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Iris
“You’re thirty-one now.”
Sandwiched between my grandparents at the dining room table in my childhood home while we all ate my favorite birthday meal of steak tacos, I puffed up my chest with pride at my dad’s declaration. “I am.”
There was something I just loved about this. My family didn’t have this need to do something extravagant for birthday celebrations. It was all about spending time together as a family and enjoying each other’s company over some home-cooked meals.
Sitting at the opposite end of the table from my dad, my mom asked, “Do you feel like you’re where you want to be?”
Every year—usually every birthday and New Year’s Day—we were all asked some version of this question.Were we happy? Were there things we’d hoped to accomplish by now that we hadn’t? What were our hopes for our future?
Even if I hadn’t gotten such good news from my boss yesterday, I would have easily been able to give my mom theyesanswer I knew she was hoping for. Because life was great. Wonderful, even. I had not a single thing to complain about.
“Interestingly enough,” I began, noting the way everyone leaned in with curiosity, “I got some excellent news yesterday.”
“What is it?” my grandfather asked around a mouthful of steak tacos.
I hesitated for a moment, taking in the looks on all their faces. “I’m getting a promotion.”
Jaws fell open and eyes widened.
“What?” my younger sister, Eleni, gasped. “You just got one!”
Nodding, I confirmed, “I did. But apparently, I’ve been doing so well that they felt compelled to offer me a new position.”
Flora, my soft-spoken sister, and the youngest of the three of us, asked, “What will you be doing? I thought you liked this new job as the marketing director.”
“I do. I love it. But they want to promote me to the vice president of marketing.”
“That’s my girl,” my dad declared, reaching for another steak-filled tortilla to assemble himself a second taco. There was no doubt I got my confidence from him. No matter what challenges were ahead of us, Adam Gibson never questioned our capabilities. Maybe there was something for him about raising three daughters in a man’s world that did it, but he always led us to believe we couldaccomplish whatever we put our minds to. “I knew it’d only be a matter of time.”
“How wonderful, Iris.” My mom’s eyes were filled with tears. April Gibson was the one who’d given me my empathetic heart. She was the reason I found myself talking to anyone and everyone, doing whatever I could to brighten their days. Even someone like my grouchy neighbor.
I scooped up some chunks of avocado to put on my taco. “I’m really excited about the opportunity. It’s such a big deal, and it’s certainly something I hadn’t anticipated happening this quickly.”
My grandmother placed her hand over mine. “Congratulations, dear. Is this going to mean more responsibility?”
She removed her hand and curled her fingers around her glass of water. And after adding small bits of chopped red onion and a squirt of fresh lime to my taco, I lifted it to my mouth and answered before taking a bite. “I suspect it will. Most promotions do.”
“But she’ll have more money to go along with it, so the added responsibility is not a problem,” my grandfather declared from my opposite side.
Ever the practical one, I expected nothing less from him.
This was what I’d grown to know and love about my family. It wasn’t just me that they were like this about. If either of my sisters had any news to share—whether related to their career or otherwise—they could expect the same response from our parents and grandparents.
Of course, I was told every family had that one person who knew how to kill the moment. In my family, that was Eleni.
And so that was likely the reason I wasn’t the least bitsurprised when it was she who decided not to sing my praises. “This shouldn’t surprise me, but for some reason, it does. Every time you have news to share, Iris, it’s always about work. Do you ever get out and do anything? Do you ever have any fun?”
For the most part, my sisters and I had always gotten along. We’d never really had any major fights beyond the typical bickering that had mostly occurred when the three of us were living at home with our parents through our high school and college days.
I guess that was to be expected, considering we were as different as could be. Our personalities were as dissimilar as our physical appearance.
Where I had dark auburn hair and green eyes, my younger sisters were both blondes with hazel eyes. Eleni was tall and slender with an athletic build she didn’t need to work for. Flora was several inches shorter than her, had the prettiest face of the three of us, and curves Eleni always told her she’d kill for. At five feet four inches tall, I was the shortest of the three of us, standing just one inch shorter than Flora. I was a mix of both sisters when it came to my body. I managed to maintain a more toned physique with regular visits to the gym each week, but there was no amount of exercise that was going to shrink the size of my breasts.
I focused all my attention on her, once again wondering what it was that made her so easily riled these days. I couldn’t ever quite work out if she was genuinely upset on my behalf about the lack of fun she imagined I had in my life, or if she simply couldn’t bring herself to be happy about my promotion that she needed to focus on some other aspect of my life.
It wasn’t like she had any reason to be jealous of my success. She had done just as well for herself. Both of my sisters did. Having always excelled at numbers, Eleni worked as a corporate accountant. Flora was self-employed, working as an editor. When it came to their jobs, they were both doing well, and I’d never gotten the impression that either one of them wasn’t happy with their chosen career path.
