My two sisters are younger than I am, Sandy by almost four years and Janie by exactly nine. I didn't really know either of them until four years ago when we began to talk about our childhoods, getting material from each other to help figure out problems now. It happened easily; our perfunctory phone calls stretched into conversations. Janie remembers how she couldn't get new dresses because I was in Europe my junior year spending the family's money. Sandy, how I always interrupted her when she was in the middle of a sentence. How I called her best friend a cosmic drag right to her face. How I would terrorize her with headless dolls. We would probably be better friends/closer if we weren't sisters, since it's almost impossible for us to be together without dragging our parents/the family scene into our time. We can't seem to get away from the fact that we're three sisters competing for more.
Now Sandy teaches physical education in Framingham, a suburb about fifteen miles away from Cambridge. The pictures of her here are from Christmas Day, 1973. She came over with some turkey and stuffing she wanted me to taste. It had come out better than ever before. We eat, talk about diets, cross-country skiing, yoga, how awful the holidays are.
Janie was a kindergarten teacher for six months before she got married at twenty-three and moved to Middlebury, Vermont. This picture was taken summer 1973 when she and her husband and their two daughters stayed here for a few days. They took over my bedroom, all four of them sleeping on the king-size bed, visited aunts and uncles, my grandmother in the Hebrew Home for the Aged, my father and mother in Newton, Johnny's father. They'd collapse back at Flagg Street at night, saying how glad they were to live in Vermont where nobody says your child's face is dirty, you should wash your car, come visit. Since the picture with Lizzy, Janie has lost ninety pounds and become pregnant with her third child.
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