My Parents Mocked Me at the Family Reunion — Until The Helicopter Landed: “Admiral… We Need You.” Uncle Robert’s farm was all paper plates, church-lady potato salad, and the kind of small talk that keeps score. I’d flown home on leave because my grandmother turned eighty and still called me “my steady girl.” I’ve been the steady one my whole life—quiet, reliable, the daughter who wired money when the roof leaked, who paid Diane’s tuition when the scholarship ran short, who never asked to be than