last minute subsitution

The following is not actually about Beirut. But as I start my new job and try to finish a post about my trip to Damascus, I offer this. My sister has recently gotten a job as well and our schedules combined with a seven-hour time difference is going to make us much less available to each other. So, in temporary lieu of a topical diatribe. please enjoy.

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Twin-speak

My family has friend who, after knowing us for over ten years, has never been able to tell my identical twin sister and I apart. She is not alone.

I, of course, have our physical differences memorized. In fact, though I rarely know of either of our exact weights or heights over the years, I know that she has for some time been two inches shorter and 10 pounds lighter. Her face is slightly longer and thinner and her feet are one size smaller. She has two more freckles than I on her face and her hair has always had a slightly more reddish tinge than mine. In fact, we have catalogued our differences in order to make them non-threatening and non-competitive; I am the pretty and she is the skinny one.

But the truth is that my identity has largely been formed by the fact that I look and often think exactly like someone else. We have shared almost all of the same experiences in the same settings with the same people.

Being born a full minute before Lindsey, my parents say that I immediately took on the traits of the firstborn. I was the leader, the decider, the protector and the fighter of the pair. My mother says that Lindsey was the peacemaker, happy to follow and concede the best toys to keep everyone happy. At two years old and one week, I told my mother “Leave me alone and put Lindsey’s shoes on.” That statement would describe the next fifteen years. I always wanted to protect Lindsey and have my own life at the same time. And these goals were often hard to reconcile.

Now we’re both finishing college. We stumbled on our different schools with little discussion about the possibility of going together. It just didn’t seem natural to us to stay together, much to the relief of my parents, who wanted us to have our own, independent experiences. Lindsey chose a picturesque small school in Virginia and I a large urban one in Washington, DC. But I think the differences between our schools allowed us to experience both worlds.

When I walked on to my sister’s college campus for the first time, for some reason I was surprised at the confused, staring faces all around me. Coming from a large school where I could easily remain anonymous, it was strange for me to be in an environment where everybody knew everybody. And everybody knew me. Or thought they did, because one of Lindsey’s professors asked me why I wasn’t dressed to perform.

When the concert began, I suddenly became nervous. Lindsey was alone. In the past neither of us had ever performed without the other waiting in the wings or on the stage as well. I never simply sat and watched my sister perform.

Some kids have a security blanket that they bring with them everywhere. The first day of school, trips to the dentist or potentially scary situations are made easier by the presence of one item. My security blanket walks, talks and has opinions. And, unlike the inanimate objects others use, I don’t have the option of outgrowing it and tossing it away. And, not to belabor the metaphor, but my security blanket depends on me just as I depend on her, sometimes more so.

The lights dimmed and the 17-piece big band walked out onto the stage. Lindsey was wearing a new black dress and new shoes, which turned out to be a mistake because she tripped on her way to her chair. She laughed it off. I sat in my chair, dwelling on the slip, as I always did. Why was I embarrassed for her?

1992. 4 years old. Snack time. Lindsey and I, both with identical brown curls and the same outfit in different colors, sat next to each other on plastic chairs around a circular children’s table waiting for our preschool afternoon snack.

My parents had never been fond of dressing us alike because they wanted us to feel like individuals. But, as most first time parents do, they heavily relied on gifts from friends and family, who ranked adorability over individuality. So for the first few years, we matched. At age three, I began to search out my own identity. I insisted upon different clothes than my sister.

That day I was excited because someone’s mom had made the snack, which was always better than goldfish crackers or apple slices. Filled with anticipation, but not fidgeting, I was never one to fidget, the teacher placed a rice krispie treat with colored specks of pastel-dyed cereal throughout. It was spring and Easter was coming. I immediately began dissecting my treat, feeling the now inexplicable need to play with my food before I ate it. And as I did, I noticed that Lindsey wasn’t eating hers. She was just staring at it with a worried look on her face. I asked her what was wrong and she asked me in a whisper what those “things” were in her snack. I told her that they tasted the same and that she should just eat it but, being an extremely picky eater and resister of all things new, she just stared.

According to my parents, my bossiness was well known in the family. I, being four and believing that I knew best, thought that I was a delight, but apparently I was wrong. Lindsey, however, being the passive and agreeable half of the package usually complied: but not when it came to food. Everyday the teacher would pin notes to our backpacks listing the things that we had eaten that day, which usually read: Emma ate carrots raisins and peanut butter crackers. Lindsey ate nothing.

Then I got angry. For some reason I was sure that she would get in trouble for refusing to eat her snack. We were both undeniable goody-two-shoes’ and getting in trouble was the worst thing that could possibly happen. I pleaded with her to just try it using all of my 4-year-old powers of persuasion, but she refused.

Even at age four, I expected other people to treat us as a unit. And I dreaded the strange embarrassment that came from my teacher’s frustration with Lindsey’s quirky eating habits.

The teacher came over and asked her why she wouldn’t eat the treat. She ordered my sister to try one bite but Lindsey just shook her head. “Fine!” the teacher said with a huff of exasperation and Lindsey began to cry. And then I began to cry.

