Something Eva Can Do

Eva has been suffering for several weeks from “middle child” syndrome. It really kicked in once Moira learned how to roll her r’s and Eva couldn’t do it, no matter how much she practiced. She wasn’t comforted when both Jonathan and I demonstrated (spittily) that no matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t roll our r’s either. She began mentioning at odd moments throughout the day that there was nothing she could do that Moira and/or Iris couldn’t do. Bringing up all her wonderful personality traits, her excellent reading skills, her inventiveness and crazy sense of humor was cold comfort to her. She wanted an actual, identifiable skill that she could do and no other kids in this house could. And I couldn’t think of anything. That’s kind of the problem when your older sister is three years older than you. All of Eva’s skills have already been learned by Moira.

Then I realized that there was something I could teach her that Moira and Iris don’t know how to do. And so on New Year’s Day Eva learned how to crochet. Several hours later she’d finished a dish cloth in single crochet with a shell border. And nobody else (well, except me, but luckily I don’t count) in this house except Eva can crochet. I think we’ll leave it that way for a while. She deserves to have her unique talent last for a while longer.

And then later on New Year’s Day (it should have been done on New Year’s Eve, but Moira was sick so we postponed it) we participated in our annual braincell-killing tradition of throwing the lead to predict our futures for the new year. Usually the lead (a lump of solder melted in a tin can over a red-hot stove burner, then tossed in a dish of cold water) forms into a bland lump accompanied by a few smaller generic shapes we call “swords” and “teardrops”. It takes a lot of creativity to predict anything from the usual lump or misshapen ball. Last year my lead looked exactly like a golf club – and I don’t play golf. I raised it up out of the water and declaimed something along the lines of, “Umm … this golf club is predicting that this year I’ll play more games!” When I threw the lead on January 1 this year, I got something different. Something downright beautiful. And I can’t tell you how many times in the past few days I’ve thought of this lovely form as an omen of hope and change. To me, it looks like a flower (a peony, to be exact). And so even though it’s just a piece of melted solder, I can’t wait to blossom. I’m doing everything I possibly can to make my New Year’s fortune come true this year.

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