A Long-term Investment

Last night I went home. Not the home I grew up in and not the home that I currently share with Nooman and his computer, but my home… or should I say where my parents’ live. This should not be such a bold statement to make, but as I admit I am not the best daughter/ sister/ aunt in the world, so when I do step out of my Tel Aviv bubble I try to appreciate my time spent with the people I appreciate most and who probably realise it the least.

Earlier in the day I had a meeting with a financial adviser to discuss how I was going to invest my Pension fund that I (a year too late) have received from my work. I remember back in England, meeting with a financial advisor and gazing over is head wistfully as he droned on and on about high risk and low risk investments, while I contemplated how I was going to spend my money and promptly told him “Just give me the cash”. This time around, a little more mature, and a little more paranoid about the future, I asked him in depth questions about how I could get the highest growth out of my savings, the best way to invest it for the long term, and what other options I had to be a millionaire by the time I retire. In turn he, amazed that someone was actually interested in how their money was going to grow, talked about stocks and bonds, interest rates and the ever unstable market. He asked me questions about my health, lifestyle, family and finally came around to the most difficult part of the process…. What if I die?

Being young, and not having a husband or children of my own to consider if and when I leave this world, I had never really considered what would happen to my ‘things’. I mean I have never really owned anything of great worth… a car… a wardrobe full of clothes… There is nothing that anyone would really want. If I died tomorrow my family would more likely be cursing me for the inheritance of clearing out my draws, jammed full with crap that I have just thrown in over the years, forgotten about and have been too lazy to sort through and throw away. Perhaps that is something I should consider when I next get the cleaning bug.

So I am sat in the main meeting room, looking at the financial advisor with a thick Scottish accent and a large jovial grin on his face and my gut reaction is, “My father, I would like my father to be the beneficiary.” I think it was the right thing to do. I would never want to take favourites amongst my siblings. The advisor continues to look at me and I feel the heat rising to my face, my eyes watering slightly and I flush red. “Does he know how much you love him?” he says winking at me. I say, “Probably not”, and nervously laugh.

Sleeping last night in my parents’ house, in the only single bed in the house, I felt so strangely safe. There is a different feeling you feel sleeping under the comfort blanket of your parents building. I may prefer my bed in my apartment, I may find the mattress hard and unforgiving, but the sleep I have is like the sleep of my youth. It is like the rest of the world is really cut off. My eyes shut, relaxed… no monsters will come out of the wardrobe to get me, no-one is going to break in tonight. In the middle of the night I woke up and heard my father snoring across the hall.