Just Look

Two completely different five year olds

"How do you tell them apart?"

If I hadn't been running after a two year old who was Hell bent on throwing herself in front of a car in the preschool drop-off line, I'd have given another mom my craziest crazy eyes.

Surely, she had to be kidding.

It cannot be that difficult to distinguish my children from each other.

It is, in fact, so easy that all three of my children have ready-made answers to this question, for whenever they hear somebody ask.

"How do you tell them apart?"

If I had the time, I would TELL each person who asked this.

I'd say SI is two full inches taller, that she has blue eyes and dark brown hair, that she has pale eyebrows and an elegant neck. That she looks dainty and elfish with her rounded lips and ears that stick out a bit from her head.

I'd say DD has olive skin, and hair only a few shades darker when the sun has tanned and highlighted all summer. That she has a squared smile and small, perfectly even teeth, that her eyes are green and her nose both rounded and cleft. That she has no earlobes, and her much longer curls are so thick and kinky as to be obviously "ethnic."

I'd say SI has loose, soft curls, and cheekbones for miles. And that DD has the Hapsburg chin dark and, heavy eyebrows.

I'd say SI has a little beauty mark on her forehead, and DD has one on her cheekbone that Marilyn Monroe would KILL for. That SI's feet are a whole size and a half larger than DD's, and that she chews her fingernails but DD doesn't.

I could catalogue each feature, and tell you which of the many branches of their family tree provided it, and that there are almost no commonalities.

They are both five year old girls with curly brown hair, but the similarities begin and end there.

SI, with the same lips as M's sister, my great-grandfather's ears, my mother's hair, my wonky little toes.

DD, with my younger sister's smile, my father's eyebrows, my older sister's hair, M's dimple.

How do I tell them apart?

It can't just be that I'm their mother. That I've seen them on all but about twelve of their roughly 2,000 days on this earth. It can't just be that I have some sort of superpower that enables me to see them as individuals, as unique from each other in every way.

I have always worried for them, my twins, who will be lumped together as a unit no matter what they do, because they are twins.

I have always worried that their identities will be so caught up in what people expect of them as twins that they are afraid to find out who they are alone.

I would ask anyone who asks me, "How do I tell them apart?" "Have you seen them?"

Look at each of their features. Just look. Even bundled up in their coats- one in all pinks and the other with bold blue and yellow stripes- with nothing to work from but their eyes and noses and the strands of hair that work their way out from under their hoods. And find one- a single one- that is the same from child to child.

Listen to them speak. DD's wet "j" and "ch" sounds, her overly pronounced vowels that sound British in their accent, with words like "school" lengthened to two syllables.

SI's muddled vowels, and her intense sarcasm as she answers statements of the obvious with, "Are you KIDDING me?!"

Listen to their laughs, DD's open and wild shrieks, SI's hysterical giggles and guffaws.

Even if their faces were identical. Even if they matched from the tops of their curls to the crescents of their toenails, I could still tell them apart.

Because they are not the same people.

They are unique and fascinating, they have separate interests and likes and dislikes, and they express themselves in their own ways.

They are not, in any way, the same. Not in the way they eat their dinner, not in the way they kiss me goodnight.

If I were blind I could tell them apart.

If I were deaf I could tell them apart.

If I were given no indication but the feel of their hand in mine, I would know who's hand I was holding.

They are twins, but that does not mean they are the same. That doesn't even mean they are a pair. They are siblings with the same birthday, but being twins does not and should not eclipse their identity.

Strangers ask me how to tell them apart, as though being twins makes them a completed set. As though there must be an answer to the question because there must be some problem distinguishing their individual identities in the first place.

"How do you tell them apart?"

"Just ask them," I sometimes say.

They know how to answer.

"I'm SI," SI says.

"And I'm DD!" DD replies.

"That is my sister SI, and that is my sister DD," RH adds, as though to settle the matter.

That should be enough for anyone.

The Center of the Universe

Me and the center of my universe

Last week, M and I decided to (finally) take the plunge, and start watching Breaking Bad. (This post might have a few spoilers if you've never heard about the show before, but nothing big.)

