Spider Eyes

I was two and a half years old when my mother first told me she was going to have another baby. I remember the moment vividly. I was sitting on the avocado-green carpet in the doorway of our kitchen, playing with a purple inflatable Easter bunny that had a little plastic carrot in its paw.

She asked if I wanted a brother or a sister.

I recall quite clearly indicating that I’d like a brother.

This was not because I had any preference for a male sibling. At the time, I had absolutely no idea what either of those words meant—I simply liked the sound of the word “brother.” It just sort of rolled off the tongue, or so I thought. For all I knew it was a kind of breakfast pastry—or perhaps a cool new floaty toy to play with in the bathtub.

Several months later, my order finally arrived.

*

For reasons unknown to me, the delivery of my brother was a fairly involved process. My grandmother whisked me away to spend a couple of days at her house. As near as I could tell, in order to prepare for the imminent arrival of the package, both of my parents would need to be away for a bit.

I absolutely adored my maternal grandparents, so I didn’t see this as anything to raise a huge fuss over. I don’t recall much, but I seem to remember I had a capital time with them.

One enjoyable activity in particular involved gathering all of my grandma’s pots and pans from the kitchen cabinet and arranging them on the floor around me. This made for a rather serviceable drum kit, or so I thought. The lid of her Revere Ware soup pot in particular was an excellent stand-in for the cymbals.

I still have the color photo my grandmother took of me in the act—wooden spoon clutched in one hand, my other hand raised—with my pudgy little index finger pointing at the camera, as if directing the orchestra to join in. For reasons known only to my toddler self, I was also sporting a styrofoam ice bucket upside down on my head—like some sort of Viking helmet.

There’s something about a grandchild that causes an adult to become not only tolerant of this sort of child’s play, but to find it impossibly cute. I’m assuming that this picture was taken because I was deemed adorable rather than a menace to the peace and quiet at Grandma’s house.

*

Eventually, she announced that it was time for me to go home. I thought perhaps it was because I’d drummed myself out of her favor, but she seemed unbothered by this. She instead told me I was going home to meet my new “baby sister.”

Wait… what? Sister?

Clearly the postal service had screwed something up.

Oh well. I clambered up into the vinyl seat of her dark brown Mercury and off we went down the gravel road to the main highway for the brief five-minute return trip to the rental house we were living in at the time.

Sister or brother, no matter—I was curious to see what all the fuss was. Everyone seemed positively effusive about the whole thing.

I was ushered through the back door and into the kitchen. Beyond the far doorway into the living room, I spied Mom and Dad sitting on the floor next to a large box of some sort. It was made of a dark navy and forest green tartan plaid fabric and had these funny curved feet that allowed it to be rocked from side to side.

As I approached… there she was. Good lord and butter, it was a baby!

At two and a half years old, I had yet to learn the meaning of the word “usurper,” but my definition of “sister” at that moment would probably have been in the ballpark.

Well. This was a fine how-do-you-do. My replacement—hmmph.

I grasped the edge of the bassinet and peered in.

Mom told me her name was Jill. I was pronounced her “big brother.” I remained resolutely unimpressed by the sudden field promotion.

Unusually for a newborn, her head was already adorned with a gorgeous mass of dark brown curls tied up with little pink bows. She was wide awake and looking up at me with what I must admit were stunning dark eyes. They almost glittered in the soft lamplight of the living room.

“So? What do you think of her?” my mother asked gently, as she continued to rock her back and forth.

What did I think? I really wasn’t sure what to think.

So, this was what all of this “sister” hoopla was about? I finally managed to respond.

“She’s got spider eyes, Mommy!”

I don’t recall my mother’s reaction to this, although I’d imagine it was one of laughter tinged with the immediate rueful recognition that her little boy was about to become quite a jealous handful for a while.

I am given to understand that I was, too, although I actually don’t remember any of it. I only know the story as it was related to me later in life.

But, it seems I scored the first victory in the long-running battle of sibling rivalry within the first minute of meeting my new baby sister. The nickname stuck immediately and has followed her to this day.

As far as I know, she is the only fifty-something-year-old woman in all of Iowa who has an email handle that includes “Spider Eyes” in the text.

It’s almost like a badge of honor to her. Hmm…

*

Despite this somewhat inauspicious start, we quickly became our own two-person entertainment committee.  We were children growing up on a farm in rural Iowa, so it wasn’t like there were lots of neighbor kids around with whom we could play.

Dad built us a big sandbox in the back yard and filled it with a truckload of fresh sand from the local quarry. For hours on end we’d stir around with our little metal shovels and plastic buckets. This continued until my mother made the horrifying discovery that our two outdoor cats had commandeered it as the world’s largest litter box.

That afternoon we were tubbed and scrubbed in hot water and soap from head to toe and summarily forbidden from ever playing in the sandbox again. A short while later, Dad was charged with its removal on sanitary grounds.

It was fun while it lasted, but let’s face it: we were basically sculpting sand castles out of used Tidy Cat. To this day, I still have a mild aversion to Tootsie Rolls.

To make up for the loss of the sandbox, Dad constructed a tree house where we'd spend most of the summer. After breakfast, we'd troop down the field behind the house to the little creek where it stood in an ancient oak tree. We’d while away the afternoons—making mud pies, tossing rocks into the creek, playing with a hapless frog we’d captured in the grass—whatever came to our minds.

By the end of the summer we were so tan, we looked like little walnuts.

