Love Ya Like A Sister

WHEN I WENT away to high school, I found myself surrounded by incredible girls (we were definitely not women, not yet). 25 years later (ouch) many of us are still friends, and with no sisters of my own, these relationships are some of the first ones that I think of as “sister friends.” As best as I know how (and my best is often not nearly good enough) I love these women like my sisters. That said, I’m pretty sure I’ve never sent any of them a text message reading “LYLAS”.

Our communiqués ran more to the pen-and-paper variety. In the pre-email days (yes, for those of you under 30, there was such a dark time) we wrote actual letters. But most often, we wrote them to the whole group, which we referred to as the “L6″ (“L” the first letter of the name of our high school dorm, “6″ for the number of us), printed ‘em out, photocopied them, and sent them off across the country. Somewhere, buried in one of my nostalgia boxes, I have bunches of them, tracking the expected stuff of 20-something lives: new jobs, decisions about graduate school, broken hearts and uncertainty about our futures.

I remember writing to the gang shortly after I met my (now) husband, wondering right away if he was someone special. One of us was in medical school, another studying acting, two already married and juggling graduate school and family; I was muddling along in my second career, hoping it might stick. (It did for a while–then didn’t.)

Without sisters of my own, I imagine that this is, kind of? sort of?, how sisters, separated by time and space and the demands of individual lives, might have kept each other up to speed on the tiny, critically important details of each others’ lives. If we’d known leetspeak, maybe we’d have written LYLAS on a postcard, stamped it, sent it off and called it a day, but I’d like to think those letters, like Marion’s delicious Hart sisters round robin, would have happened anyway. Though I may not have a sister of my own, if you love someone like a sister, it takes more than five letters to let them know.

Here at TSP, we’ve got loads of people we love like sisters. Anastasia is desperately seeking siblings. Marion says that if you’re red, you’re family. I’m a stickler for rules, especially when I’m cooking with my sisters. Not only that, but we believe in keeping in touch. We even have a new email newsletter to do just that. Have you signed up yet? It’s the best way to make sure you have all the news on sisterhood, every week. Click here to sign up, if you haven’t already, and be sure to tell us your stories, too. LYLAS.

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