There are twins in my family—Paul and Christine. And whenever someone says they have twins in their family, or maybe they are a twin themselves, I always say, “Oh! I have twins, too!”
But then I back-track and say, “Well, I mean, I have twin siblings.”
I don’t want it to sound like I have ownership or anything.
On Saturday I went to our little city’s downtown for the little St. Patrick’s Day parade, even though it was cold outside and I was coming down with a cold. Nope, we went anyway, wearing some shade of green. And we waited for the parade when the twins said, “Oh, we need to go get hot chocolate.”
And I said, “Why?”
And they said, “It’s what we always do. It’s tradition.”
(Please note: I have gone to many, many parades in my life, as it’s something I strangely love, and I have never been aware of this tradition).
So we went to the hipster tea place down the way, and they got hot chocolate and I got green tea (“What kind do you want?” the man behind the counter asked. But I told him I couldn’t smell anything (because I have a cold), so just any kind of green tea would do, and then he gave me one that tasted like seaweed so, yeah, thanks counter-guy.) and then, with warm drinks in hand, they were like, “Now we’ll go watch the parade. This is what we always do.”
After the parade we went to get some Thai food. But, the place we traipsed to first was closed.
“It’s alright,” we said, “we can just go to a different one.”
“If you think about it,” my brother said, “your whole LIFE is a choose-your-own-adventure!”
In the Thai restaurant we eventually found, my sister sat across from my brother, I sat next to him.
“PAUL!” my sister kept saying, “You have chocolate in your beard! On your chin!”
But, he couldn’t quite ever get the spot she saw, so finally she was like, “COME HERE,” and she dipped his napkin in a glass of ice water and rubbed fiercely, washing off his chin.
“There you go,” she said, “gosh.”
When the twins were babies, they would work mischief in tandem–unrolling the toilet paper together, etc. Rascal-babies!
When the twins were older, but Christine couldn’t reach the door handle yet, she would yell for Paul so he would let her in the house…because, you see, he could reach the handle. He could also reach the sink knob first, so she would call him every time she needed to wash her hands. And, he would come.
In middle school, she would say to him, “Paul, when I was your age…” and proceed to give advice. Even though her age compared to his is a mere twenty minutes.
Last fall, I heard this convo:
Christine: “Paul, COME HERE, I need you.”
Paul (under his breath): “Won’t be the first time.”
Christine (with attitude): “Won’t be the last.”
So many days and so many memories, right? These two. Double of the trouble, double of the funz.
Happy birthday, twinz.
Maybe today you can make up some more of your secret language together and unroll some toilet paper and rely on each other to get through another year of LIFE.
And I comfort myself with the fact that I look more like each of you then either of you look like each other.
So there.
Muah!
Also, Paul got Christine the best card:
