I used to imagine that my three sisters and I were living a real-life, Nebraska version of Little Women (except in our version, Beth lives to love and hang-out with her sisters for perpetuity). The March girls/the Welch girls . . . Jo, Meg, Amy and Beth/Shannon, Timaree, Erin and Kael . . . different place and different time, but sisters nonetheless.

As my father was dying this summer, my sisters and I were blessed to have shared his last days with my mother and countless visitors who came to sit, bedside, recounting their favorite memories, the lessons he taught them, those that made them who they were today.  My sisters and I tag-teamed, we used the gifts we had, gifts born from an exquisite blend of our mother and father. We stayed until we had to rejoin our own families for a time, leaving our parents in the watchful care of another sister–or two.

My sister Erin’s efficiency and expertise at nursing rivals seasoned RNs. While my father was in the hospital, Erin listened and took notes as  the doctors and nurses spoke or delivered care. She served as a conduit of information, delivered hourly updates through text messages,  and anchored us all in a semblance of order when our world was chaotically spinning out of control. And when my father came home with hospice care, it was Erin who stood, shoulder to shoulder with the nurses, watching how they changed sheets, cleaned his wounds, administered medications. I looked on in sore amazement, for I could not imagine how she had become so brave, so competent. One afternoon when she left to return home for a few days, leaving me as the sole sister, I could only think of the moment when my mother left after the birth of my first child. As my mom pulled away, I stood with my head pressed to the window and cried, Don’t leave me. I can’t do this by myself. As Erin drove off, my hands turned cold, and it was all I could do not to run after her car, to beg her to stay for one more day until I could learn from the master.

My sister, Timaree, can plan and multi-task with the pros. Like my mother, she can see out for days and weeks to come, anticipating what needs to be done. Even though I am the oldest sister, as children, I learned early that Timaree was the one to speak to sales clerks, to make phone calls, to lead. Content to follow, I stood behind her as she shouldered her way through conflicts and situations that scared me spitless. Timaree ran our high school’s student council. Timaree choreographed our cheerleading and dance routines. Timaree led with a clarity and confidence that left me breathless. And, if the truth be told, envious. Author Louise Gluck writes that Of two sisters one is always the watcher, one the dancer. I was the church mouse who watched from her shadow, grateful–oh so grateful–to have this dancer’s shadow to rest in. So it did not surprise me that Timaree organized the meal after my father’s memorial service, and she weeded my parents’ backyard.

My youngest sister Kael and I shared more time together in the weeks that led to my father’s death. We sat in hospital waiting rooms together, ate supper in the hospital Subway (undoubtedly, the staff there knew our orders by heart), and later, spent days and nights in my parents’ home. Anyone who has met Kael is immediately drawn in by her hospitality. Everything about her says Come in. Stay awhile. She is the hostess with the mostest, able to greet and comfort those who came to our home with coffee cakes, casseroles, and tears. For the days I spent with her, she was my confidante. The one to whom I could voice my fears and grief. The one to whom I could unabashedly laugh and cry without fear of judgment. Daily, she comforted others, and as she did, I felt strangely warmed in a peace that truly passes all understanding.

Together we were better. I don’t think the March sisters have anything on my sisters. I have seen the power of their gifts and felt the grace of their presence, and I cannot imagine a life without my sisters.

They have given me stories that have delighted students in three states. Ask any of my students if they recall the turtle story, and I’d bet that they could retell it in glorious detail.

When my sister, Timaree, and I were 5 and 7, we begged my mom to let us get two small painted turtles at the local dimestore. In a moment of certain weakness, my mom consented, and we came home with two turtles–one red, one blue–a plastic turtle bowl with a fake palm tree, and a box of turtle food. Life was good. Until the day my turtle disappeared.

Convinced that Timaree was playing a trick on me, I marched down the stairs and into the kitchen where my mom was washing dishes and my visiting Grammie was drinking her tea. I confronted her, adamant that she return my turtle to the bowl before he dried out and died. What happened next lives on in infamy.

Behind me, three-year-old Erin entered the kitchen. Grammie shrieked, throwing her toast skyward. My mom gasped. And I turned to see one tiny, green turtle foot dangling from Erin’s bottom lip. I screamed. Erin screamed, and her mouth stretched and gaped, revealing her tonsils–and my turtle who lay prone, lifeless across her tongue.

You killed him! You ate my turtle! Gagging, Grammie turned away. My mom stepped away from the sink and demanded, Spit it out. Here in my hand, right now. And there it was: a motionless, blue-shelled turtle in my mom’s palm.

