More than two decades later, tears come to my eyes as I think back to that day. Yet I have often thought that sometimes events are so sad that just at the moment when you think they can’t get any sadder, a new event opens up and reveals a new kind of wonderment.
Soon, thankfully, I was pregnant again. Marcus and I prayed constantly, beseeching God to bring that baby to term. And yes, Elisa Laura Bachmann—her middle name after my mother’s mother—was born on April 14, 1990. Our first daughter! Marcus had only brothers growing up, as did I. Finally, we had a baby girl to grace our lives. She was pretty in pink—and, if I may be permitted a boast, pretty in every other color.
One day Marcus and I were sitting together in the kitchen, watching her. That’s all we were doing—watching her every wiggle and gesture. In that moment, I thought of Whittaker Chambers’s famous discussion of his baby girl’s ear in his soul-searing book, Witness. Chambers had once been a communist—a spy for the Soviet Union, in fact—but then he saw the light. He took his story to the FBI and so became not only a witness against other Soviet spies in the 1940s but also, in a larger sense, a witness against godless communism. Chambers’s moment of epiphany came to him as he watched his baby:
My daughter was in her high chair. I was watching her eat. She was the most miraculous thing that had ever happened in my life. I liked to watch her even when she smeared porridge on her face or dropped it meditatively on the floor. My eye came to rest on the delicate convolutions of her ear—those intricate, perfect ears.
The thought passed through my mind: “No, those ears were not created by any chance coming together of atoms in nature (the Communist view). They could have been created only by immense design.”
Chambers then thought to himself, “Design presupposes God.” And so, he wrote, “at that moment, the finger of God was first laid upon my forehead.” Marcus and I were already firm believers, of course, as we gazed on Elisa’s little ear, but we revere Chambers and his memory. We revere the author of Witness as more than a witness to faith; he was a champion of faith. No wonder President Reagan awarded him, posthumously, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Meanwhile, in our lives—it was now 1992—we were ready to take our three children out of the city and into the suburbs. We had enjoyed our time in St. Paul, but we needed more room, and the kids needed a safe place to play.
So Marcus, having completed much of his PhD course work, found a new job as a Christian counselor in the suburbs, and we moved to the town of Stillwater, about ten miles east of St. Paul; we have been here ever since. Our little town sits on the banks of the St. Croix River, which serves as the boundary line between Minnesota and Wisconsin. It’s not far away from Anoka, where my mother and her husband Ray reside, and it’s not far from Marcus’s family farm. When you have aging parents, it’s always nice to be close.
Stillwater is a place rich in tradition. Along with much of the western Great Lakes region, it was settled originally by the Dakota and Ojibwa, or Chippewa, tribes; they thrived on the abundant local fish and game, as well as wild rice and other indigenous plants. In 1855 poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote his famous “Song of Hiawatha,” based on legends of the Ojibwa, describing “happiness and plenty / In the land of the Ojibways, / In the pleasant land and peaceful.”
Stillwater is often called the birthplace of Minnesota. It was here in 1848, right on the corner of Main and Myrtle, that folks from the area convened and set in motion the legal process leading to the formation of the Minnesota Territory and then, in 1857, to the joining of the great State of Minnesota with the larger federal Union.
In the nineteenth century, Stillwater’s economy was driven by forestry. Timber harvested upstream flowed down the St. Croix, each log having been stamped by its owner. In the river at Stillwater, a boom, or barrier, was stretched across the water to catch the logs, which were then tallied and tracked as they went on to the sawmill. It was a marvelously intricate system in which people who had never even met one another managed to work together, following a complex process that turned trees into valuable building materials. This process might be called an example of the “spontaneous order” that the economist Friedrich Hayek was later to describe so ably. That is, it’s the process of thousands of people cooperating with one another for the benefit of all—and no bureaucrat in some faraway place could have made this system work so effectively. Yes, these loggers might also be competing with one another, but as long as commonsense laws were put in place, and as long as contracts were honored and enforced, then cooperation and competition could occur profitably at the same time. To this day, the St. Croix Boom Site is a notable tourist attraction, reminding visitors of the mighty lumberjacks and their legendary deeds.
