Human Sister

the storybook character, I, too, was a little engine that could—could make significant rediscoveries even at my age—and the pistons that gave me power were question and answer.
    Occasionally, if I couldn’t solve a problem, I’d become anxious and start to whine for Grandpa to help me. At such times, he would take me into his study, where he would have me sit cross-legged with him on the floor and meditate. For him, meditation wasn’t a practice of cultivating the joy of non-doing or the sense that each moment is complete; it was the practice of clearing one’s mind for the purpose of preparing a calm consciousness to receive messages—such as solutions to his problems—from one’s unconscious. He taught me to be attentive to my breathing and, whenever my attention strayed to the bothersome little pains that sprang up devilishly in my cramped legs and back or to the chattering thoughts that often invaded the silence of my mind, to calmly refocus on the in-and-out tides of my breath. When he sensed my impatience was finally tamed, he would tell me to let my mind go to the problem at hand and, if my attention wandered from the problem, to return to my breath, then back to the problem, and so on. When he was satisfied with my progress, he would terminate the meditation, give me a little hint, and send me off chugging along until the problem’s solution, like the first wildflowers that pierce the hills in spring, would suddenly blossom in my mind.
    Grandpa said I could either read the story of the evolution of knowledge, or I could discover much of that knowledge anew. We chose—at least in my little mind it was “we” who chose—the road of rediscovery. Over a period of several years, beginning when I was about three, we plotted the positions of the moon and of several planets and stars; we rediscovered Kepler’s laws; we performed Galileo’s pendulum and rolling-ball experiments; we re-traversed the paths of Euclid and Archimedes; we dissected anatomically correct models of animals. And for the most part, I loved those wonderful trips into knowledge, but I had no one other than imaginary friends to play with—well, no one other than Grandpa or Grandma.

    “I’ve been thinking about your desire for a companion,” Grandpa said a few days after he’d admonished me to be a good sister to First Brother. “Let’s find Grandma and go for a drive.”
    “Did you make a new brother for me?”
    “No, no,” he chuckled. “Brothers aren’t made that fast. Besides, you already have two marvelous brothers. You just need to learn how to love them.”
    About a half-hour later on that sunny late-winter day, the yard gates opened, a gardenerbot scurried to the side with some weeds it had just pulled, and Grandpa drove out onto our long driveway. The car was peculiarly quiet inside, the kind of silence made of invisibly fitted heavy armor. Another car followed us, a car driven by one of Grandpa’s security guards. The sunburst honey locust trees lining the drive were bare, but in the vineyard wild mustard blossoms brightened the ground like thousands of tiny suns.
    As we drove on narrow, winding country roads, a few early wild blossoms—red delphinium, Grandma told me, and blue periwinkle and yellow Spanish broom—smiled at us from grassy verges along the way. We finally pulled in to a homestead with a small white house, an old red pickup with a deep dent in its side, and a dilapidated barn, all tucked in among winter-naked oaks, willows, and black walnut trees. A man, older than Dad but younger than Grandpa, came out of the barn to greet us. Grandpa said the man worked on a vineyard nearby. A dog was barking—a deep, scary barking—from somewhere inside the barn. I held on firmly to Grandma’s hand.
    Following the man through a creaky spring-hinged gate, we walked on a sidewalk, grass sprouting between jagged cracks, toward the house, up a few stairs, and onto the pillared porch, where there were two Adirondack chairs from which most of the white paint had peeled—a center slat was absent from one, like a missing front tooth—and a wicker basket in which a litter of sleeping puppies snuggled: five, taffy colored; one, pure white.
    Reminded of Grandma’s Madonna lilies blooming then in our greenhouse, I pointed to the white puppy and exclaimed, “Lily!”
    Even now, remembering, I can feel the excitement I felt when that soft, warm, sugary bundle of sleep was placed in my arms; and I can hear myself