Despite their skills, careers and vast amount of knowledge, I often fail to see my siblings as fully formed adults. This was brought home to me while sorting through my late mother's house, where I repeatedly ignored my sister's requests to water the garden, convinced she couldn't possibly know more about gardening than I do—despite her own magnificent garden.
This dynamic is mutual. My sister, a fashion designer and exquisite draughtsperson, cannot drive and is hyper-vigilant as a passenger, pointing out cars, pedestrians and trees as if I would crash without her intervention. Our brother, a skilled decorator and photographer, leaves me baffled when he uses terms like 'primer' and 'dust sheet', and his superior photos seem like hocus-pocus rather than skill.
My other brother is a maths teacher, and my other sister a physicist. I find it fanciful that they really do these jobs, and have to pretend to believe it. It seems that childhood wires us to think knowledge is equally distributed, or that differences are just a matter of younger ones catching up—but no amount of adulthood can overturn this perception.
After it rained, I noticed the garden looked amazing. Perhaps my sister was right about that one thing.
