When she wasn't in school, she stayed with me constantly. I felt a brief fear as Lynn disappeared into the cornstalks. Her long black hair disappeared into the corn as she chased the dog. A dirty gray dog ran out of the field near us, and then he ran back in. Fields of tall corn stretched into the distance wherever you looked. We were playing on the empty road near our house. I was almost five, and she was almost nine. For instance, one of my earliest memories is the day Lynn saved my life. I like to see how her memories were the same as mine, but also different. Today I keep her diary in a drawer next to my bed. I know a lot about when I was a little girl, because my sister used to keep a diary. I didn't care where she sent me, so long as Lynn came along. She was dismayed over how un-Japanese we were and vowed to send us to Japan one day. My mother said we were misusing the word you could not call a Kleenex kira-kira. Lynn told me that when I was a baby, she used to take me onto our empty road at night, where we would lie on our backs and look at the stars while she said over and over, "Katie, say ' kira-kira, kira-kira.'" I loved that word! When I grew older, I used kira-kira to describe everything I liked: the beautiful blue sky puppies kittens butterflies colored Kleenex. Kira-kira means "glittering" in Japanese. I pronounced it ka-a-ahhh, but she knew what I meant. My sister, Lynn, taught me my first word: kira-kira.
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