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

My mother was deep in conversation with my friend as we waited for our dinner to come, and I heard her say, “Margaret was diagnosed with autism in fall of 1970. She was just three years old.” I felt sucker punched. My mother never noticed. But to me, my story now went like this: my birthday is the anniversary of Margaret’s autism.

AT LARRY’S I waited until I was sufficiently caffeinated, and then I drove north on Washington Street, the north-south artery that divides Spokane in half. I passed through a revived downtown area, past River-front Park, the site of Expo ’74. The bridge took me across the Spokane River and up the hill into the Gonzaga University district. We went to high school near here, all of us but Margaret. Two of my siblings went to the university, and Larry finished law school in this neighborhood. Ann and Larry got married here, and I learned how to do a beer bong. Mike had narrowly avoided wrecking the car here on more than one snowy morning as we headed to school. This neighborhood had always been a kind of proving ground for our family in one way or another. Even now, I half expected to see a younger version of my brother Larry speeding down Hamilton Boulevard with Mike in the passenger seat and me in the back with Vanessa McRae.

By the time I pulled up in front of Margaret’s house it was about 10:00 AM. I got halfway up the walk before the door banged open and revealed Margaret’s large frame. “Hi, Eileen!” she said. Here stood my big sister, smiling and happy to see me. What a relief. She was wearing the tan hiking pants I had bought her the previous summer and a short-sleeved zip-neck top I had picked out for her. When we had gone on a hike the previous fall, she’d been dressed in linen pants and a long-sleeved shirt. Neither had held up well in the dusty heat. Today Margaret was also sporting a raspberry fleece coat that matched the shirt. Her hair had been cut recently. She looked great, and she was smiling. Thank God.

“Hi, Eileen!” she said again and embraced me. My big, soft sister. It was a quick hug, but it was a hug. Not the no-arm lean-in I’d had last fall, when she seemed less sure about wanting to go anywhere with me. That day she would barely look at me and kept muttering under her breath, making weird faces, and avoiding eye contact when we went to REI for some rainy-day shopping.

A young woman stepped out onto the porch and introduced herself. This was Alicia, the one who had urged Margaret to call me. New to the staff, Alicia was Margaret’s “focus person,” the staff member who was most tuned in to my sister’s daily life and tried to help her do the things she wanted to do: find a job, go swimming, run errands. Alicia was smart, cute, and genuinely warm. “Margaret was so excited that you were coming this morning,” she said. And later, when I asked how Margaret had been and what she had been up to, Alicia filled me in. Margaret obviously liked her very much, as she smiled and hugged Alicia good-bye before getting into the car. As I left, Alicia told me, “I just love Margaret.” I wanted to believe her. I could see how my sister would love her back. I needed to believe that Margaret was living with people who really cared about her well-being, who saw her as a person, an individual.

It was hard to believe, because I’d met a lot of Alicias: kind young women and men, often students, who did this job well and eventually moved on to better-paying, easier careers. I wanted someone to stay and be there for Margaret always, like family. But how could I expect that of a complete stranger when I couldn’t do it myself ? And why was I still feeling guilty that I was not there taking care of Margaret? No one had ever asked me to, and I was certainly not qualified in either temperament or training. But I had taken care of her when we were growing up, as a matter of course. I was her big little sister, but I still felt responsible for her as an adult, and I felt guilty. As much as I was trying to accept that it just wouldn’t be good for either of us, the survivor’s guilt was hard to put down; I’d gotten used to the feeling of carrying that guilt on my shoulder, the way our dad used to carry a case of beer down the dock to our boat.

Margaret had now galloped down the walk to the van. Dizzy wagged her tail in greeting and got a gentle pat on the nose from my sister. We both climbed into the van. “Hi, Eileen!” she said again and gave the door a mighty slam. The van rocked from side to side as I remembered, again, that Margaret closes every door as if she’s the Incredible Hulk. “Hi, Margs!’ I leaned across the gap between the seats to give her another hug, still struck by her physical presence. “You look so pretty,” I said, “Who gave you that coat?” She looked down at it and rubbed the fleece with her finger. “Ann,” she said confidently, meaning our oldest sister, which I doubted.

“You want to go for a hike?” she asked me, but it wasn’t really a question. What she really meant was “I want to go for a hike.” But I responded anyway. “Yes, I do,” I said, and I pulled out my notebook.

We are an anxious people, we Garvins. On this day I was anxious because it is my habit, and my sister was anxious because she has autism. Or maybe it had nothing to do with her autism; it was just the family quirk that made her