This lack of consideration could take a single-mindedness all of its own. People like my sister often went about their routine or urgent matters with blinders on, stopping only to glance side to side when there was a shadow or tangential movement that might inhibit their own forward progress.
Suppose that I was driving my sister to a doctor's appointment. It was usually that case and never the other way around, for I normally could get to the doctor myself, and Mai was uncomfortable driving a car until she was around thirty years old. I was the one who finally taught her how to drive on the freeway. (Remind me to tell you that story.) Our father taught her how to drive, as he taught all his children, but after passing her driver's exam, my sister drove almost exclusively on city streets because she was afeared of switching lanes, and anyone sitting in the passenger seat was usually terrified.
We would be in the car and I would be backing out of the driveway and ask where to turn to get to my sister's doctor's office. Nine times out of ten, she would say, "Oh, I don't know, I'm figuring that out right now," while she scanned the paper map and when cell phones finally had Google Maps she would quickly get directions. The tenth time was when I prodded Mai ahead of time to print out directions or map them out on her phone. Otherwise, it would be left to me, not my doctor's appointment but somehow I had to get us there on time. Unfortunately, it was faster if I both read the map and drove instead of waiting for my sister to read the map or get directions online while I drove. Knowing that I was that competent often made people like Mai depend on me more. So when I would drive her somewhere in the early morning when we both had little sleep, she would, unless I prompted her, kick back and relax, maybe take a snooze, while I struggled to stay alert with hot Jasmine tea.
Giving me directions would consist of something similar to this. Before we got on the nearby freeway, which was two miles away and I obviously knew the way there having driven our neighborhood streets hundreds of times, Mai would say, "Turn left out of the driveway,..." We would often get lost before we hit the freeway if followed Mai's direction giving, by the way.
Mai would often read the directions all at once, without looking at the map, without thinking it through, "take a right on Bradford, a left on Burlingame, enter the freeway headed north, drive 7 miles, exit on Monterey street headed east for 0.8 miles, then take the third left. Next, drive four blocks--"
"Mai, we're not yet on the freeway, I can't memorize the directions when you read them at me while I'm driving. Wait until we get to the next step, then tell me." I would remind her for the twenty-seventh time. That year.
Besides not really considering that a person could not memorize all the steps at once while driving to the nearby freeway and without being able to look at the map, my sister also read the directions so quickly all at once so that she could get it over with. Kick back, relax, read a Harlequin romance while I chauffeured her around town, catch up on her sleep because she had read romance novels all night long.
And then when we finally got to the segment of the drive where I really needed help, my sister would be huddled over a Silhouette romance novel, poke her nose out when I sternly told her to stop reading and give me directions, flash a look of anger for being interrupted in the middle of her romance novel, and flusteredly try to figure out where we were and where I needed to turn next (about three blocks ago). Where we grew up it rained a lot and getting lost was not a big deal, and I am not the type of person who drives from point A to point B taking one route her entire life. However, when you have played chauffeur long enough, having to take U-turns because someone did not bother to give you prompt and accurate directions because she was busy reading a romance novel gets aggravating. Especially when you are losing sleep over it or could be doing something else far more interesting than drive your older sister to a physician's appointment because she is too afraid to change lanes on a freeway.
You might think these are little things but little things add up and the repetition of a little thing cumulates until all these identical little things summed from zero to infinity drown you even as the function approaches zero over time. That means, although today, my sister has improved a lot in helping the person that is driving by giving timely and understandable directions, when she does not, it's the straw that breaks the camel's back. For a chauffeur who could have gone on to do bigger and better things, the marginal times Mai got us lost was enough for the wave of exasperation to submerge me in its howling undercurrent. For there are some people, who when drowning, can be saved only by a professional lifeguard, otherwise the rescuer might drown himself. So it was with Mai.
I long ago stopped counting the ways in which I had to stop up the pin holes that were poked in a balloon that was then filled with water. The water would eventually leak out and if the goal was to keep the balloon inflated, then either water had to constantly be poured in or the holes had to be stopped. Or both, which was doubly tricky because pouring water into a balloon that you knew would eventually leak out all its water was frustrating because you were the one filling the balloon and and tending it, trying to stop all the water leaking out so how was it that there were new pinholes as soon as you patched up an existing pinhole when you were so careful?
Sometimes, I thought that the faster I poured in water, the faster it would leak out. Was it the pressure or a predetermined equilibrium that made it impossible to keep the balloon filled at a critical minimal level so that it could stay inflated and float away from its own? So, sometimes I would let my sister fend for herself, always waiting in the emotional wings to stabilize her when necessary. Lo and behold of wonders, sometimes Mai was able to swim, not only the dog paddle but the butterfly, as gracefully as if she had never been in a cocoon. Most of the time, I had to continue refilling the balloon with water. Determining the difference when to let go and when to stabilize her was one of the greatest puzzles I had been given to solve. It was a multistep process in which we all played a part.
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