How to Be a Sister

like us, are supposed to be different. The marriage rites are generally a time of quiet and reverence, a time to focus on the sacred union between two people who have chosen to (try to) spend (they hope) the rest of their lives together.
Weddings can range widely within an acceptable scope of good taste—religious versus secular, indoor or outdoor, tuxes and silk as opposed to beach attire are just a few types that come to mind. However, I can say with some certainty that most marriage ceremonies don’t include a rousing, hand-clapping solo of “I’ve Been Workin’ on the Railroad” from one of the guests. I was almost a teenager before I realized that this kind of musical interlude was not common at nuptial services. No, in fact, this kind of thing was actually viewed as a disruption, the kind engineered by my sister Margaret.
Margaret’s particular solo went something like this: “Someone’s in (clap) the kitchen (clap) with Di (clap) NAH! (clap clap) Someone’s in (clap) the kitchen (clap) I knowoh-oh-oh!” and concluded with a resounding, “Ha! Ha! Ha! You be quiet, Margaret!” as my sister scolded herself loudly at the end of the verse.
Sometimes such an outburst would include a game of tag, with my mother being “It.” This game often drew withering looks from the officiating priest as my chortling sister ran up the aisle and around the altar with my silent, grim-faced mother in hot pursuit. How often I watched my big sister Margaret sprinting around the Eucharistic minister, or rocking from side to side in her wide-leg stance up on the altar, clapping and singing. Sometimes she’d just start laughing during a quiet part of the service, or scold herself in a parroting of our mother’s voice. “Margaret, now you behave! Now you be quiet!” Her voice seemed to echo endlessly across the cool, quiet sanctuary. Or perhaps when my mother whispered in her ear (“Margaret, you have to be quiet or we have to leave”), we’d hear only Margaret’s side of the conversation, as if she were on the phone. “No! Okay! That’s good behaving, Mom!” I’d sink down in the pew, thankful that it was always pretty dark in Sacred Heart Catholic Church, hoping people would think it was somebody else’s family making all the noise.
These episodes all ended the same way: my gentle mother wordlessly hauled Margaret, who was either wailing or laughing, down the aisle and to the back of the church as half of the congregation turned to watch while the other half pretended that nothing was happening. The doors at the back of the church would bang shut behind them, heads would swivel back to the priest, and then the service would continue.
I actually can’t remember a wedding service in my childhood that Margaret did not contribute to in some very memorable way. Maybe that’s because if she’d behaved herself, I wouldn’t have had anything to remember. The celebrations I do recall are absolutely burned into my memory. As I write this, I can still feel the frozen stare of a bride and groom, family friends, as the entire congregation turned to look at the Garvins. It was 1978. The groom’s eyes were wider than his tie. The bride craned her veil-covered head over one puffy satin and lace shoulder pad to try to locate the source of an undeniable and unbelievable ruckus from our pew. I don’t remember what Margaret had done. Only that it was so loud that even the priest couldn’t ignore it and had paused in the middle of the ceremony to look our way.
This was my chance to smile and give a little wave. “Hi, Jim! Hi, Jane! Oh, good, they saw me. Now they know we’re here,” I said to my eight-year-old self, not realizing that most weddings were not meant to be interactive.
This is how it went through the marriages of our cousins, family friends, and second cousins. And at some point we’d usually get to share the spotlight when Margaret performed her routine, always unique and never predictable. Suffice it to say people never had to say, years later, “Did the Garvins come to our wedding? I just can’t remember.” They always remembered.
THINKING BACK ON all this as I wrote my bridal stories, it struck me that we could have used someone like Teresa, not so much as a wedding planner but as a kind of crisis manager. Perhaps Teresa could have been our Emily Post of autism, the person to smooth out the crazy in our lives and make things seem more normal. This woman handled inclement weather, ill-behaved relatives, and emotional meltdowns without getting a hair out of place. Months after I interviewed her for my wedding feature, I read about her in the news section of our little paper when she pulled off one of the most heroic wedding rescues I’ve ever heard of. When a wildfire drove one wedding party from their site, she rushed over to another wedding she was managing on the same day at a different location and convinced the other bride to let the first couple come on over and share the same reception area—all this as the bride was marching down the aisle. When I read that story, I thought, “Man, she is tough!” But when all was said and done, I still didn’t think Teresa would have been any match for Margaret.
When my siblings and I got married, my sister’s history as Most Memorable Guest gave us some pause. I wasn’t the only one asking myself, “What should I do about Margaret?” Over the years the question weighed heavily on each of us as we, by turns, got engaged and planned the Big Day. Our oldest sister, Ann, tested the waters first, marrying her college sweetheart, Rob, when she was just twenty-one. Being the oldest, her instincts were untested and kind of screwed up, so she asked Margaret and me to be bridesmaids along with her