Rambling On About Goats and Whatnot

A very niece-and-nephew heavy weekend. The Husband and I flew up to Chicago to visit with his sister and brother-in-law and the adorable, rambunctious and precocious six-year-old nephew. I was nearly ready to burst anyway, because as a late Christmas present, I'd brought along the first three Harry Potter books, 'Freckle Juice' (my favorite book when I was his age), and 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' (my second favorite book when I was his age). The kid is SET for reading, as far as I'm concerned.

Aside from that, The Mizzou Fan (aka my sister-in-law, aka My Brother's Keeper) is preparing to explode with the triplets at any moment, and the past week has been a bit scary. First her blood pressure went up, and now her protein levels have gone up, too, and her OB finally had to admit her so they could monitor her and the babies. The good news is that all three of my future Auntie-squeal-inducers are doing very well -- above average weight and everything -- which means they probably won't have to spend much time in the hospital after they're born. So it's likely that their rugged four pounds apiece is what's causing Mom's body chemistry to suddenly go all screwy, meaning they're almost ready to make their entrance into the world, so that Auntie can finally appreciate them for the perfect little angels they are.

Talking about this with my brother has been far more entertaining than I can ever aspire to portray here. Though never a particularly talkative individual, at the beginning, my brother was freaked out to the point of near speechlessness. His announcement to me after they'd received confirmation of their impending children went like this:


HIM: "There are three of them."
ME: "Three what?"
(Long pause.)
HIM: "Babies."
ME: "YOU'RE HAVING TRIPLETS?!"
HIM: "Yeah."
ME: "That's...wow. That's some serious shit, right there."
HIM: "Yeah."
ME: "Jesus. You're kidding me, right?"
(Long pause. Sound of beer being opened and guzzled.)
HIM: "No."
ME: "Well, that's pretty exciting, I guess."
(More beer guzzling.)
HIM: "Yeah."
ME: "I'm trying to find a bright side to this. There isn't one, is there?"
HIM: "No. Three. College. Fuck."
(Sound of beer being finished and thrown away, and new beer being opened.)


After a while, he grew to accept the situation a bit, which he kind of had to do, what with three of everything being delivered to their house all the time and his wife expanding at the rate and speed of your average nuclear bomb. At this point, I was capable of finding the situation hilarious. After all, my brother was facing down the impending arrival of fatherhood. The same brother that -- not very long ago -- I used to have to call on the fifteenth of every month to remind him to pay his phone bill so it wouldn't get shut off FOR THE THIRD TIME. The same brother that used to kneel on top of me and fart in my face.

Yeah, that's fatherhood material right there.

It wasn't until I went out to KC for the shower that I really got a glimpse of my brother in this role. I'd seen him interact with The Mizzou Fan before. I'd seem them be romantic. I'd seen them wrestle on the floor, too. (In explanation of this, she's an only child. Therefore, she never had an older brother, and that's the only justifiable reason I can find for them being able to do this in an entirely playful manner. Having had an older brother, my first instinct has always been a solid knee to the balls, because once you end up on the bottom...refer to the previous comment about being farted on. It becomes an instinct.)

Anyway, I saw a bit of a change in him. Not just helping out his big pregnant wife, but actually taking a role with everything, talking about how they were going to handle the situation, what they'd each have to do, and even sounding kind of excited about it all. In other words, being an adult and finding a mature way to plan for the impending arrival of three simultaneous infants.

I've had several conversations with my parents about this sudden onset of maturity. For their part, they're very impressed by it. I'm less impressed than relieved. Having fled the nest rather early for the most part, it's always been my opinion that the only thing standing between my brother and adulthood was the fact that he and I are disturbingly alike in our own way. Which is to say that we're a pair of lazy fucks. If we're capable of getting someone else to do something for us (through pity or manipulation or anything else we can think of) instead of having to do it ourselves, we'll take the opportunity in a heartbeat. At the age of twelve, both of us were informed that we were now responsible adolescents, and that our hygiene, room cleanliness, and laundry were now up to us. As a girl who did not particularly wish to be recognized school-wide as 'That Chick Who Smells Like A Homeless Person,' I took this little dictum to heart. My brother did not. He stank. Dear God, he stank. Speaking from experience, there is nothing so ripe as a fifteen-year-old boy who hasn't showered in three days, refuses to buy himself deodorant, hasn't washed his sheets in a year and believes that anything on his floor that doesn't actually have to be SCRAPED off the floor is perfectly acceptable apparel to wear in public.

