e-locutions

Strangers always told my mother that I look like her, but only in the absence of my dad.  Aesthetically, I am the female model of my father. However these strangers based their perspective on character traits, not appearance. My mother and I shared mannerisms, facial expressions, stance, cadence and style. Like best friends who grow to adopt the other’s preferences, my mom and I resembled each other even though we actually shared few physical attributes other than our height and hands.

Derek saw himself in Andee, her ebullient friendliness being the most predominant shared characteristic. She also shared his long-limbs, nose and eyes. People also mistook me for her mother, but people always assume the woman barking orders must be a mother. Sometimes she corrected the offender, that depended on her mood.

Derek encouraged the misconception, repeated it often to others, which I suspected has less to do with our resemblance and more to ignore the commonalities she shared with her mother. In our years together I never met Ann in person. I saw pictures, waved in passing, and thought Andee resembled her more than Derek would ever admit. As for her personality, I had only her actions, and the hearsay of others, to judge by.

During one of the first family gatherings that I attended with Derek, his sister-in-law Ellie gave me an unsolicited snapshot of her former sister-in-law. We were watching Andee playing with her cousins out the back window and she asked me if I had met Andee’s mother yet. When I replied in the negative she said, “I liked Ann at first, but she was really lazy. She would never do something for herself if she thought she could get someone else to do it for her.  Whenever we had a party she would sit in one spot the whole time and every time someone else got up she would ask them to bring something back for her. She ran Derek around like a slave. She was pleasant about it, but it was like she expected him to do everything for her. Anyway you seem to be more like me, very self sufficient.”  She let the conversation drop for a moment but then added, “That and she didn’t have very good hygiene, and hygiene is really important to me.”

Though I came to learn much about Ann since, those words granted me more insight than any judgement I could accrue from her actions, mostly because they also applied to Andee.

Though far from a professional in the field, I did take some psychology classes in High School and College, and my teachers’ habits of pitting the popular ‘nature’ vs ‘nurture’ theories against each other always annoyed me.  I still didn’t understand why a person’s behavior must stem from either chemistry or influence when a combination made the most sense.

The fact that Derek liked to please others, had a can-do mentality and plenty of energy to spoil even the most capable person had no doubt hindered Andee’s development, however, these traits also attracted freeloaders of every ilk, including the simply indolent. Only when Derek began to foster Andee’s independence did it became evident that he had a willing victim on his hands.

One annoying habit that I resolved to quash at the beginning of our cohabitation was Andee’s insistence on immediate assistance, at the place of her choosing, whether or not the facilitator had more pressing tasks at hand.  She would yell from her spot until someone came to help her open a pen cap, take off her socks, or something similarly simple. However, if she heard Derek in the midst of a conversation, she would (sometimes) deign to fetch him. If she found him talking to someone present she would simply insert herself between him and his listener, interrupting him mid-sentence with her demand. If she found him on the phone she would tug on his arm, explaining her request loud enough to drown out all other voices in his ear. Derek would naturally respond to this, and. continuing his conversation without hesitation, he would crook the phone in his neck to look for a toy she had kicked under a chair.

At first I tried telling Andee to leave her father alone, suggesting that she could probably do the task for herself if she tried. This proposal elicited one of three reactions, listed here in order of likeliness:

1. She listened, nodded and then resumed pulling on Derek’s arm, gesticulating or silently mouthing her need.

2. She waited for Derek.

3. She gave some lame excuse why she couldn’t do it.  These reasons usually had little to no merit.  She always chose to embrace her own ignorance rather than ask a question, and when I provided the solution she would either:

1. resume waiting for Derek or

2. pretend to try and fail, which would lead me to urge her to try harder, and if she bothered to stick with it, eventually she would succeed, and then brag to her father about her accomplishment.

To clarify, I’m not talking about troubleshooting computer issues, reaching high shelves or opening pickle jars here.  The tasks she would request assistance with included:

• Tying her shoes
• Zipping up jackets
• Brushing her hair
• Opening anything – even gum wrappers and bananas
• Tell time – on a digital clock
• Turn on the shower
• Read anything
• Fetch anything – she would be standing in the kitchen asking Derek in the living room to get her a fork. (Of course, once he fetched her the fork, Derek would later find fork wherever she left it and clean it.)