the maths. Four children, two adults, three bedrooms, one bathroom.
The first month we did what everybody does. We squeezed. Andre went in with our son on a mattress on the floor. Jermaine slept on the settee in the living room because we did not have a better idea. Our daughter kept her own room and, to be honest, guarded it like a soldier. Mornings were war. School starts at the same time for everybody and there is one shower. My wife was up at half past four to cook so the kitchen would be free later. I started bathing at night just to get out of the way.
By the second month Jermaine was quiet in a way that worried me. He had nowhere to put anything. His clothes were in a barrel bag behind the settee. He could not go to bed until the rest of us finished watching the news. He could not do homework without somebody walking past. One night I found him sitting on the back step at ten o’clock and he told me he felt like a visitor. That hit me hard. I had been so proud of saying yes that I had not thought about what it feels like to be the one who is squeezed in.
So my wife and I sat down with a sheet of paper and drew the house. Not the house we wished we had. The house we had. And we asked a different question. Not “where can we fit two more children” but “what does each person in this house need to feel like they live here”. The answers were simple. A bed that is theirs. A place to keep their things. Somewhere quiet to do schoolwork. And some way of getting through the morning without a fight.
Here is what we did, over about six months, mostly with our own hands and a little help.
We gave up our own bedroom, which was the biggest, to the three boys. Bunk beds for the two younger ones, a single bed for Jermaine against the other wall, and a curtain on a rail he could pull across when he wanted. Each boy got a set of plastic drawers with his name on it. My wife and I moved into the small room. I will not pretend I liked it. My feet hang off the end of the bed. But the boys’ room became a room, not a storage problem.
The back verandah had been half enclosed for years with louvre windows and nothing much in it except the washing machine and a broken exercise bicycle. A church brother who does tiling helped me finish it properly, and it became a study corner with a long table, a lamp and a fan. That table has seen more homework in two years than the rest of the house put together.
The bathroom we could not fix quickly. We had always planned a second one someday, and we started saving for it seriously, and it is now roughed in but not finished. In the meantime we made a timetable. It sounds silly, but it worked. Written on the door, fifteen minutes each, in an order that changed every week so nobody was always last. Our daughter got the last slot at night because she likes long baths, and nobody bothered her.
Money was tight. My sister sends what she can, but it is not every month and it is not a lot, and at first I was too proud to discuss it. We had one bad argument about it, my wife and I, in the car outside the supermarket. After that we made a plain agreement with my sister about what she would send and what it would cover. It made things easier for everybody, including her.
The thing I did not expect was how our own children would feel. Our daughter was angry for a long time. She had done nothing wrong and her house had changed around her. We should have given her more say. Our son took to having brothers faster than any of us. Now the four of them fight and make up like any children, and I hear them on the verandah at night laughing about things I am not supposed to know.
My sister is doing well. She hopes the boys can join her next year. I am glad for her. I am also dreading it, which I did not see coming. The house will be too big for a while.
If you are about to say yes to somebody’s children, say it. But ask your spouse first, ask your own children what they are worried about, and draw the house you actually have before you make a single promise.
— Winston, Manchester
Editor’s note
Winston’s turning point was a change of question: from “where can we fit them?” to “what does each person need to feel they live here?” A bed, a drawer, a quiet corner and a fair morning routine did more than any extension could have done in the time. His story also shows that welcome has to be shared. Scripture calls us to care for the fatherless and to practise hospitality, but hospitality works best when the whole household is part of the decision, including the children whose lives are rearranged. And a clear, kind agreement about money can protect family love rather than threaten it.
Reader letters may be edited for length and clarity, and names and identifying details are changed.
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