And we all basically got so fed up with him stinking up the place that we did his laundry for him. We cleaned his room for him. I began waking up early just so I could go knock on his door and whine at him every morning until he finally bothered to get up and take a shower before going to school.

It should be noted at this point that my brother has become metrosexually fastidious in the past few years. He wears Ralph Lauren and Armani. He lounges around the house in Tommy Hilfiger and showers daily. He's improved, to say the least. But this is still a person that -- up until his wife became too pregnant to do so -- had never done his own laundry in his entire life, and needed six daily phone calls to sort it all out the first few times. And as much as I'd like to give him credit for pulling the proverbial wool over Mom's eyes for that long, I really can't, because I've always kind of got the impression that my mother LIKES doing laundry. Especially my brother's.

Yeah. I can't explain that. It's just one of those Mom things you don't question.

In any case, it's just odd to see my brother so attentive. Not only to his wife, but to the household in general. Because I can understand him being attentive to his gigantically pregnant wife. Rather hard to miss, that. It's a lot weirder to buy the kid who used to blithely step over dog shit in the living room so he wouldn't have to clean it up walking into the kitchen and washing a sink full of dishes just 'cause.

Or maybe it's just a leftover from last night's 'Scrubs,' when Dr. Cox told his sister that it was just impossible to see her without remembering their childhood. And whereas theirs was abusive and terrible, and ours very much wasn't, I guess there's a larger point there. I have a very different perspective on my brother as he exists right now, because I know every step he's taken to get there. And it's reciprocal. He knows every step I've taken, too. It's deeper than lifelong friends, because lifelong friends never got trapped in a car with you for hours on end to go see relatives, or were let in on the wacky, occasionally local-law-breaking traditions of your family. They were never exposed to the half-English ramblings of how we got here, or the knowledge and fierce sort of heritage that we were exposed to.

They'd also likely never shared a room with a goat, and that situation...is kind of hard to explain.

It's just weird to imagine these kids, all some mix of dark and light, all being parented by one of the most organized, rational, patient individuals ever to walk the face of the planet and...a guy who just started doing his own laundry six months ago. My sister-in-law is prepared for this as much as anybody can be, but I'm not sure my brother is, especially since I have yet to have a conversation with him in which he doesn't half-jokingly offer me one of his children to raise. That offer has only become more serious in the last week. I love my brother dearly, but even his firmly even-keeled Picses personality is showing the strain. He's freaked out again, as he should be. None of The Mizzou Fan's health problems are slight, especially at this point. The babies are in danger, and she is, too. It's all...well, it's all become very serious and dangerous, and we're all crap at dealing with shit like that, my brother included.

So we settle for really dark humor. As in:


ME: "Well, at least you could use the life insurance to pay off the loan on that minivan."
HIM: "That, and most of the mortgage. And no college, either."
ME: "Yeah. Island beach house."


This is the main reason why I don't allow myself anywhere near anybody who's lost someone in the past year. I've rather learned from experience that this sort of approach doesn't work on most people. And that trying to explain our method of mourning our dead only makes them step back and regard us with horror.

Some things are better left to the family annals. Like goats and grief.

I do hope it all works out, though, and that The Mizzou Fan and all of the babies are okay. It's amazing how...territorial it all feels. Don't get me wrong; I love my nephew to pieces. But it is a bit different, I suppose. These kids aren't just irresistably cute toddlers; they're blood family. It's deeper, I guess. After all, The Nephew has a slew of cousins and other Aunts and Uncles. The triplets only have me and The Husband. And I fully intend to spoil them until they don't know which way is up.

That is, after all, an Auntie's prerogative.

And I really can't wait. I know it's better the longer they get to gestate and all that, but I really just can't wait to meet my new little nephews and niece in person. It's jarring how much of their personality you can make out through advanced sonograms. For instance, we know already that the girl is the largest, and seems to be the leader of the bunch. One of the boys is rather frail and wiry, and the other one looks like Charlie Weiss (or Rodney Dangerfield, if you don't know who Charlie Weiss is). They've all moved into birthing position and are ready to go.

And the rest of it...I think it was Bill Cosby who said that you don't really know what kind of person you are until you become a parent. So I guess we'll see.