The crying always happened that way. Until perhaps age 11 neither of us could cry without the other one starting. It was the first “twin thing” we did and the first I wished would stop. It was embarrassing, even as a toddler, to always be crying at the same time. I remember consciously realizing how ridiculous it was that when my sister fell and scraped her knee and I would be blubbering until she felt better.

The first number in the concert was a fast, Latin tune. The program said that Lindsey had a solo on tenor saxophone and I nervously awaited her turn to play. She stood up and played a tentative but impressive 16 bars of soulful improvisation ending with an errant squeak. A woman sitting behind me made a noise, annoyed by the accident. I clenched my jaw and furrowed my brow in an instantaneous rage.

1998. 10 years old. Recess. Lindsey and I were on the basketball court rather unsuccessfully trying to shoot baskets with our girlfriends. Her hair was chin length with bangs that formed a straight line just above her eyebrows. Mine was shoulder length and most likely a mess as I refused to brush it in the morning. We had unfortunately outgrown our precious curls. Our clothes by now were completely different, having grown out of our matching outfits, Lindsey’s personal style was heading into the adidas striped swish pants tomboy direction and mine was heading in the more jeans and tweety bird t-shirt direction.

I monitored our dress like a drill sergeant inspecting a uniform. Nothing could be the same color or style or one of us, usually Lindsey at my strong suggestion, would have to change. If braids were in vogue, there would be a fight. Who got to wear braids? I would never allow it to be both of us (or Lindsey).

Back on the court, the basketball strayed onto the other side of the court where the boys considered as cool as 10-year-old boys could be, were playing a game. When my sister went to retrieve the ball one of the boys, a particularly short one who had the curls I so desperately wanted back, said something mean to my sister. I don’t know what it was. It didn’t matter. My mind went blank. My thoughts were replaced by blinding anger. My face became hot and the next thing I knew I was swinging the boy around in circles by the neck of his t-shirt until he landed on the side of the court. I awoke from my rage embarrassed and ashamed. And I walked away from the court hearing refrains of “what the heck?” from the boys behind me.

Walking away, I was confused and ashamed at my impulsive behavior.

I let the woman live. The next number was a classic Ellington swing tune. And then came the big one. For everyone else, the vocal number represented a break for the band. It was musically easy and usually a crowd pleaser. Lindsey had waited months to tell the director she could sing: hesitant to start self-promoting so early in her college career. But once she sang in front of the band one time, she became a regular.

The song was “I Got it Bad and That Ain’t Good.” It started out low and slow. But even in the first few seconds she already sounded better than I remembered. I am ashamed to say, she sounded better than I expected. When the song really got going and Lindsey started belting it out I could feel the crowd reacting. My dad grabbed my arm and looked up at the stage with a big toothy. During the applause, he leaned in and said, “ I just don’t know where you girls got those pipes.” I knew.

2000. 12 years old. Home alone. In seventh grade, Lindsey and I sat on a bench in front of a large bay window doing homework at the kitchen table. Both of our parents worked late on Tuesdays so we were left alone until around 6 p.m. As I sat angelically doing my homework, Lindsey asked me for a pen.

Most adolescent girls are fighting with themselves. Growing, preteen girls are angry at their skin and their body’s inability or over-ability to develop certain body parts. They try to carve out their identity through social maneuvering and flirting.

I was grappling with my identity too, but the part of me that I found most frustrating, was my sister. I was tired of being a novelty. I was tired of being cute. The little girls with crazy brown curls and matching dresses smiling at me from the photos around our house had left the building. I didn’t want to stop being a twin. I needed that trick in my pocket to pull out when advantageous. I just wanted to be an individual too.

But at the wise age of 12, I asserted my individuality in the smallest, most trivial ways. I demanded that my mother buy me my own bottle of shampoo. I wouldn’t let my sister borrow anything. We played different instruments in the school band and we read different books at home. In fact, I wouldn’t even take book recommendations from her until years later. And while I was carving out my own identity, we fought.

I honestly can’t recall what most of our fights were about. But they were loud. I remember going to bed with my voice nearly gone from all of the screaming.

She asked for the pen, and I was furious from a mix of selfishness and desire for her to stop depending on me. As usual, things escalated in a routine of shouting and girlish slapping that my mother had grown tired of long ago. We yelled as loud as possible while finding new and clever ways to tear down each other’s confidence. Years later, my neighbors would tell me that, as our house was on quite a steep hill, our fights could be heard for at least 100 yards.

As I had superior capabilities for verbal cruelty, Lindsey was the first to resort to violence and, in an act of extremely poor spatial judgment, pushed me into the bay window.

Once I realized that I was not lying limp on the ground below I was grateful that my parents had bought a house with double-paned windows. I was fine. The window was shattered.

As I walked around the auditorium searching for my sister after the show, the same stares that had unnerved me before made me proud. In this room full of my sister’s friends, classmates and professors, my face was a badge of honor. I was proud to have an automatic association with her.

We still fight sometimes, but not in the savage, cruel way we used to. We talk on the phone four or five times a day. The same proximity and sharing that used to make me so angry is now a necessity. Sometimes, I will have been walking for blocks without realizing that we have both been silently on the line.

And now that our lives are more separate than they have ever been, I find myself appreciating our similarities. I’m even trying to lose those 10 pounds.