*

Next Christmas, Jill got a “Malibu Barbie” play set. One of the things it came with was a miniature plastic swimming pool that you could put water in. It was just doll-sized, of course—maybe two feet long at most—but it looked snazzy.

Me? I was a Tonka man. I got their tanker truck and firetruck, both of which could actually hold water. The firetruck came with a three-inch red metal fire hydrant that had a real garden-hose-sized adapter on one side. On the other, you’d hook up these little rubber "fire hoses" and plug them into the side of the truck. This caused the cherry picker/basket thing on the top to squirt water from a plastic nozzle. For a grade school boy, well… this was the bee's knees.

The following summer was the year that the local city pool was closed for the season for a major renovation. One of our primary summertime activities was off the menu and we were really at a loss.

One afternoon, I had the bright idea to take my tanker truck, the firetruck, and Jill's Malibu Barbie pool—and gather them all on the back patio. I filled the pool with water, then got the notion that Barbie's Malibu dream house was on “fire”—so I proceeded to soak it with my fire truck.

Mom didn't see any harm in what I was doing, and it was a hot summer day, so she let both of us change into our swimsuits. I think she was just glad to have us out of the house and out of her hair for the afternoon.

Jill and I proceeded to dig into this opportunity with relish, dipping our feet into the tiny pool that held maybe a gallon of water at most. I decided she needed some fire extinguishing too, so I began squirting her with the fire truck. We both were greatly amused by the whole thing and proceeded to engage in a water battle on the back patio for the rest of the afternoon.

Since we’d had so much fun, we asked Mom the next day if we could play with the "Barbie Pool" again. She seemed to be especially pleased that we’d managed to make it through the previous afternoon without getting into one of those classic sibling “He started it! No, SHE started it!” screaming matches, so she saw no reason to object.

This immediately became a daily activity for us. All was well, until a couple of weeks later when my Dad got the water bill from the Rathbun Rural Water Association. I can still hear the shock and indignation in his voice as he exclaimed, “How in the hell have we used five hundred extra gallons of water this month?!” He pronounced “five hundred” in a somewhat precise and exaggerated manner.

He never knew what had happened as far as I know. Mom quietly ran interference and made up some tale about the marigolds out front needing more water than usual because of the heat wave. After that, though, the Barbie Pool joined the unfortunate city pool shutdown.

*

Her spider eyes notwithstanding, Jill and I seemed to generally get along as well as any two siblings close in age could be expected to. And, as I’ve said before, as far as the nickname that has followed her even until this very day? I have no memory of actually saying that when I was first introduced to her in the long ago year of 1972.

But—I won’t lie—it totally sounds like something I might have said.

I know me. I’ve seen me do it.

As we grew up together, the mischievous dynamic we shared never seemed to entirely go away. In the early 2000s, Jill decided for a time to try living in Tennessee where I’d settled. She secured a job as an ICU nurse at the same hospital where I was working as a newly-minted attending physician.

What makes this oddly full-circle is that as children, one of our favorite activities was to play “hospital” using the family cat as our long-suffering “patient.” I was in possession of a nifty Fisher-Price “doctor kit” and she had the matching “nurse kit.” As “Doctor” Mike and “Nurse” Jill, we spent many an afternoon running our little hospital.

We thought it was pretty cool, but then my dad would walk through the living room—on his way to the kitchen for a snack—and in his patented smart-aleck tone of voice would say, “Ahh, I see we’re filming another episode of General Horse Spittle.”

I immediately recognized his teasing was a reference to the popular daytime soap opera, but it wasn’t until a few years later that I learned what the word “spittle” meant.

Oh, har-dee-har-har. Funny man.

Anyway, here we were now, both in our thirties, young medical professionals. I never imagined we’d end up working together in the same hospital, let alone treating the same patients.

Then one day it happened. I was rounding with a medical student and I needed to put in what is called a “central line” for a patient in the ICU. It’s a type of glorified IV procedure that generally only physicians are trained to perform. I won’t bore you with the details.

When I arrived at the nurse’s station, I realized Jill was the nurse assigned to this particular patient that day. Oh well, no worries. I’d known her long enough to know she was an excellent nurse. We’d have this line in without a hitch.

I went into the patient’s room with the student in tow. Jill was already setting up the instruments I’d need. I stood patiently with my hands gloved, fingers steepled together to avoid touching anything that would contaminate them. As I did, I noticed her accidentally touching part of the disposable sterile drape I’d be using to perform the procedure.

Truly not a big deal. We just needed to discard it and get a new one.

But then, like a reflex, big brother mode suddenly kicked in. I said to her in my best faux-offended voice, “YOU contaminated the sterile field. I’m telling Mom!”

The student froze like a deer in headlights, first looking at me, then Jill, then back at me again. Jill, of course, just rolled her eyes and sighed as she reached into the drawer for another drape.

Sensing the student’s profound puzzlement and rising concern, I chuckled and said, “It’s okay, she really is my sister. I’m just giving her a hard time because I can.”

He gave a nervous little laugh and looked over at her. She immediately shot back at him, “Be glad you only have to work with him for a month. I’ve had to put up with him my whole life.”

That brought on an actual belly laugh from the student, and the tension was diffused.

I smiled and said nothing at first—she’d won this round handily, and I’d let her savor the victory. There would be other days.

After a moment passed, I peered over the top of my glasses and said, “Touché... ”

With a faint upward curl of her lip, she returned my steady gaze—those spider eyes twinkling the way they always had, from the moment I first met her.