Neither of us are generally the sort of person to get caught up in a cultural hype, we geek out about what we geek out about, and there's a lot of overlap for us. But we both feel a bit uncomfortable when everybody we know and everybody they know and everybody else seems to be obsessed with something new. Especially when it comes to TV. We don't want much television, so when we do we sort of want it to count. Well, now that Breaking Bad is of the air, now that it's over and we've distanced ourselves from the popular obsession, we decided it might be fun to watch just an episode and see what we thought.

Of course, we quickly learned it's pretty much impossible to watch the first episode of Breaking Bad and not immediately put on the next.

There's a lot on the show that makes us uncomfortable. Not the murder and drugs and gruesome comedy of errors regarding those things. No, what makes us uncomfortable is scenes like this.





I get a visceral fury whenever Skylar, Walter's wife, talks to Walter about his treatment. It's not about what he wants. It's about what she needs. I understand where she's coming from, sure, but she's going about it all wrong.

She's made up her mind what's going to happen to Walt, and he's going to do what she says because the alternative is to die.

I understand that. I do, I profoundly do. I see myself in Skylar a lot. But where we fundamentally differ is in how we address those same fears and needs. For me, M's cancer was always about him. It has always been about him, and his life, and his needs. I refused to believe he would die, but I tried to make sure he was feeling good about life as he lived it.

Whenever Skylar tries to bully Walter into a different treatment, or into a different doctor, or simply into her way of thinking, it comes across to me as cruel. She doesn't care if Walter's happy, so long as he's alive. Whereas Walter doesn't care if he's alive, so long as he's happy. Or at least, so long as he feels he has some direction and control over his destiny.

M and I watch these scenes snuggled up together on the bed, our hands gripped together and our breath shallow. Because these are real conversations that people really have when they know what they're facing.

I wonder if Brittany Maynard was a Breaking Bad fan.

When Walt's hair fell out during chemo, I wanted to punch Skylar in the face. She couldn't speak. She cried when she saw him bald- exactly as he had predicted. I remembered how I locked down my own feelings when M's hair started falling out and stayed cool, calm, and as relaxed as I could, helping him shave the patchy growth left on his head.

Because, as it seems I forgot in my grief and rage over Ms. Maynard, it's only about one person.

When somebody you love is in pain, is truly ill, you get over yourself and remember who really matters.

It's like this wonderful graph from the LA Times article- "How Not To Say The Wrong Thing."

The idea is the sick person is in the middle, and nobody is allowed to complain them about how their illness affects anyone else. That person can complain, or not, to anybody. All you give, from the outside in, is support.

I might have worried that M would die and I would never see my Happily Ever After with my One True Love, but M never heard that from me. Never. Because it's unfair and unkind. What could he do about it? Stop being sick?

No, M, was the center of the universe. He had to be. His universe was terrifying and it was collapsing. You never put more burdens on the person holding together the center of all existence. You just don't.

Skylar turns it on its head. No matter what Walter tries to do, she is critical. Who the hell wants that kind of person for a support structure?

Watching the show has been fun, so far. Lots of humor, meth related violence, and people saying, "Bitch!" with wild and conflicting inflections.

But we were not expecting to turn into a medical drama. Not hardly. And it's the side of medical dramas we don't particularly want to see. While M was on chemo, we watched House and Scrubs fanatically. We spend a few colder nights of our honeymoon watching Grey's Anatomy. We like the doctor side of things- doctors having fights and drama, and somehow coming out in the end to either cure the patient or to fail.

Watching Walter fall apart as the chemo ruins his body and his family's poorly concealed despair... that's not so much fun.

That's everything we never wanted.

We're still watching the show. Of course we are, it's too damned addictive.

But I have a renewed sympathy for the Maynard family. Actually, I'd like to offer her and her family an apology, for every bit of anger I harbored about her decision.

Nobody has the right, not me, to question Brittany Maynard. For her, she was the center of the universe. I'm so far outside the circles of contact and support, I don't even exist.

Me and the center of the universe

That's what I think I need to remember.