Later, my dad said that Erin’s system must have been lacking something to make her want to eat a turtle. Too young for sarcasm, I believed him and told Timaree to stand guard over the remaining turtle, lest he meet a similar fate.

My sisters and I donned high heels that my Aunt Susie had worn in the Miss America pageant and strolled the sidewalk leading to our house like a grand runway. We judged each other on how well we walked in high heels, in how elegantly we could turn, throwing our heads around in beauty pageant splendor. Our little girl feet stuffed into the pointy toes of high heels, we clomped our way into imagined glory.

We rode stick horses in packs around the neighborhood, we transformed wooden crates that my dad gifted to us into circus elephants and stallions. We organized neighborhood missions–elaborately planned and mapped on large pieces of newsprint over Kool-Aid and graham crackers in the McDaniel boys’ garage. Never mind that we didn’t really intend to carry out these missions. It was all in the planning, the Kool-Aid mustaches, and the furtive glances at the two cutest boys we had ever seen. It was all about sisters together.

The girls across the street told us that we should never roller skate over a section of sidewalk that had buckled, creating a kind of ramp that sent up momentarily airborne. They claimed that fires from the pit of hell had erupted, breaking the cement and creating a hole straight to damnation. They warned us that one false step, and the Devil would get us. And so, my sisters and I skated right up to this spot, exited the sidewalk and inched our skates through the grass and around the hole, and resumed skating. For years, we were bound in a shared conviction that we could escape hell if only we skated and biked with caution.

I would be lying if I didn’t admit that, like most siblings, we often annoyed each other, took advantage of each other, even tortured each other. We borrowed clothes that we didn’t return and that ended up in heaps in our closets on the very day that our sister had to have them. We offered to pay a younger sister to retrieve our Barbies from the basement (because it was the basement and it was scary), and later reneged on our promises. Because we never had any money, and after all, this was the role of an older sister and the lot of a younger sister. We haggled and re-haggled over who got to use the car. Around the supper table, we disagreed, argued our views, and sometimes left the room in disgust.

Still, we marveled at each other’s words and deeds, at the choices that, secretly, we could never see ourselves making but that were perfect for our sister. A thrift-store aficionado, Kael put together outfits that often took our collective breath away. We whispered to each other and to our mother, She is NOT going to wear that to school, is she? But when she did, and when her classmates not only accepted her attire but emulated it, our fears were silenced. When Erin took a job as a Girl Scout camp counselor in Pennsylvania (clear across the country! in another state!), I admired her courage and conviction. And when she came home, every inch of her body ravaged by weeks of mosquito bites, I could honestly admit that I could never have done what she did. When Timaree sang in our college swing choir, she never failed to raise the hairs on the back of my neck. I longed to open my own mouth and hear the clear soprano voice of my sister burst forth. And I longed to dance with the ease and innate grace that she did. When she sang and danced, time stopped for me.

In her novel, Beloved, Toni Morrison describes the interactions between sisters as sweet, crazy conversations full of half sentences, daydreams and misunderstandings more thrilling than understanding could ever be. Oh yes, I’ll take me some sweet, crazy conversations full of half sentences, daydreams and misunderstandings from the sisters I am blessed to know as friends. Double-size my portion, please. No triple-size it. You don’t have to count calories when it comes to sister-size portions.

As shining and splendid as sisterhood is in childhood, it is that much and more in adulthood. In her New York Times Notable Book, The Dazzle of Day, Molly Gloss writes:

You know how it is between sisters in their middle age? that old old friendship, how loose-fitting it is? the comfort and safety in it? how you can let silence lie between you without it taking on any weight? how you can let words out of your mouth without wariness or precision because you know your sister will listen to what’s worthwhile and let the rest fall out of her ears into the air? how you can be surly, unreasonable, stupid, in the certainty of her grace?

What could really be better than loose-fitting friendship between sisters, like a much-loved pair of sweat pants (because jeans, with all their zippers and buttons, are unforgiving for those with middle-aged apple shapes)? What could be more satisfying than letting silence lie between you without it taking on any weight? In real-life, where we must be eloquent and articulate, filling the space between others with something reasonable and meaningful, the silence between sisters is a gift of inestimable worth. Who but a sister can let the worthwhile stuff sink in and let the stupid stuff simply blow away like the insignificant chaff it is?

And where else can you rest in the certainty of grace but in the presence of your sisters?

So here’s to my sisters who have made and who continue to make me a better human being. We are better together, and for this, I could not be more grateful.