Essay Writing: A Particularly Meaningful Incident or Event

I still remember during my school day a very meaningful event had happen to me and my sister. Early one morning, my parents received an urgent phone call asking them to go somewhere. Unable to take us with them, they left us at home. Being the eldest, I and my sister Rima was told to take care of my seven-year-old brother, Boy, and my three-year-old sister Rina.

“No problem,” we told our parents confidently. “Go and don’t worry about a thing. You can be sure that everything went smoothly.”

The two children played peacefully. After that, it was as if World War III had broken out.

Three-year-old Rina and seven-year-old Roy went for each other’s throats over some building blocks. It was an awesome sight to see the tiny girl fighting with her much bigger brother. It was not unlike a midget fighting with a giant. I put my arms around my younger brother to stop him pummeling his younger sister. If any of his blows landed on the tiny tot, the consequences would have been disastrous while the tiny fist of the tiny little girl hitting him will have the same effect as feathers falling on his body.

While I was trying to restrain her elder brother, the determined little girl wanted to continue fighting. She went on raining blows on her brother’s body. Finally, she was the one I had to restrain instead of her brother! I yelled to my sister Rima asking for help. We eventually found the solution to the problem by borrowing from King Solomon’s wisdom. I divided the building blocks equally between the two and put them in different parts of the room.

They played quietly for a while. The ceasefire lasted hardly fifteen minutes. War restarted between the two. The small girl did not want to play with the building blocks she had been apportioned. She wanted those her brother was playing with. So, she started snatching blocks from him. Her brother snatched them back and they were at war with each other again. Their shouts and screams could be heard at least ten houses away. At first, we tried to use diplomacy to stop the fight but it was no use.

“Roy, you’re a good girl. Rina, you’re a very good girl. Please stop fighting and settle this peacefully,” Rima coaxed them.

It was like trying to settle the Middle-east dispute. They paid not the slightest heed to what Rima was saying. Their shouts increased in volume and they were about to come to blow again. Completely exasperated, I shouted more loudly than the both of them. To my surprise, it worked. The quarrel stopped instantly. The both of them stared at me.

“Haven’t you heard Mother say that it’s very rude to shout?” my little sister asked me!

An hour later, my sister urinated in her pants and I had to change them for her. Hardly thirty minutes later, she urinated again and I had to repeat the pant-changing process. After that she was hungry and yelled for her milk. Rima prepared her bottled of milk posthaste to prevent her yelling so much. Then she handed the bottle to her. She took a suck of the milk and immediately spat it out again.

“Hot! Hot! She shrieked. “It’s very hot!”

Alarmed that the milk might have scalded her mouth, I quickly took it away from her. I added some cold boiled water to the milk. Then, I gave the bottle to her again. This time, the milk was also not to her satisfaction.

“Very cold,” she said. “Not nice.”

Fortunately for me, she was ravenous by this time and finished drinking the bottle of milk without protesting further.

Then came bath time. We had to give both of them a bath. They did not sit quietly in the tub while I washed them. Rima wants me to do the job because she had to cook for our lunch. They squirmed and wriggled vigorously all the while. By the time I had finished giving them their baths, I was soaked to the skin. There were soap suds in my hair and also on my face, arms and clothes. I had no choice but to take a bath myself and change my clothes.

When it was noon, we had to give them their lunch. I had seen how easy it was when my mother fed them. She just scooped spoonfuls of food and put them in their mouths and they just swallowed them. So, we did not expect any problems when we did it. How wrong we were! It was a truly Herculean task when we tried to feed the two small children. I had to coax them to open their mouths to take the spoonfuls of food I held out to them. Only after much persuasion would they do it. Making them chew and swallow the food was very impossible. They would keep the food in their mouths and take all eternity to chew it. After an hour, I was sweating profusely with the effort and there was still a lot of food left on the plate. I knew we would never succeed making them eat all the food that was left on the plate, so we give up the attempt. I came to a firm decision. I would let my mother feed them some more when she came back.

Later, Rina started to cry. I knew that she usually slept at that hour so I put her in her cradle. I rocked and rocked her but she refused to go to sleep. Then I remembered that my mother sing ‘Rock-a-bye Baby’ to her while rocking her. I did the same thing and finally she closed her eyes and slept.

Then I had to ask my younger brother to do his homework. It was like forcing someone to take poison! After a lot of prodding, he would do a little of the work. Then he would stop. Each time he needed to be prodded to do a little more of his homework. Then he fell asleep at the table. We had to carry him to his bed. With both of them sound asleep, we was able to have some peace finally. Then our parents came back.

“No problem?” was the first thing my mother asked. She gave me a wink when she asked me the question.

“Not much,” was my sheepish reply. “But I’m very glad that you’re back.”