Deb

I’ll tell you something about my sister Deb.  When she was a teenager, she was evil.  Evil incarnate.

One afternoon in high school, she dropped by the gym to collect Mary, Terri and Caroline, who had just finished a rigorous basketball practice.  Sweaty, tired and famished, my three little sisters fell into the back seat of the car. 

Suddenly, however, their heads shot up.  On Deb’s lap was a carton of delectable chocolate-covered donuts.  The three little girls glanced quickly at each other.  You had to play it cool with Deb, they knew.  Pretending nonchalance, they sat back in their seats to bide their time and wait Deb out.

As she pulled the car out of the school’s circle drive to head home, Deb popped a donut in her mouth.  “Oh my lord,” she rolled her eyes in orgasmic pleasure.  But Mary, Terri and Caroline remained indifferent to her ecstacy.

Deb stuffed another donut in her mouth.  “SO fresh,” she murmured.

Finally, Terri asked timidly, “Will you be eating all the donuts?”  She was careful to keep any hint of sarcasm out of her voice.

“Yes,” Deb said shortly, her mouth full of donut.  “All of them.”

Instantly, Terri was filled with rage.  “You know what?” she spat out.  But Mary and Caroline shot her a warning look.

“What?” Deb’s chocolate smeared mouth smiled innocently at her in the rear view mirror.

With difficulty, Terri regained her composure.  “I’m not really hungry anyway,” she shrugged.

After demolishing the fourth donut, however, Deb appeared to have reached her limit.  The three little girls watched intently as she brushed off her fingers and neatly closed the carton of donuts.

Hope was alive.

Deb sighed with satisfaction, picked up the carton with the remaining eight donuts, and casually tossed it all out the car window.

She still howls about that story.  Deb’s always believed she’s the funniest person alive.  But over the years, she’s actually experienced remorse from time to time for the terrible things she used to do in high school.

“Oh, I wish I’d been nicer to my classmates,” she moans, or “Why didn’t I study harder in school?” or “I should never have set off those firecrackers in the boys’ locker room.”

No, Deb isn’t evil any more.  She wouldn’t be classified as a saint, exactly, but she’s dang close.  Deb is such a good person, you could pretty much liken her transformation to the conversion of St. Paul.

In our own enormous, sprawling, generational family, Deb is the rock.  She’s the one who reminds everybody to send Uncle Carl a birthday card, who arranges the Christmas gift draw, and who plans the Thanksgiving menu.  She’s the first person everybody calls for sympathy, for advice, and for bucking up.  She’s as lovely inside as she is out, and we utterly depend on her.

The news that her biopsy revealed atypical hyperplasia and that surgery would be required sent us into a tailspin.  I had the same queasy feeling in my stomach I used to get when I was a kid and Mom got the flu.

Deb was the strong one.  Nothing was allowed to happen to her. 

“I’m fine!” she convinced us all.  “This isn’t bad news, really.”

That’s the thing about Deb.  She always makes the rest of us brave.  She forces us to do the right thing, and she manages to turn the whole lopsided world upright again.  She gives us hope.

But, lordie, she was an awful teenager.