My sister, Eileen, has numerous skills and virtues but one of her traits is more debatable: an uncompromising attitude. She has always held a clear opinion of what is right and wrong as well as what she likes and what she doesn’t. On the “no like” list is the smell of cigarette smoke. No matter the brand of weed, even kretek, cigarette smoke is not a favored aromatic in her compendium of smells. The reason, she purports, is that when she was a teenager she was knocked out by a falling iron bar—which also knocked out her sense of smell. From that time onwards, there was for her no more wonderful fumes from Mother’s freshly-baked bread; the scent of lilacs in the spring; or even the slightly fetid odor of earthworms rising from the loam after a warm rain. Strangely, though, there was one aroma she could still detect: cigarette smoke, which not only irritated her olfactory glands but actually made her nauseous.
In December 1978, after spending three years toiling in the copper mines of Indonesia, I returned to the United States for the purpose of going to graduate school at the University of Michigan (UM) in Ann Arbor (AA) where I enrolled in the spring of 1980. There were a number of reasons for me to go to UM-AA: 1) UM was the only school to which I had applied; 2) UM offered me a full scholarship; 3) I was able to squeeze my classroom work into the days Monday through Thursday, thus leaving me free to go to Detroit for a good time on weekends; and 4) Eileen and her husband, Bill, were living there. Obviously, it was because of the fourth reason, I chose UM.
At this juncture in my sister’s life, Eileen (who had given birth to daughter Megan in July 1979) was juggling the demands of motherhood with work at the AA Public Library while her husband Bill was commuting most days of the week to Lansing, where he had a job at the Michigan State Legislature. The two of them—or the “three,” I should say, as Megan was a VERY BIG part of their life—were living in an apartment complex on Pauline Boulevard which went by the highly original name of “Pauline Apartments.” Their unit was more spacious than the previous one they had occupied, Nob Hill Apartments, located in the area of town known as—Guess what?—Nob Hill, but was modest, nonetheless, at least compared to the home I occupied at the time of this story: a fantastically modern home of a wealthy friend with four spacious bedrooms, cathedral ceilings, hot tub, and sauna—the whole works!—set in a picturesque woodlot.
I remark on the difference in living situations between myself and Eileen only so that the reader may intuit the difference in our personalities with Eileen being a down-to-earth type of person, able to make do, neither demanding nor expecting more than she herself has earned, and I being hedonistic, concentrating on personal satisfaction, and ready to have others do for him what he is averse to doing for himself.
The city of AA, though not without certain charms (if you happen to like football and beer) was for me a fairly boring place to live (especially after my three years in Jakarta). Entertainment venues were sparse. Thank heavens, therefore, for Eileen and Bill! With them in AA the city a much more bearable place in which to live. To their benefit, my presence gave them easy access to a babysitter whose services were free for the asking.
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My sister, Eileen, and niece, Megan, in 1981. A bearded Uncle John at around that same time.
I can’t remember for certain the day or month it was they asked me to babysit for Megan but it must have been January or February of 1981 because the day was as cold a one as it ever gets in Michigan, when church mice sleep near votive candles and cheerleaders carry their pompoms between their thighs. Maybe it was Valentine’s Day—which would give this story a heart-warming touch. Yes, let’s say it was February 14 and Bill and Eileen were going out for a rare dinner-out and film. At any rate, it was so cold that when Bill ran into the flower shop on Main Street to buy a dozen roses for Eileen he had to double park the car and keep the engine running so that the internal temperature of the sedan didn’t turn the bouquet he’d purchased into a clump of blackened blooms before he returned to Pauline Apartments on Pauline Boulevard to present them to his doe-eyed wife.
As I did not own a car, Bill would have come over to my manse on Kearny Court. When he arrived I might have been soothing my academically weary bones in the hot tub or sitting in front of the fireplace with a cocktail in one hand and a cigarette in the other while listing to a Boz Scaggs album on the Bose stereo but I know for sure that when leaving the house and the frigid air attacked my every pore I would have sworn under my breath that only love of family would force me to go out on an evening so cold.
With the clock ticking away, and show time drawing near, by the time Bill and I arrived at Pauline Apartments, Eileen was bundled up and ready to go. Little Megan was already dressed for bed and, remarkably pleasant child that she was, was making no fuss about being abandoned by her heartless parents to her bearded uncle. (The beard, which I sported during the winter months in AA, was a point in my favor for my niece who seemed to find nearly endless, probably sadistic, joy in pulling on it.)
“Here’s the keys, there’s food in the fridge, Megan’s been feed and is ready for bed, we’ll be back after the movie,” were Eileen’s hurried words as she rushed toward the door, before dropping the more distinctly enunciated phrase, “AND NO SMOKING IN THE HOUSE!”
“Hmm,” I thought, “how many hours would it be before I could have my next nicotine fix?” And even before Eileen and Bill were out the door, I called to Megan, “Come to Uncle John! We’re going outside to play!”
Eileen stopped in her tracks. “You can’t take Megan outside in this weather!”
“It won’t be long, just time enough for a cig,” I remarked.
Eileen’s voice became a loud plea: “But you can’t! Megan will freeze to death.”
“Oh, what’s a little frostbite?” was my flippant reply.
Eileen raced into the kitchen, turned on the exhaust fan above the stove and cracked the window above the sink. “Here’s what you can do,” she said. “If you must smoke, stick your hand out the window and put your face to the exhaust but first put Megan in her room!”
“Okay…” I clicked my tongue to cinch the deal and send Eileen and Bill on their way.
I can’t say for sure but I don’t think I smoked that night. Just having witnessed Eileen, the vehement anti-smoker, break her own inviolate rule in order ensure her daughter’s comfort, made me want to put Megan’s safety first, too, which brings me to the one small point I’m trying to make here: that love for others often requires the ability to compromise and that to compromise is a sign of compassion and empathy, not failure.
John McGlynn
john_mcglynn@lontar.org