On Twins
Dear Denise,
The first prompt for our writing project was:
What is a twin if not a mirror of their counterpart?
Thanks for your answer. As we figure this thing out, you’ll hopefully post your response here…
You ended with:
“You’re right that it’s simple and complex at once. On the surface, we look the same. People can’t tell us apart in photos. But that similarity is a trick of light and interpretation. Your brain sees my face and thinks it knows what it’s seeing. My brain hears your voice and thinks it’s hearing itself. But none of it is real in the way we think it is. We’re both just interpreting signals. So what is a twin if not a mirror? Maybe it’s someone your brain keeps trying to turn into a reflection of yourself, and never quite manages.”
Maybe it’s someone your brain keeps trying to turn into a reflection of yourself…
Every so often, I catch a glimpse of you, in the mirror, in a picture with my children. Sometimes, like you mentioned, I hear your voice, your intonation coming right out of my mouth. It’s a strange thing, knowing a person from the inside out. There’s no-one else I know so well.
I’ve been thinking about what it means to be a twin. I guess I think about that a lot. It’s a huge part of my life, something only other twins can understand- and not every other twin- just the close ones. It’s a relationship that begins at the cellular level, in the womb- deeper, closer even, that the attachment between mother and baby.
When we were twelve or thirteen we spent a few weeks in Rialma. You and I are a curious pair. We could never resist an unlocked drawer or closet. I still peek into open doors and drawers when I arrive at a new hotel or airbnb. I just can’t help myself. I hope you do too. That’s a trait that is only charming as a ‘twin quirk’. If we both do it, it’s ok. If it’s just me, it’s nosy.
Anyway, that year I did the customary inventory of Vó Aracy’s dresser. The top two drawers contained her sizable undergarments and over-the-shoulder-boulder-holders (At that time she was very overweight and her bra was as big as my head).
The bottom two drawers had family pictures. An album with photographs of Tio Arnon, who had died a few years prior. Another album had school portraits of each uncle at a wooden desk, hair tamed, hands folded, strategically placed ruler and globe on the desktop, a blackboard in the background. There were sepia photos of a trip to a river. Mom could be seen only in a handful. She had destroyed most of her childhood photos.
Remember those old albums with the plastic 4×6 sleeves? We had stacks of them, photographs developed at Fujioka. In one album there were adorable pictures of us when we lived in Holland and Saudi Arabia.
Seriously, there is nothing cuter than twin toddlers. Except twin babies. I found a picture of one of us on Vó Aracy’s lap and I pulled it out of the sleeve so I could take it back to Zimbabwe for my own archive. It didn’t matter which twin was pictured- we were interchangeable at that phase.
On the back of the picture mom had scrawled ‘For mamãe, one of the few times you held Débora’. Vó Aracy and Vô Messias were Denise’s godparents, I knew, but this rejection of baby- me was something I hadn’t consciously picked up on until that day…
In disbelief, I marched to the kitchen, where Vó Aracy was hosting some neighbors for coffee: a ragtag assortment of rural humans: the Japanese grandmother who made pastel and shrank two or three inches each year, the neighbor opposite, Dona Ieda, with her erudite son.
I will write about Vó Aracy’s gentle ways in a different post… For today, I will just say that she told me, in a matter-of-fact tone, that as a newborn, I was so ugly and scrawny that no-one wanted to hold me.
Obviously, Vó Aracy was being petty and cruel. I had caught up to you within a month and was cuddled plenty. It was so unnecessary. Hurt people hurt people, right?
I mentioned this to my mom this morning and she said she fears I will go to my grave with this slight- why had she committed this thought to paper? I assured her that I don’t care- it’s an anthropological curiosity. Vó Aracy, mom, me, we mothers- we parents, for the most part, we just do the best we can…
I don’t care that my grandma felt this way, but it’s significant to me in terms of attachment and neuroception.
Attachment is a biological imperative, meaning that babies must secure a caregiver’s attachment in order to survive. How does this happen? We are flooded with oxytocin, dopamine and endorphins when our babies are present- or even come to mind. Once babies capture our hearts, their survival is all but assured and they can continue their trajectory of growth and development.
Neuroception, coined by Stephen Porges, is the concept that our nervous systems unconsciously and automatically perceive whether we are safe and protected in order to determine where to send resources (to growth and development or to survival). From our birth to our death, our nervous systems are distinguishing between (generative) safety and (reactive) threat.
So what might happen if a caregiver of twins, for example, prefers the stronger twin over the other? It happens all the time in nature… I once watched a documentary in sheer horror. The Southern Ground Hornbill can have two chicks and will let the weaker chick die so they can focus their resources on the stronger, healthier chick. Survival of the fittest…
All dramatics aside, I know I was never at risk of being left to die, but I do wonder if the runt of the litter perceives their status as ‘least likely to succeed’ and whether it affects the way they show up in the world from then on…
Could the perception that I was weaker and more vulnerable have contributed to a lifelong struggle with my mental health?
Or was I the more independent sibling because of this month-long period where I resembled a weak, leathery chick? When we were children, I remember nights when André would come to our room, scared, while you and I slept holding hands. We three were together and I was the brave one.
And still I had you- I have you. There with me, always… 7 thousand miles away. And that attachment, which certainly never ensured either of our survival, has sustained me like no other…