the day I baked the cookies and my sister sat there watching

I am creaming. Butter and sugar get married and turn fluffy. Flour and oats come to the party. She is sitting in the chair. It's the one people sit in when they want to be close to the magic that happens in my kitchen. She holds her baby and coos to him. The other little people are committing crimes in the basement, but we don't care. It is afternoon, and we are together, like days after school, chatting about nothing and everything. I need to be with her more. She has a way of making me feel funnier than I really am, I think. She's been looking down at her baby. He is still new, and he elicits much examining. Now she tilts her head back, stretches her neck, and looks over at me. I am stirring with more effort now that the chocolate chips are in my dough. "You look like Dad right now," she says. Her observation gives me more pleasure than I am willing to show. I now have one more thing to add to my list of reasons why I really like God: He invented family resemblance. She and my brother do this for me. I do it for them. We remind each other. And it is His way of keeping Dad in our company. I smile and put the first batch in the oven.