Crashing waves

My two sisters and I are less than two years apart. Katherine and I are twins and Amy is twenty-one months younger. When we were kids we rotated in different duos within our trio. Although we each had our own bedrooms, we often migrated for periods of time to one of our sister's rooms. Sometimes Katherine and I would share a bedroom, sometimes me and Amy, and sometimes Katherine and Amy. Though we fought like all siblings, I remember more good times than bad with my sisters. We grew up in the 1970s when grown ups, at least our grown ups, were sowing their wild oats, finding themselves, letting us kids figure out how to entertain ourselves with minimal adult supervision.

We ran in a neighborhood pack on the South side of Chicago. Our posse-- Christa, Regan, Joby, Frouwkje--with the periodic inclusion of other neighborhood kids, had a regular weekend garage sale on the corner of 57th and Harper in front of Powell's  Bookstore. We'd take the books out of the free box and label them with nickel, dime and quarter price tags and add that to old sheets, kitchen utensils and toys from our respective houses. The police once gave us a warning for selling pillow cases with block labeling "PROPERTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO" that we'd grabbed from our linen closet.

In many ways our childhood was fantastic. I have great sadness that my daughter doesn't have the freedom to be wild and unaccounted for in the ways I was. But those years were also chaotic and sometimes unsafe and my sisters and I developed a tight bond, one that has lasted into adulthood. But just like our room swapping as kids, we've gone through lots of different relational incarnations with each other.

There have been times when Katherine and I were really close and Amy wasn't deep in the mix. Katherine and Amy have had times of connection and I've been on the outside and Amy and I bond deeply one month and find more distance others. We all live in different states now, so there are very few times when the three of us are all together in one room. Our interactions are mostly via phone calls, email and text.

But every summer we all get together. The sisters, our parents, and the grandkids. Those are amazing times, uproariously funny times. And because we're not familiar with the intensity anymore, they almost always make us a little bit crazy. A few weeks ago we all gathered in Michigan for a reunion. Toward the end of the seven days, I was feeling the familiar frustration that comes from being together intensely. I think Katherine and Amy were feeling it too. Right before dinner when the Lake Michigan waves are high and strong, Katherine and Amy said they were going down to the lake. At the last minute I decided to join them.

Riding the energy of an intense day, we walked down to the lake in relative silence. I felt tense, a familiar upset feeling from finding myself back in that hijacked anxious state that I get when I see myself repeating old familial patterns. I felt like throwing a tantrum or beating the shit out of someone. As we crested the dunes to the lake, we could see that the waves were higher than they'd been all week. There were only two other people on the whole beach.

Within seconds we had all dropped our towels and were running into the waves. We've been diving into those waves our whole lives and the joy we felt as we plunged headfirst into them was visceral. We emerged, bathing suits askew from the force of the water, hair wildly placed in ridiculous sandy combovers, laughing hysterically at ourselves and each other. It was the laughter that I only have with my sisters. The waves beat the shit out of us. For twenty minutes we dove in and the lake spit us out. And then, as if in silent agreement, Katherine walked towards the shore and Amy and I followed. We gathered ourselves into our towels, slipped on our sandals and, bathing suit bottoms filled with sand, walked home for dinner.