My Traveling Sisters

A year ago, the girl to my right lived less than 10 blocks away from me in Manhattan. The girl on my left lived across the country in Salt Lake City. We all love Disney. And mayonnaise. And we tend to break out in song when we see beautiful views – or when we are tired. When we go on trips, we stay up far too late talking about the prison system, vegetarianism, the world, aliens – you name it.

I have more photos of them than I do of myself on my phone – most of them in the middle of a fit of laughter.

We do that a lot.

Yugen calls us the trio – a term we all roll our eyes out because while we are alike, it’s what we all bring to the friendship that’s made it so special. And sometimes difficult, rocky, complicated, ridiculous, close and most of all, worth it.

I force them to make wishes on rocks and keep us always hopeful. Liz is our voice of reason and our resident comedian. Jess is a wealth of random knowledge when she says perfectly weird things out of left field. We all remind one another to go easier on ourselves and are always the loudest table at any restaurant. Put it all together and somehow – like mango sticky rice – it just makes sense.

I knew leaving home would be hard, but I didn’t expect that home could actually be anytime I’m with these two. I don’t have siblings, but if I did, I would hope they would be a lot like them. Love you girls.