In addition to hard workers, Stillwater has had its inventors. Back in 1921, Charles Strite received a patent for the pop-up toaster—the greatest thing since sliced bread, we like to joke! Five years later, Strite opened a factory in Minneapolis. Today Stillwater remains a town full of hardworking folks; the locals, along with visitors, enjoy boating on the river, strolling through the many stores clustered in the downtown, and visiting the local vineyards—and there’s even a brewery cave tour!
In other words, Stillwater, population eighteen thousand, has its own proud history, as well as its own homegrown entrepreneurial and civic energy. Indeed, we Stillwaterites continue to be responsible, civic-minded citizens, fully capable of making all the big decisions about ourselves, our families, and our community. We raise our kids responsibly, we make our own local decisions, and we run our lives in an accountable, transparent manner. So here’s a question: Why do the state capital, St. Paul, and the national capital, Washington, insist on telling us what to do? How did it happen that individual autonomy and local control were arrogated to state and federal bureaucrats? Here’s an even more important question: How can we take our power back, away from the bureaucrats who took it away from us in the first place?
All those questions—and a few answers—were becoming apparent to me during those awakening years. But first, Marcus and I had kids to raise. More kids than we had ever dreamed of.
When we moved to Stillwater in the spring of 1992, we had three kids, and a fourth soon joined us; Caroline Cathleen Bachmann was born on June 15, 1992. These four kids seemed to fill up our four-bedroom house, and yet we asked God for more—and we got more.
Sophia Anna Bachmann—her middle name honoring my father’s mother, the Wall Street Journal–reading Republican—was born on May 31, 1994. So there we were, at a total of five kids. We would have been happy with more, of course, but after that pregnancy, I realized I couldn’t have any more biological children.
During my early thirties, I found that I was developing severe headaches. They were diagnosed as migraines. The word “migraine,” I learned, is derived from the Greek word for “skull,” which is kranion, or “cranium,” plus the Greek word for “half,” which is hemi. So the term “hemi-cranium” was sanded and silted down to “migraine.” But let me tell you, a migraine hurts your whole cranium. Yet with the right medication, these headaches are entirely controllable; I thought to myself, Thank God that medical science has developed such effective treatments. As a child, I had read about how scientists such as Louis Pasteur and Jonas Salk had used their brilliance to identify and alleviate the causes of disease. Thanks to their genius, the blind could now see and the lame could walk. And so God’s plan for us unfolds here on earth.
I later learned that some thirty million Americans suffer from migraines, about three-fourths of them women—and that migraine incidence in women spikes after the change of life. At the time, I thought to myself, Welcome to the club, Michele. And while I am reluctant to cite sexism as a political issue, sexism certainly can exist. Many years later, when migraines briefly became a campaign issue for me, it appeared that political foes were maybe playing the gender card. After all, at one time or another, all of us, b
oth men and women, suffer pain and get sick.
Meanwhile, back in Stillwater, I threw myself into raising all these kids. During the years 1992 to 2000, I didn’t work outside our home, although I certainly was busy. At the Bachmann household, it was “kids r us.” I was always cooking, cleaning, sewing, painting, wallpapering, and generally mothering. I thought of the nursery rhyme, “There was an old woman who lived in a shoe / She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do.” Of course, I hadn’t seen anything yet.
Marcus had a good job, but with seven of us, money was always tight. And I will admit, my natural frugality—handed down to me from thrifty ancestors and reinforced by lean years while I was growing up—came into play. I knew all that I had done to make ends meet, to stretch dimes into dollars, and I knew all that Marcus had done as well. And we wanted to share those values with our kids. I was very tight at the grocery store, buying generics, skimping on meat, and making nearly all of our menus from scratch. For instance, we bought dehydrated milk powder at the store, then added water at home. The kids hated it, so Marcus and I finally gave in. But to this day, we are always on the lookout for discount coupons from any source; even on the campaign trail, Marcus picks through newspaper inserts looking for bargains. Most of my clothes, even today, are from consignment stores. As for our children, we wanted them to be good shoppers, and we also wanted them to think in terms of paying cash, not using a line of credit.
