Today, I miss my sisters.

When we were little, Easter meant it was warm enough to go outside in the early morning in bare feet to search for eggs without getting too terribly cold. It meant that the bush in the back yard would have pink blossoms on it, and we would dress up in our Easter dresses with hats and hose and shiny shoes and have our photograph taken. We would gorge on candy, fidget all through mass and go to our grandmother’s, where she’d give us more candy and our mom would insist we’d had enough and my grandmother would say, “Look at them! They’re too skinny,” and give it to us anyway, which pissed my mother off, also a part of the holiday tradition.

Yesterday, I found an old photograph from about 1982 of my sisters and me. We’re in our old family room (mustard colored shag carpet, plaid couch) watching Mork and Mindy on our big old television with no remote control. We’re all in our footy pajamas and we’re all on the couch upside down, like Mork. We liked Mork. We spent a lot of time upside down—on the couch, at the dinner table, and occasionally we slid down the stairs upside down. It was riotously funny.

With three girls, is often lots of hard laughter. My oldest sister is kind of quiet and introverted very smart and hugely sensitive and occasionally hysterical. The youngest was absolutely hyper active—pretty out of control now that I think about it—and she was always getting sent out of classrooms and away from the dinner table and failing class and making up rediculous words and saying things out loud that everyone secretly knows that you just don’t say out loud and she was creative and nuts and also hysterical. Once, she got sent home with a nasty note from the home ec teacher because she refused to use measuring utensils while baking. She’s an amazing cook—but that didn’t matter. So my mom wrote back to the home ec teacher: “We don’t ever use measuring utensils in our house.” Which made me happy.

My little sis is a worry and a headache and totally lovable and unique and ornery and awesome. She is sensitive and sweet. The week after college graduation, I was in the driver’s seat of my car, which was packed to the gills, ready to high-tail it out of Indiana for Portland, indefinitely. I rolled my window half way down to say goodbye and she cried and blubbered all over the place and left tear streaks all over my window. I didn’t wash the car for a long time because I didn’t want her sweet tear streaks to go away.

So, I miss them, that’s all.