It was Christmas morning at the Cheney house when I was three or four, the earliest one I remember.  I was the first to wake. I padded down the long hall out to the living room, socks drooping at my ankles, and stared, dumbstruck, at the gifts blinking and bright under the tree. I curled up on the sofa and waited. I had slept in a navy leotard that snapped at the crotch, a big red daisy on the front. My ponytails were in disparate stages of loosening themselves from their rubber bands. I just sat and stared and waited. An eternity.

My sister, Kathi, 11 years older, came out first in a blue flannel shirt over pajama bottoms. Her long, blonde hair fell smooth and shiny in her eyes. She laughed when she saw me, her blue eyes wide. “You’re just waiting here?  You haven’t opened anything?”  

At four years…