How to Be a Sister by Eileen Garvin (icecream ebook reader .TXT) 📗

and she’d say something like, “You don’t spit your juice, Eileen! That’s good manners! Ha ha ha ha ha!” And then she would spit on me again. She also loved to grab the gallon jug of milk out of the refrigerator and pour it down the drain to make us scream, “No, Margaret! Don’t pour the milk out!” This also made her laugh, and we were not supposed to respond as she hollered, “You don’t pour the milk out! Ha! Ha! Ha!”

We’ve spent a lot of time not reacting to Margaret’s kooky jokes, and I don’t think it has made a bit of difference. I love her and she has shaped my life in ways that I continue to try to understand, but when I was young, mostly I felt like I wanted to kill her when she did this sort of thing. In college when I read the myth of Sisyphus, I felt an immediate kinship. I knew what it was like to do the same thing over and over again, to go beyond exhaustion with the repetition of some meaningless task, and to wake up the next day and do it all over again without any hope of reprieve. That’s how I felt when we, as a family, were trying to teach Margaret to do, or not do, something. I always think about Margaret when I am around other people’s children, because I was one of the many people who helped bring her up. Although I am three years younger than she, I am, for all intents and purposes, her big sister, and it’s the only frame of reference I have for child rearing. I realize it is not a conservative comparison, but it’s all I’ve got.

TONY, UNLIKE MARGARET, only spit on me the one time. And I came to recognize that it was an accident, although after the response he got, you could tell he really wanted to do it again. After Ann left for her class, I kept reminding myself that these three children were not like my unpredictable sister. They were fairly reasonable little people; they had rules and a moral code. They might have been a bit too focused on keeping score—who ate the last cookie, whose turn it was for Xbox, who got to pick the last movie—but at least they all followed the same basic playbook with a range of rules: What Is Allowed, What Is Not Allowed, and What Aunt Eileen Might Not Know Is Not Allowed. This last category left me at a serious disadvantage. The rules and regulations of the childhood code of ethics seemed to have left me, and I felt panicked. I thought I was supposed to have some kind of answer to their nonstop negotiating for sugary snacks, television, a later bedtime, or their turn with a toy. The internal bickering and massive power struggles made me feel like Colin Powell during the Bush administration: I was supposed to have the answers, but no one was listening to me.

But I soon realized that I didn’t have to say much, if anything at all. These kids knew what was right and wrong within the family charter, even if I didn’t. I found that if I didn’t say anything and just looked knowingly at them, they came to the answer on their own. This tactic kept the peace and gave the illusion, at least, that I was on to them.

To be fair, they didn’t give me any real trouble, because they are good kids. They’ve moved around in the migratory army life—California, Massachusetts, Virginia, Beijing, Virginia again, Hong Kong, Virginia one last time, and now Washington State. Through all that, they’ve hung together. They are kind to one another and still play together, even the boys, who are separated by seven years.

And did they ever play; this was a gaming family. On the first night the three of them tried to teach me to play chess, a game I have never even tried, but which is a passion for my husband. It made me shudder, the anonymous-looking pieces and the blank board, which somehow inspired very mysterious, specific moves. Where were the chutes and ladders? The Lollipop Forest? The metal wheelbarrow and Scotty dog? But Bobby, Tony, and Julia were good little teachers. Plus we were using the Lord of the Rings chess set with its recognizable Orcs and Wizards and such, not those neutered-looking wooden pegs. I was actually starting to catch on, and then I won by default when Tony, who had been beating me soundly, fell victim to teasing from his older brother, got pissed off, and threw the board.

On the second night, they asked me what I wanted to play after dinner, and I said, “What do you have?” “Risk,” they said, “and Murder in the Abbey, and Scattergories, and Cranium.” I said I didn’t know how to play any of those, but I’d be willing to learn.

Tony slapped the table with an open palm like he’d just about had it with me. “Aunt Eileen, you don’t know ANYTHING!” he exclaimed. The older kids looked at me to see if I was going to get mad. I’m pretty sure there is a rule in the family charter about how you are supposed to address adults, but by this time I’d decided that I mostly fall into the middle ground regarding this sort of etiquette; I am not a parent and I am not a child, but I feel a closer kinship to the children, especially when I’m sleeping on the hide-a-bed in the middle of the living room. So I just smiled at Tony and told him it was okay that I didn’t know anything, because I had him to teach me.

That’s the truth, too. These kids taught me something every time I saw them. I learned not to be terrified if Julia asked me to brush her beautiful auburn hair in the morning. I used to flee the comb