When Gay Kids Come in Threes

My close-knit family began an unexpected journey of discovery when my older sister finally came out—and we were just getting started.

Illustrations by Sarah Lammer

After volleys of applause at my grandmother’s book talk, my twin brother, sister, mother and I pile into the car and lock the doors.

“What a dyke!” my sister yells.

We burst out laughing. We had, of course, all been thinking it.

The book she wrote is a biography of her Holocaust Literature professor — a Zionist thinker and poet who first captivated my grandmother in the classroom, then later in private quarters. As any good disciple would do for a teacher at the end of life, my grandmother wrote a book to preserve her memory.

“Did you hear her speech?” my mother chimes in. “About how she lived with her for a couple of months, but of course, grandma slept on the couch. And she threw her hands up when she said it like, ‘for the record, world, I slept on the couch!’ She just had to include that detail for fear that anyone would possibly suspect her of sleeping anywhere else in the house.”

“And oh, she was just so lost in life that she had to crawl back to her prof…