Sometimes, when my kids decide to play cooperatively together, independent of adult intervention, I observe them. I watch them as they play with the same toy, gleefully handing it back and forth. I watch them as they play with different toys and continually NEED that toy that the other has. Thank goodness our enormous box of plastic food has 2 or 3 of everything. Wait! Maybe the manufacturers had kids? I remark upon how they gaze at each other, and how they frequently move in synch despite the fact that they are not looking at each other and didn’t seem to have any organized plan. I notice the smile and contagious giggle they share with only their twin, and I also notice the capacity that best friend has to annoy them like no other.
It amazes and humbles me. While I love and cherish many people in my life, I have never felt quite that way. I have many close friends, including my husband, and I don’t want to think about the state of my life without any of them. I do, however, have an image of my life before I met them. Additionally, I recognize that if my choices had carved a different path for me, one that didn’t bring me to my current loved ones, I would probably still be enjoying my content and fulfilling life with slightly different details.
I think back to my high school days when a classmate of mine asked another classmate what it was like to be a twin. Her answer, quite rightly, was “What’s it like to NOT be a twin?” I never forgot that.
When my twins were young, I was asked many times if I thought my kids were aware of each other. Mind you, this was at an age where babies don’t tend to have awareness of other children. Well, at least according to psychologists and studies, that is. My belief is that my kids have never been aware of each other, they have only been aware of each other’s absence. Sort of like my right arm. It is part of me and unless I have some specific reason (pain or discomfort, for example) I don’t think about my right arm. It’s simply there. If I were to lose my right arm in a tragic accident, its loss would be devastating and I would be forced to reevaluate my entire manner of functioning in life. Everything would be different, altered beyond repair.
Children in multi child families have an element of this bonding, but I don’t believe that it’s to the same level. After all, the first child knows exactly what life was like before the competition arrived and is not afraid to talk about it. “Mom had more time for me before you came along… it’s not fair! “
I read an article about 92 year old identical twins. They were born minutes apart and they died hours apart, on the same day. They both perished from heart conditions. The ailment doesn’t surprise me terribly, because at 92 years old the heart has been working pretty diligently for a long time. While that sort of death is sad, it’s not tragic. Hey, I’ll live to 92 thanks. The same day, though? It made me think. What if they simply could not live without the other? What if their lives were so intertwined that they each needed the other for basic survival? What if their hearts really did beat as one?
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