Two People, One Beginning

When my daughter was pregnant with twins, she made a promise to herself.

She would never allow her children to lose their individual identities simply because they happened to arrive in the world at the same time. She wasn't going to give them rhyming names or names that made them sound like a matched set. She chose names that belonged to each child individually, and she gave them middle names to honor their grandfathers. It was important to her that they would always know they were two separate people.

As their grandmother, I think we have been very fortunate to watch that promise unfold.

Physically, they are identical twins. But watching them grow has been a lesson in just how different two people can be when they begin life side by side. They have found their own interests, their own sports, their own passions and their own personalities. One may be completely absorbed in something that the other couldn't care less about. Their differences have never seemed to threaten their relationship. If anything, those differences have made watching them grow even more fascinating.

I have often wondered whether people expect too much sameness from twins. We see two children who look alike and immediately want to find the similarities. We ask which one is which. We compare their personalities. We want to know if they think alike, finish each other's sentences or somehow know when something is happening to the other.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about twins isn't how alike they are, but how two people can begin in exactly the same place and still become completely themselves.

Of course, like all siblings, they have their moments. They can declare that they hate each other one minute and be laughing together fifteen minutes later. They can argue over something that seems extremely important at the time and then forget what they were fighting about.

But separation is different. If one is sick and stays home from school, the other may go about his day, but eventually the question comes: “When is he coming home?”

And when that brother finally walks through the door, whatever argument or irritation existed before seems to disappear. Suddenly they're together again, often inseparable. That has always fascinated me.

They don't have to be alike to need each other. They don't have to share every interest to share a bond. They don't have to understand everything about each other's worlds to show up for each other.

Luke recently wrote about what it is like to be someone's twin. He wrote about how different he and his brother are and how, despite those differences, his brother is the first person he would call. He described his brother as a kind of ballast, the person who doesn't necessarily understand everything he is doing but will be there when he needs him.

As his grandmother, I have had the privilege of seeing the other side of that relationship. I have watched two babies become two little boys, and then two young men who are still becoming who they are.

I have watched them discover that they don't have to follow the same path simply because they started on the same one. Perhaps that is one of the greatest gifts we can give any child, twin or not: the freedom to become the person they were meant to be.

Being a twin is a unique beginning.

It means sharing a birthday, a family, a home and a childhood with someone who was there from the very beginning. It means having a built-in companion, even when you don't particularly want one. It means sometimes wanting your own space and sometimes wondering where the other person is the moment he isn't there.

Twins and multiples have a connection that is difficult for the rest of us to completely understand, but I don't think that connection requires sameness. Maybe the beauty of being a twin is that you can be completely yourself and still have someone who has been beside you from the beginning.

Two people, two personalities, two paths, one beginning, and somehow, through all the differences, they find their way back to each other.