I woke up very early this morning, restless and bothered, itchy for the day to happen. As dawn broke orange, the city was revealed. I’ll never get tired of watching that. The snow was gone but a gloss over the city streets indicated ice. I scanned the landscape for movement - for life - like a predator.

Lisa and I are headed back to school today, at 11am, by air, which our parents feel is the best way to avoid our old, holiday nemesis omicron (doesn’t that make us sound like secret agents?).

Once everyone was finally up, Lisa and I got our busy-on, doing the last load of laundry and final packing. Lisa, packs a suitcase, by throwing clothes in without bothering to fold them, while I meticulously fold and roll my clothes, like a marine headed for deployment.

As Lisa and I worked, Leeza (12) was lying on Lisa’s bed, on her back with her head hanging over the edge - watching us pack upside down. Her red hair looked like a thrown plate of spaghetti.

Leeza was talk, talk, talking and gnawing on a toasted bagel at the same time. “How do you feel about going back to school?” she asked us. “OH, feelings!” I gasped, “A free therapy session!” “No, really,” she said, grown serious and rolling right side up.

Leeza is cute as a button and vulnerable - I could almost feel her anxiety. As the youngest sibling I’d been left behind too - you don’t want the holiday to end and your big sister to leave - it’s a singularly lonesome feeling. I wanted to grab her, like a puppy, wrestle her and tell her I love her and I’d miss her - like my sister used to do with me. I decided that as soon as we were done packing, I would.

“My GOD,” Lisa said to Leeza, “will you PLEASE shut up! I have to think.” Leeza blushed and shrugged “I’m just making conversation, grump-face, you’ve packed a million times before haven’t you?” “Does counting to 10 make ****** premeditated?” Lisa asked the ceiling.

Suddenly, Lisa dropped the blouse she’d been holding and pounced on Leeza, tickling her as she squealed with delight. In a second they’d become a ball of flailing arms, legs, hair and playful noise. I slunk out of the room to give them their sister’s goodbye.

Besides, I smelled bacon.

The elevator opened on the 46th floor, to a small foyer and one plain, grey door

The door opened and a young girl, 10ish, in a blue, polo, tennis dress, said, “Hi! I’m Karen, you must be Anais. Will is around here somewhere. Aren’t you pretty, though? You go to school with Lisa? No wonder Will likes you.”

She skippingly ushered me from a bright, windowed, off-white, staircase entryway, into a deep-red, mahogany paneled library. A persian cat was soon underfoot, purring and winding around my legs.”That’s Misha,” Karen said, “just shoo her away if you don’t like cats.”

I stooped down to pet Misha who eagerly offered herself to be petted and admired. As I stroked her charcoal fur, Karen said, “Let me get Will,” as she scampered off.

A gold framed, impressionistic painting, pin-lit in bright crystalline light, hung over a fireplace. In the painting, two girls, in summer hats bright with startling red bows and yellow flowers, were sharing a book. The colors were rich, deep and swirling - it looked very much like a Renoir (I know my French artists). He’d done a whole “two girls” series. I drew closer - it wasn’t a print.

Though dazed by the opulence, I hadn’t missed what Karen had said. Will liked me. I longed to interrogate her about how exactly she knew Will liked me, and what form, exactly, Will’s liking took.

I know Will and Lisa (who would be joining us in a minute) are just friends. Not that it matters, we’re heading back to New Haven later - but Karen’s statements were capable of activating a girl's guy-dar.

Karen, wearing socks but no shoes, came to a sliding halt, on the wooden floor, by grabbing the door frame to stop an otherwise complete slide into the library. “You guys are going to the Ritz for lunch?” she asked, looking back over her shoulder, in a way that indicated that she knew the answer quite well.

The Ritz Carlton is a block away and our mission was to grab the food and bring it back here to eat. “Mind if I join?” she said, before I could answer her first question, all wide-eyed, blinking impatience.

“I don’t mind at ALL.” I said, Karen whooped and was off again down the hall. “I’M COMING TOO!” she yelled. I chuckled, knowingly - I’ve been there - I’m a little sister too.

I’m in the kitchen at Lisa’s. Her little sister Leeza enters, her pale, freckled face redder than usual. “Liza is the bossiest sister..,” Leeza says, slamming the cupboard door after grabbing a box of Fruity-Pebbles-cereal like she’s choking the life out of it.

Lisa enters from the hall, her jaw set with tension, she waves her “La Mer” makeup bag, wildly, letting its very existence, there in the kitchen, function as angry exposition. “YOU,” she practically screams and then shaking with outrage, she begins more calmly. “You can’t use someone else's makeup and ESPECIALLY not their brushes!!” She had begun under control but with each word her message grew emotionally.

“I didn’t hurt anything!” Leeza answered venomously back, giving as good as she got.

I lean with my **** against the waist high kitchen island, slowly letting myself slide down to where I’m not visible, into a sitting position on the floor, as the fight quickly escalates.

Have you ever been a guest somewhere, when there’s a sibling fight or other parents start yelling at a friend? All you can do is try and become invisible - or pretend to text on your phone like you can’t hear the turmoil.

I catch a motion out of the corner of my eye, it’s their mom, Karen, motioning me, with a side-bob of her head, into the living room. I quietly, crouchingly exit the kitchen - the fight reaching full, nuclear bloom.

I join her on a white sectional, breathing a sigh of relief. We’re far enough away from the action to feel uninvolved. I like Karen a lot. She's warm, open and always seems to be suppressing a smile when watching her girls. She’s a lawyer. “You’re officially part of the family,” she says, as she takes a sip of coffee, “they don’t fight in front of company.” I grin.

Somewhere just below the tumult, I hear a dad’s deep, male voice, “Excuse me?” he says, and the fight is instantly over. There is a moment of deafening quiet. “It’s NOTHING,” both girls say, a second later, in perfect, synchronized, bored-sounding unison.

To run as children
Joyous laughs
Fields of green
Surrounded by trees

To slap so vile
Rage and rage and rage

To love and know so deeply
A world only we know
A bond only we hold

Everything in me
Is also in you
To share so much of who we are
How can that be separated?

I feel her spirit in the air
I see her in the light reflected against the trees
In the curvature of the shadow of a leaf
The wind I breathe carries her into me
Now a part of everything

A bond that can't be broken
Sister's a love that can't be broken
Sister's a word that can't be broken
Sister's sharing clothes
Sister's sharing make-up
Sister's sharing advice
Sister's sharing a common ground
Sister's old
Sister's young
Sister's a bond that be broken
Sister's a love that can't be broken
Sister's a word that can't be broken

I love my sister's by blood by loyalty