I miss my sister. Ruth Anne lives only 70 miles away. But I miss her.

We go way back. In high school when the "cool" girls would avoid kid sisters like the plague, I always made sure my sister came along. Of course. We're sisters. But despite that we forged a strong friendship growing up. Two years my junior, she and I each had our own friends, but her friends were my friends and mine were hers. We all mingled. Still, I upheld the older sibling responsibilities to look out for as well as to tease and torment her.

Looking out for my sister came naturally. Once, while out collecting for our paper route, a guy in only a towel tried to get us to come into the house. Ruth Anne, trust still fully intact, nearly agreed but I stopped her and firmly told the pervert that we'd come back when his parents were home as I pushed my sister down the driveway. When we reached the end of the driveway he called out, I reflexively turned around and he pulled his towel off. I pushed my sister into the street and instructed her not to turn around.

Other things were easier to handle. Like when she was too young to go to concerts by herself, I drove her to see Rick Springfield. Twice. The mini-adventures we created by stopping in the lobby of hotel to run up the down escalators while driving through the big city or the time we stopped in the Menard's parking lot on the way home from viewing "Footloose" to recreate dancing scenes from the movie with our mingled group of friends all created everlasting memories that have bonded us into adulthood.

I'm no hero. Some of the the meanest things I did to my sister can be attributed to my adolescent immaturity, like the time she refused to give up the front seat of the car to me as and I retaliated with the focus of a seasoned martial artist by channeling all my energy into my finger and flicking her ear. Or one infamous showdown in the high school lunch room that ended with me hauling out the big guns by calling her a baby. Always fighting words to the youngest child in the family. In our typical fashion though, we were over it by the end of the day, if not the by end of the week. I never did recall the topic of that argument.

But the most heinous sibling torture came during Ash Wednesday mass, once again, while we were teens. Just before we stood to join the line to receive the ashes on our foreheads, I leaned toward my sister's ear and said, "you know where they get the ashes, don't you?" Wide-eyed she responded, "no."

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