Teach your children well

So Far / Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young









When Sam was four, she led a charmed life. Her family moved to the wealthy New York suburbs in Connecticut. The house was too large. No mind was given to this as the cleaning people came in daily. Her father’s career as bright young surgeon was on the fast track up. Her mother, couldn’t write fast enough to keep the publisher happy. Days were spent at the country club, while mom gossiped or played bridge, and Sam made friends in the children’s room.



In later years, she’d look back at those days as the clear beginning of the end. Her father’s late nights and her mother locking herself in her room for hours were surely signs. But not signs to such a young and naïve girl, and certainly not to her brother, Kevin, the golden boy.


Later, what she would remember most about this time was being carefree and happy. There were few limits, few times the answer was no. Later she’d say, if it had not been for the fact that she was painfully shy, she would have become quiet a bratty princess. Proof positive? She’d point to Kevin. Kevin was never shy. Kevin was always a selfish spoiled brat. And Kevin had definitely become a princess.


Sam always liked this idea: Kevin as princess. She’s picture her tall, athletic brother in a pink prom dress. His dark wavy hair curling around a tiara, and his broody eyes slits as he waved some kind of scepter and pouted. She liked the idea most because she knew how her brother would despise it. In fact, this was not the kind of princess she meant when referring to him as such. Prince. King. Any royalty, would have been sufficient.


Kevin also had led a charmed life, but far more so than Sam. When they moved to Connecticut he was seven. He his role as idolized leader had already been cast and he had already learned how to play the system. It didn’t hurt that he was, even then, a handsome young man.


“Such a heart breaker, like your dad.” Amanda Dessen would sigh when she looked at him. “No wonder I write such great romance surrounded as I am.” Then she would life.


In those days, Kevin didn’t know what these words meant, but he knew they were good. He also knew that if you smiled at the right time, pouted in the right way, asked with honey in your voice, you very often got what you wanted. He also very quickly learned that it was much better to be in a position where you got what you wanted then not.


Ground work had been laid early.


Back in those days, Sam had idolized her older brother. He was a god. He knew things and she was very content to exist off the mere bones he decided to toss her. After all, she was only the little sister. She was a girl. She was short. She was younger. No one told her she was a heart breaker.


This was a pattern that was embedded early and woven stronger over time.