Beginnings

We didn't start out the way we are today. It took us years of intense bickering and more than a few all-out battles to realize that our status as  siblings could in fact become a sisterhood of the highest order. We initially came together in adolescence, as a united front against our parents—a fairly unoriginal scenario that, in our case, entailed labyrinthine tales to cover our nefarious activities. Our teenage years were typical enough. Though a few years too young to benefit from the upheaval of the late sixties, we managed to make the most of its fallout. We attended what was euphemistically called a "free" school, part of the Great Education Experiment of the 1970s. In our case, it was a public high school located on the fringe of the University of Minnesota campus—adjacent to its notorious Dinkytown, haunted by Bob Dylan a decade earlier. There were, in keeping with its mandate, no rules to speak of and no discernable curriculum....