More Twins!

In an odd coincidence, I wrote the twins entry the day before I learned this:

One of my oldest friends (in the sense of how long I have known her, not her chronological age) -- is pregnant with twins! Since she, like me, is 40 (we met in high school), this is a geriatric pregnancy, and given her history, risky.

These twins will be her first and, inshallah, last children. Let's take a moment of silence and hope for the very best for L. and her twins. She is just about out of her first trimester, which, to those of us in her geriatric pregnancy zone, is known as the most dangerous part. Later, they are just tiny and have to live in the NICU for a while. That will be OK. If you believe in any sort of omnipotent deity, call in your favors now.

Twins

Here is a thing that is a rarity: a thing Kathleen doesn't know about me. (At least I don't think. Watch me be proven wrong.)

I was supposed to be a twin. I was a honeymoon baby -- totally legitimate, but born less than a year after my parents' marriage -- and, before my mother could know she was pregnant with me, she had the worst period she had ever had in her life. Less than two weeks later, she found out she was pregnant with me. The obvious explanation is that she must have miscarried my twin sibling and, somehow, I survived.

I come back to this, wonderingly, when I feel alone, like someone out there must know something about myself that I don't. I always wonder, what if I had had another? What if I had had that special bond with someone, which I hear about and which always kind of makes me want to cry? I also come back to it when I need to feel strong. After all, even though at times I've not been sure why or for what purpose or for what greater good, I survived.

Seeing Double

I have long been thinking about getting a digital camera, a small point and shoot, so I can take it everywhere with me and shoot interesting things I see and post them on the blog. Today, on the R train home, I was very sorry I had not made that purchase, for across from me in the train sat two boys who were not only identical twins, but were also wearing matching blue parkas and orange knit hats with the word "Milwaukee" in blue script. They were each drinking an RC Cola. They looked to be about 11, though I am bad guessing ages, had dark eyes and olive-toned skin. They looked calm and self-sufficient, mature beyond their years, talking in low tones about something I was too far away to overhear. There were so many things I wanted to ask them: whether they were really from Milwaukee or just fans of that city, what it was like to be a twin, if their parents made them wear matching outfits or they did it of their own free will.

If I had had to ask permission to shoot them I would been able to ask all those things, though I might have been overcome by a fit of shyness. They got off at Rector Street, each carrying a bag. The bags did not match.

I got home and took the dog out for a walk, where I promptly ran into another set of twins near the subway station: also identical and identically dressed boys. These two were probably about 4, wearing blue parkas, looking concerned or perhaps cold.

I don't know why I found this so moving, but I did. I thought about Diane Arbus and her fascination with shooting twins. Is it because it challenges our notions about our own uniqueness? Do we envy twins because they are not alone in the same way other people are?