Twins?

Sophia and I are in Marshalls, looking for spring dresses.  Sophie has given me a list of criteria to separate the wheat from the chaff:

• Must be pink
• Must be sparkly
• Must be beautiful
• Must be “long enough”
• Must not be itchy
• Must not be tight

It’s a tall order, and I’ve only found one or two things that will fit the bill. I know that if I deviate from her list, there will be consequences.  I am a slave to Sophie’s fashion sense.  But I would rather her find something she really loves and wears till it falls off her body, than have a closetful of dresses she never wears. 

I’ve got my back to a woman who approaches Sophie.   I can hear her as I slide reject after reject across the rack:  too short, too blue, too stripey, too expensive…

“Oh, just look at your eyes!  What color are they?  Not blue, exactly.  More grey…they’re the color of blue jeans!” the woman exclaims.  Without looking I know that she is between 60-70 and alone.  Sophie, unmoved by this show of attention, elicits a barely-audible thank you. 

I turn to share an audible one, when the woman exclaims, “Why look at you!  You have the same eyes!”

“We’re twins,” Sophie informs her, solemnly.

“Well you’re certainly your mother’s daughter.” 

“Yep, “ I say, “No doubt about it.  She’s mine.” 

We move away and Sophie goes on, charmed by the idea of the two of us being twins.  “We’re the same, Mommy.  We both have brown hair.  We both have gray eyes.  We’re both girls.” 

We’re both from this planet.  We both need water to survive, I think.  “Yep.  Two peas in a pod,” I tell her. 

“What does that mean?”

“Peas in a pod grow together and look the same.” 

This delights her.  “Yes, we’re two peas in a pod.” 

Sometimes, I look at Sophie and am startled by the similarity between us.  It is as if I have bent time and am looking at my younger self.  There are pictures of me that could easily be mistaken for her.  At four, my hair has not yet been curled by the hormones of puberty.  It is pin-straight, falling in a pixie-cut about my face, framing my large gray eyes.  My dimples are fainter, but when unsmiling, this difference does not matter. 

How easily I could make the mistake that she is another chance at me.  I could pin all my hopes and unfulfilled dreams on her.  Treat her as what’s known in the psychology biz as a narcissistic extension of self.  Saddling her with the weight of my perceived failures until she buckles under the pressure of them. 

Or, I could imagine myself an enlightened visitor to the past, filled with the wisdom of all my years, who’s come to prevent her from making the same mistakes I made.  I could sagely offer advice of how to live one’s life to minimize the pain that I have suffered myself. 

But Sophie would vehemently resist either of these mothers.  She is some interesting rearrangement of my DNA, and, perhaps bears a strong likeness, but she is not me.  At five, closer to her beginning, she lives in the world differently.  She has her own lessons to teach

I am trying to live in the moment; she inhabits it.

I am trying to maintain a sense of peace and joy; she manufactures it. 
I am trying to love; she embodies it.

It has become exhilaratingly obvious that she is not a version of my self to be saved or taught, but a reminder of who I once was, and, perhaps, who I can aspire to be once again.  

Life Lesson

In third grade, and then again in fifth, I had Mr. O’Brian for Language Arts.  Mr. O’Brien was different from any teacher I had ever had before.  For one, he was a man with a mustache (it was the 70’s).  But the reason we all loved him is that he stoked the flames of our curiosity. 

One day, he transformed the classroom into a courtroom.  He told us about an incident in the news where some kids had vandalized an old women’s house and then killed her.  We were appalled.  We send the kids up the river.  And after we did—he asked us if the story sounded familiar. 

None of us had recognized it as Hansel and Gretel. 

Whenever you asked Mr. O’Brien the spelling of a word, he always replied, “D-I-C-T-I-O-N-A-R-Y.” 

And then there was the time Mr. O’Brien gave us a lesson in superlatives.  He singled me out, asking, with a twinkle in his eye, “Melissa, who’s your best friend?”

He knew full well who my best friends were.  We sat next to each other.  We did our projects together.  We got in trouble for talking together.  The three of us were inseparable.  “You know.” I told him, “I have two best friends:  Emily and Christine.” 

“No,” he corrected with a sadistic smile, “they might be two good friends, but you can only have one best friend.”

“They are both my best friends,” I insisted, refusing to choose, my eyes stinging with tears.  It didn’t take much to get me going. 

“Best is a superlative.  It refers to the greatest degree of something.   There can only be one best.”

“That’s not fair!” I complained.  (To be more exact, Mr. O’Brien wasn’t being fair.)

Then he said what he always said.  His greatest lesson of all:  “Life is unfair.”

It was frustrating then, this essential, disappointing truth.  And, now a grown-up myself, I carry the responsibility of passing along these painful words of wisdom.

After a strange warm spell, when the mercury climbed up to 60 in the middle of January, a meteorological gesture I can only take as a preview of the increasingly oppressive days to come, it settled back down into the below-freezing range.  Sophia, was as fooled by this sudden warmth as the green shoots that dared peek out from the semi-thawed Earth.  I slipped on my black, floor length coat and handed her a rainbow-colored ski jacket. 

“No, mom.  I want to wear my light, pink jacket.”  It was what I had allowed her to wear a few days ago, when, in anything else she would have broken a sweat. 

“Sorry, Soph, but it’s 28-degrees outside.  You have to put on something warmer.”  Temperature-appropriate is my only clothing requirement.

“But, mo-om!  You’re wearing a light jacket.” 

I begin to defend myself, “No, this is actually one of my winter coats—“

“No, it’s not!”  I realize, once again, I have been tricked into arguing with a five-year-old.  Drats! 

“Put your coat on.  It’s time to go.”  I tell her, and I open the door for emphasis.  A cold blast of air forces entry. 

“My coat is stronger than your coat,” she sobs, shivering, “ITS NOT FAIR!” 

It has arrived.  The belief that all things must be equal.  That life is predictable and makes sense.  That good is rewarded with good, and bad is punished with bad.  That she is entitled to fair. 

I wonder where she has heard these three little words.  Certainly not from me, who stopped long ago railing at the unfairness of life, nor from her father, who expects randomness.  Who once told me he was struck with the sense of his aunt’s response when she contracted a deadly cancer, “Why not me?” 

Is this, perhaps, a developmental stage, one we all pass through, where we come to believe that we should have exactly the same size cake—down to the crumb—as our siblings, have as many Beyblades as our best friends, stay up just as late as parents?  

Or is it a folk belief, handed down from kid-to-kid, much in the way that playground games are mysteriously transmitted from generation to generation, without the intervention of adult stewards.  

Here she is before me, saying what I have said so many times, with great indignance.  I wonder if she will remember this moment, the way I remember mine with Mr. O’Brien, or if it will take many, many more disappointments before the truth of it sinks in.

“Sophia, life is unfair,” I tell her.