Lucas likes to tell the story of the time we went to the Goodwill store to buy him a pair of winter boots. Usually, Goodwill is a great place for bargains—but not on that day, or at least not for boots. I took one look at the price tag and said, “This is just too overpriced!” Okay, maybe I said it a little too loudly. Okay, maybe I said it loudly enough so that everybody else in the store heard me. My apologies to the other shoppers, who might not have needed to hear my audible price-point analysis, but I am glad that Lucas remembers. “Come on, kids,” I said, “Goodwill is too expensive for Mom!” The kids said, “Wow.” Listen to your mother—always good advice!
In Minneapolis, there was a great store called Discount 70. The rule is, everything is 70 percent off. And that’s a good start. But on the day after Christmas, all Christmas items are 90 percent off. Now that’s more like it! So every December 26, we would trek over to Discount 70 and load up on gifts for the year ahead, plus Christmas cards, plus wrapping paper, plus everything else we needed. It was always a great teachable shopping moment for the kids.
And I probably shouldn’t tell this story, but one time Marcus saw that a car dealer was offering roast beef sandwiches to visitors coming into the showroom. Not just hot dogs, but real roast beef. So Marcus went in, kicked a few tires, and ate a few sandwiches. Anything to stretch the paycheck!
Those were fun years. Lucas, who became a teenager in the nineties, probably has the quickest wit of anyone in the family, as well as the best vocabulary. He attended both Bethel University in St. Paul and the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis; he is now a medical doctor.
Harrison, five years younger than his brother and thus closer in age to the three girls, proved to be a wonderful big brother. A jock himself, he would always encourage his sisters to be athletic. In the manner of his father, Harrison has always been a social animal; he made a lot of friends in high school and made even more at Wheaton College in Illinois. Since graduating, he has nearly completed his master’s in teaching and worked for two years as a special education teacher for SomaliAmerican and Ethiopian refugee kids in St. Paul.
Elisa, the oldest of the girls, took enormous responsibility in raising her little sisters—and in helping all of us. She packed the knapsacks for the littler ones on their way to school, scheduled their dentist appointments, and made sure their permission slips were always ready. As the middle child, she has been the hub of the family—the go-to girl for all her siblings. She got the job done for us at home and then later went off to a Christian college in Florida.
Caroline is the most bubbly, the most animated, the most athletic—and the tallest of the girls. She makes friends easily; in high school she always took part in sports and ran cross-country. She was, and is, an avid reader and also takes a diligent approach to shopping; she and her little sister know their way around all the bargain outlets in the area—although, primarily, they are “Maxxinistas.” As in T.J.Maxx. Caroline is now in college.
Sophia is the youngest—and let’s talk about her name; she is perhaps the child that Marcus and I had the most trouble naming. Come to think of it, we have always had trouble naming our kids. Lucas went unnamed for six weeks, because as nervous first-time parents, we wanted to get his name right. Our first choice was Christian David, and of course our parents and friends all weighed in with comments and criticisms. Ultimately, it was embarrassing to have an unnamed baby, so we made a decision, Lucas Barrett Paul, and told our family and friends that they would have to live with it. After that, we wised up and resolved that future baby names would be our decision, not a family group project! Still, sometimes we were grateful for help. Harrison’s middle name, Sterling, came from the nurse at the hospital, who was just trying to nudge us to get something down on paper, in order to complete his birth certificate. But as soon as she said it, we loved it.
And of course, all the kids have nicknames. Lucas has been called “Deedee” since Elisa was little. She couldn’t pronounce “Lucas,” and so she called him “Deedee,” and the name stuck. So now, at home, he is known as “Doctor Deedee.” And at one time—I can’t remember why—Caroline assigned her siblings nicknames based on breakfast foods. So for years, the kids called us and each other names such as “Sausage,” for Marcus, or “Orange Juice” for Lucas, or “Honeypie” for Harrison. In that same fun spirit, Elisa became “Eggs,” Caroline was “Pancake,” and Sophia was “Waffle.” The nicknames have all evolved now, but we still have them. I am the main user of nicknames, and Marcus relies on me to decode who is who. He only knows them by their given names. “Is Sophia now ‘Toffee’?” he’ll ask.
