She's here!!!

For an afternoon, for an evening, for just long enough to feel normal, my sister came home.

She's in trouble, of course. No, not because she moved all the way across the continent. Although that's a really good excuse. No. She's in trouble because she gave me an early birthday present -- a new camera. It's a great camera. It's much, much smarter than I am.

But she came home, and that's what counts. For one blissful afternoon, I felt like the world was right again.

I can't explain what it is about Amy. When we were young, I mean *little*, we didn't get along that well. I was the squeaky wheel. She was the smart one. And I have to tell you, it is really hard to follow in Amy's footsteps. All of my teachers always said, "You're Amy's little sister??? Oh! We expect *great* things from *you*."

So I always did the opposite of what Amy did, unless it was completely unavoidable. Piano, for instance. Amy was a prodigy. I started taking lessons when I was 8, and I outgrew all the local normal piano teachers by the time I was 16, but I still couldn't aspire to Amy's standards, so I quit after that. Theatre, for another one -- Amy did a play called "Fumed Oak" when I was, oh, 7 or 8 or so. I'm not sure. It's one of my fondest memories. She played the daughter with a head cold. I have absolutely no idea who wrote "Fumed Oak" or what it's about, but I will always carry the memory of Amy, onstage, in the spotlight, talking as if she had a terrible cold, and the way the grown-ups around me laughed and applauded for her. That was it, I was gone, I had to do a play. And my life has never been the same since.

But math -- oh, Amy is the smartest person I've ever known when it comes to math. And I am a complete dunderhead. I can barely add, much less do algebra, and Amy majored in math and became a computer programmer. She revels in puzzles, adores unraveling mathmatic mysteries, and loves solving programming problems.

All that is just surface stuff. When she went off to college, I was almost 14. Somehow, her absence made us able to stand back and appreciate each other -- or maybe I just finally grew up enough to be able to relate to her amazing brain. Now she's one of my best friends. No -- she's my *best* best friend. We always laugh so hard when we're together, and it's always such a magnificent relief to be with her, just so I can be myself.

There's a part of me that still can't believe she moved to Las Vegas. I know it was the right thing to do, and I know she's much happier out there, and I'm happy for her. I'm just sad for me -- sometimes. Sometimes it's really hard not to have her here. We used to meet for coffee late at night. Now we talk on the phone almost every day, and we email like maniacs -- but it's not the same as actually being with her, breathing the same air that she breathes, touching her arm, knowing that she's here and solid and *real*.

We laughed all afternoon, and laughed much harder in the evening. I know tomorrow -- or the next day, or maybe Thursday -- I'll be crying over missing her. But right now, I'm just wallowing in the knowledge that she's just down the road. If I hopped in the car right now, I could touch her arm and feel the warmth of her existence in less than 30 minutes.

At least I have a photo or two with which I can remember her. This will hold me together until the next time I see her. And someday, we'll live in the same time zone again, and we'll hang out all the time again.

It's nice that technology has advanced so much that I can talk to her without running up a huge phone bill (the way I did when I spent nine months in Illinois). But it's so much better to actually be in the same room as Yamy.