16 - Go Ask Alice!

Summary

But I don't want to go among mad people.

–Alice, in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland

Learning to drive can be stressful. Two tons of steel propelled by a powerful engine. The ever-present need to be aware not just of yourself but everything and everyone around you can be daunting, the potential to do damage or to be damaged overwhelming. The responsibility looms large enough that you have to take classes and pass, not one, but two tests, and then adhere to a series of early restrictions, before becoming a road warrior.

And so, it was with all of that hanging overhead that a teenaged Alice Ain received driving instruction from a brother older enough that when he graduated from the uber-prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, kindergarten-school-aged Alice told friends her brother had attended “some school called Mitt.”

That it was a bonding opportunity was self-evident. That it would establish a precedent for Mark serving as a mentor and later for Alice to turn the tables and teach Big Brother some valuable lessons would seem less obvious.

Mark hadn't been an absentee brother by design so much as it was chronological fate. Pearl and Jack Ain had taken a pause after having three sons in rapid succession. Aron came fourth in line and then a change … a baby girl … Alice! But with a span of roughly fifteen years between them, Mark was further down life's pipeline than most older siblings, receiving his MBA from Rochester as Alice finished phonics and the second grade.

Yet there was a strong bond, and a good deal of mutual admiration.

“I remember she was always effervescent,” recalled Mark. “Even at a young age, and more so later on, she always had a lot of friends.”

“I was always very proud of Mark,” said Alice. “He was away a lot of the time because he was so much older, so there were not a lot of household dynamics because he didn't live at home. He was always supportive. And I knew he was doing interesting things. But when he would come to visit it was always a big deal to me.”