Indeed, food seems to be a major theme around the Bachmann household. We play “turkey bingo” after Thanksgiving dinner is complete, keeping all the usual rules of bingo, except that instead of the winner saying, “Bingo!” he or she yells, “Gobble gobble!” And the winning prize includes treats Marcus knows each child wants, including beef jerky or Swiss chocolate. Depending on who wins the other’s prize, the loser might say, “Hey, that’s my prize—not fair!” Then there’ll be some chasing around the house, the losers chasing after the winner. Now we all know what will happen and the kids figure out who will chase whom around the dining-room table. Perhaps you had to be there, but for us it is hilarious and highly anticipated. And Boomer the beagle, whom we rescued from the pound, seems to love turkey bingo too. No wonder he’s gotten a bit hefty. Marcus makes sure that his treats are the rule, not the exception. Note to self: Boomer needs to be in the garage when too much food is being passed around.
Marcus always joked, “Life is short. Eat dessert first!” Of course, whenever I ate dessert, I thought of those two great Minnesota girls, Mary Richards and Rhoda Morgenstern, as Rhoda confronted weight issues on the great Mary Tyler Moore Show. Once, as Rhoda held a piece of candy in her hand, she said, “I don’t know why I’m putting this in my mouth. I should just apply it directly to my hips.” Rhoda’s predicament rings true to women everywhere. My own food weakness runs more toward cookies, and so I have to count every calorie—even if I sometimes count them retroactively!
Regarding Sophia and her name. I had always liked the name Sylvia or Solveig. And then Sigrid, which seemed like a nice way to remember my Norwegian ancestors. But Marcus pointed out that she’d inevitably be known as Siggy. But who knows, maybe Sophia could have handled that name with aplomb, as she has always been the most theatrical of our kids. Yet I might note that her career on the boards had its moments. One day, when she was onstage at a school play, s
he fainted. She was at the Christian school—it was a Bible play, and she was an Old Testament prophet—and then she swooned, right in front of the audience of mostly parents. I was in the front row, about twelve feet away from her, and jumped so fast that I caught her before she hit the floor. Marcus was there, too; he and I got her to the hospital. She fainted a second time at school; I was then serving in the Minnesota state senate, and I came running back from work. As a result, I missed a vote—which made the newspapers. This year, Sophia is off to college. Although technically a high school senior, she will do college work this year. She has always been unusually mature; the kids call her a forty-five-year-old woman.
Meanwhile, because there are so many of us in the family, and because we are always trying to save money, we celebrate birthdays on the cheap. Yet for holidays such as Easter, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and Christmas, we never scrimp or hold back. At Christmas we have a gigantic tree in the living room—a live tree, crowned by an angel. Christmas is a special family time, of course, and yet I missed it once, with great reluctance. That was Christmas 2007, when I went to visit the troops in Iraq. Family means everything to me, and yet that Christmas with the troops seemed even more important. On the flight back, our military transport plane stopped for an extra-long layover in Ireland, and I went out and bought sweaters for the kids as presents.
We got through those years with the help of a mortgage, but we incurred no other debt. Except for that home loan, Marcus and I have never been in debt. We always knew that fat years could turn into lean years, and we always wanted to be ready.
How did we do it? Well, I think there are some lessons here, especially for the greatest debtor of all, our own Uncle Sam. In the seventies, we often heard a slogan: “The personal is political.” That meant that everything one did in one’s personal life needed to be judged according to left-leaning politically correct standards. I disagree vehemently: I am against all attempts to pressure people into meeting arbitrary political standards. Here in America, we should be free to live our lives—bounded, of course, by basic ethics and by the law—without being hectored by a nanny state or even the nanny media.
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