Having your grown son move into your basement is not a parent's fondest dream, compared to, say, him joining the neurosurgery team at Johns Hopkins or quarterbacking an NFL playoff team for either of the Carolinas or winning the lottery.

However, it could be worse. He could have been elected to Congress or be running FEMA.

And there is the balancing factor. More than balancing, in fact -- it nails the positive end of the see-saw to the ground. He brings his lovely bride with him.

Whatever flaws Chris may have -- and boy, could I tell you stories -- they are more than compensated for by Rachel. One sign of the boy's intelligence, maybe the only sign, is that he fully recognizes that in the wife lottery, he came up with the winning ticket.

He has done little to deserve this good fortune, but then, what lottery winner has?

So, Chris' mother, Cece, and I are delighted to have the pair of them taking over the basement for a few short months before we turn them over to the United Kingdom for an undetermined period of time. However, it's not just the basement at stake, it turns out.

First, it should be noted that this is not a "basement" basement. I would refer to it more as the "ground floor," with world-class accommodations. It has a living area with a fireplace, a separate bedroom and bath. And it's mold-free (if you don't count the grout in the shower).

They are moving into this "basement" from a one-bedroom apartment which, except for having a bathtub and a kitchen (both roughly the same size), was probably smaller than their new digs. Despite giving away and throwing away enough household goods to give several immigrant families a good start in their new homeland, they have brought more stuff into my house than the U.S. Armed Forces took into Iraq, including better body armor.

The infamous under-stairs closet has long since been filled to bursting, and the battle for bookshelves is fully joined. All four of us are of a charmingly literary bent, meaning that we have collected enough printed matter to easily overwhelm the library of mid-sized state university. Then throw in (and I use that term advisedly) various pots, pans, knick-knacks, what-nots and doo-dads, and clutter soon becomes as insoluble as the Middle East.

It is clear that all that is keeping father and son from one another's throats is the cheerful countenance, organizational skills and energy of Rachel, who, by the way (and I say this only with fatherly-in-law pride) is way hotter than Kiera Knightley. I still don't know where she put all that stuff, but things downstairs seem remarkably orderly. As I clear off a bookshelf, which I promptly attend to every four or five days, she fills it up with things. Where those things were prior to finding a home on the bookshelf, I haven't a clue.

But there is one contested area that could yet require U.N. intervention. I refer, of course, to the driveway.

We have four vehicles between us. Well, three and one-quarter. The car Chris is driving qualifies as a vehicle only in the broadest sense of the term, being something with wheels and an engine that occasionally runs on its own power. It would be of more use armoring-up some Baghdad Humvee, except for the fact that projectiles can already pass through most of the car's metal unobstructed.

The real difficulty is the constant rearrangement of vehicles. It calls to mind one of those pocket puzzles where you have to slide around the little numbered tiles to get them into numerical order.

Still in all, Cece and I wouldn't trade these precious days for all the driveway and shelf space on the continent. We won't have Chris and Rachel close to us for long and we are grateful for each day.

It's not true that you can't go home again. You can. Just bring Rachel with you.

Steve Cope is the father of regular LifeFiles columnist Chris Cope.