Twinning

   Not long ago we learned that my cousin’s daughter is expecting twins in July. Our whole extended family is very excited for Ida and Ahmed, the parents to be. Their twins will join four other treasured kids in that generation. Ida invited my twin sister and me to chat by Zoom to talk about all things twins as she and Ahmed prepare to parent their twins. There are not a lot of subjects that I feel innately qualified to talk about, but on the topic of twins, I am distinctly qualified. I have an identical twin sister, Ann. I also have identical twin daughters, Ann and Kara. I’ve lived the twin life, and also watched it unfold before my eyes.
    My twin sister Ann and I provided Ida with the basic advice that we often give when someone asks – don’t give them matching or rhyming names and don’t dress them alike. I asked my girls about this later, to see if they agreed that this is sound advice. Kara was quick to respond. “Don’t do anything that perpetuates stereotypes of twins. Don’t push matching outfits, styles or activities on them.” My lived experience was, and apparently it was the same for Ann and Kara, that it was difficult enough to establish who you are in life as an individual, and it is even more complicated when there is someone next to you who looks just like you. Tween and teenage years can be fraught with struggles while trying to find your way and let others know who you are and what you stand for, but if there is someone with whom you can be easily confused with on a daily (more like hourly) basis, it’s that much more challenging. In a high school class that Ann and I took together, we had a teacher that we both really liked and respected. When he took the roll call for the day, he’d call us “Annabby,” as if it we had one name and we were one person. Ugh! When it was pointed out to him how frustrating and hurtful that was, he made an effort not only to call us by the right name, but to get to know us as individuals. (Thank you, Mr. Yarnell.) Until I was well into adulthood, I still answered to “Ann” when someone called that name, because for most of my life, they were likely talking to me.
   My daughter Ann talked about a set of identical twins that she and Kara were in elementary and junior high school with. They had similar sounding names and usually dressed alike. “They got a lot of attention for being ‘the twinny twins,’ but no one could really tell them apart, and we didn’t know them as individuals,” Ann said.
   When my twins were four or five years old, with shoulder length, blonde curls, Ann decided she wanted to cut her hair really short. “I got tired of being called Kara,” she explained. She got the haircut; it looked very cute, and served just the purpose she had hoped for. Everyone knew right away who was Ann, and who was Kara. It was a great idea and worked really well until a couple of years later when an elderly friend called Ann “a cute little fellow.” She didn’t cut her hair again until it was the same length as Kara’s. But she did start wearing those stretching, black “tattoo” choker necklaces all the time, and then that was the way people could tell them apart with a quick look.
   As they got older people tried to find physical characteristics to tell them apart. “People need to be mindful of how they choose to distinguish the difference in twins. If I hear one more time that I have the rounder face…” Ann said. “Everything is measured,” Kara added. “You’re not just tall, you’re ‘the taller one.’ Just get to know me, don’t compare me.”
   Ann and Kara turned 28 recently, and some things haven’t changed. “I don’t go out wearing something even remotely like Ann if we’re together. Like if she’s wearing French braids, I don’t braid my hair,” Kara said. “I don’t even order the same food as Ann if we go out to eat with a group of friends.”
   “You can treat twins the same, but you need to adapt to them individually,” Ann explained, and offered me the earliest example she could come up with. “Remember when Kara and I both got the same teddy bears when we were little. Mine was Bussy. (She didn’t have to remind me. Bussy was Ann’s most treasured possession for many years.) Kara didn’t really like hers, but I carried Bussy around with me everywhere. It was okay that I had a bear and Kara didn’t have a stuffed animal that she carried around.” In junior high they signed up for after school activities, but Kara signed up for cheerleading and Ann signed up for the wrestling team. We attended all the basketball games and wrestling meets to support them both.
   Like Ann and I, my daughters usually got similar grades, but approached their schoolwork differently. Both Anns were usually quicker to finish their schoolwork, while Kara and I were those students who used all the time allotted for tests. Kara recalled the frustration she felt when Ann could write papers and essays quickly, while she really struggled to get the words on paper. “There was one homework assignment I remember Ann finished in one hour, and I was still working on it three hours later,” Kara recalled. “And when you told me ‘I get it. I know how that feels,’ I knew you really did.” She continued, “If Ann wasn’t there, I wouldn’t have worried about how long it took me to write the essay, but I knew she had finished so much faster. Twins will compare each other. That’s something Ida should know.” Ann considered this as well. “I haven’t ever compared myself to Molly,” (their older sister) she said. “But if there’s something Kara can do, then why not me?”
   As you might imagine, the sense of familiarity between twins can be a positive thing but also has its drawbacks. “There’s more intense fighting. You know just how to push each other’s buttons,” Ann explained. “We can fire each other up faster than anyone else. Give me two sentences and I can set her off.” This is true. I’ve seen it happen. The other side of the coin is that twins often have an easy time understanding one another. “We are able to get our point across to each other without too many words,” Ann said. I know I can use many fewer words to explain something to my sister Ann, than I need to use with anyone else. And all four of us have experienced situations where in a group setting, something happens that only strikes the you and your twin as funny. Some of the times I have laughed the hardest in my life, laughing so hard I can’t talk to explain why, Ann is the only other person laughing.
   Ann and Kara and I compared the list of questions that we’ve all heard over and over. Do you ever forget which one you are? How do you know your parents never mixed you up? Can she feel your pain? Why doesn’t your twin work here too? Why don’t your names rhyme? Do you have your own language?
   People are often intrigued by twins. “I think the idea of twins is appealing, but there’s also that creepy part, like the twins in The Shining,” Kara said. In celebration of all things twin, for years Kara has tried to Ann, me, and my sister Ann to go to the Twins Day Festival in Twinsburg, Ohio. Making the most of its name, this town near Cleveland, has been holding this weekend-long event every August since 1976. It is the largest annual gathering of multiples in the world, with its number one mission to “be a vehicle for the celebration of the uniqueness of twins and other of multiple births.” The first year 38 sets of twins gathered and since then the organizers estimate 77,000 sets of multiples have attended the festival. It clearly states on the website that dressing alike is not required, but it is also quite clear from all the photos that all the twins do dress alike. Kara’s up for it, for this one occasion anyway. “I think our situation is so unique - twins and their mom and her twin, it would be cool,” she said, trying to convince me. “This would be a celebration of all that. A safe place to be weird, and by that, I mean the same.”
 
    (You may be thinking, “ahhh, twins must run in their family,” or “I thought twins skipped a generation.” Neither is true for us. Fraternal twins may run in families where women inherit the trait of ovulating multiple eggs, so two different eggs are fertilized in one pregnancy, and develop into fraternal twins, like siblings who happen to be born at the same time. To create identical twins, one fertilized egg splits in two, so there are two separate embryos with the same genetic makeup. The odds of having identical twins are much lower than the odds of having fraternal twins, so either I beat the odds, or this is some kind of karmic payback for me. Fraternal twins, conceived naturally, are born at a rate of about 30 per 1,000 births. The odds lower to 3 or 4 per 1,000 births for identical twins. The odds of an identical twin giving birth to identical twins are one is 62,500.)