Happy Birthday, twin

Usually on my birthday, I talk about me. How another year of my life is gone, how I'm getting older, wiser, more troubled, whatever. Normal enough, but for whatever reason, this year, I think I need to honor the other person my mother gave birth to on my birthday. My sister, Elizabeth.

People used to ask me what it was like being a twin. I guess they expect to hear about how it's so great having someone there all the time, or how I got jealous or how we could read each other's minds, but in my weirdly practical for a little kid way, I'd tell them: "How would I know? I've never not been a twin."

This is partly true. I have no idea what it's like to be a single kid, and I especially did not know for the first 18 years of my life. But also, I knew: yes, it was great to have someone I always knew wherever I went.

When we were about five, we made a "Buddy Club" for just the two of us. (In retrospect, this was probably more than just a bit mean, since our sister Katie was just two years older and totally not welcome to join. Despite our mother's pleadings, we would not make it "The Three Amigas Club".) The official Buddy Cereal was Cracklin' Oat Bran, and the Official Buddy Drink was Ocean Spray's Mauna Loa (or at least, that's what I thought it was called; I can't seem to find a reference to it on the web now, so either I don't properly recall it, or it's been discontinued. It was a Hawaiian-inspired guava-y sort of drink though.). That was about all there was to the Buddy Club: cereal and juice. But they were things we liked, and things we liked together, and apparently we were very impressionable youth.

Our grades and test scores were always neck-and-neck (we always compared to know for sure; I used to judge success in school not so much by how well I'd done, but if I'd done better than her) so we were always in the same classes. And we had the same friends. It was comforting, to have this built-in network. Even when you were the new kid, you weren't new to everyone.


And yes, I did get jealous at times. Because from the time she was little, Elizabeth knew how to work a crowd ("accidentally" rallying the preschool class to follow her on an "accidental" escape run from the playground) and make men fall in love with her (I don't know whatever happened to little Thomas who used to obsess about my sister and call her his "Kitty" until it got very creepy and the teacher told him not to, but he was really just the first in a long line of admirers). Though she wasn't comfortable or aware of her role, she was always the ringleader. It's hard to not be a little irritated by all that. Especially when she's 10 minutes younger than you.

Those feelings of resentment didn't really go away until I moved off to college and made a group of friends who never knew me as anybody's twin sister. It was nice. But it was also a bit sad, because being somebody's twin sister is a big part of who I am.

Do we read each other's minds? Well, I don't feel pain when she feels pain (at least: when she gave birth, I did not know she was in labor until my mother called). But I think we understand each other the way people do when they have known each other for as long as you possibly can know somebody. I know how her mind works and she gets mine.

Sometimes, I worry that maybe I won't really know what goes on her head, or that she won't get mine, since we don't see each other so much anymore. It's funny, how things change. Because she's turning 25 today and she's got a baby. And he's awesome. I thought it would be scary -- the one person whose life has been so totally connected to mine for so long going off on a path I was completely unprepared for myself. But when DJ came, it did not freak me out. It made me happy. And I don't know; it's nice for the family to start a new generation. I know a few years ago, I felt such doom and gloom about every holiday that involved gathering with family because things felt broken and depressing. But now there's DJ.


It's hard to look at him and think of anything but good things. Even when he makes his screechy dinosaur noises. And, I don't know where this is all going, and I know maybe our lives aren't really in sync anymore, but we still have the same birthday, so: Happy Birthday, Liz.