Are we really twins?

I have a twin. It baffles me because we are so different. Perhaps the stork dropped her down the chimney and she landed in my crib.

But it’s true. I have a twin. Her name is Teresa. In fact, we are the second set of fraternal twins in my family. Maybe my mother took too many chances with the rhythm method and got stuck with another set of twins. I guess the nights were pretty cold in 1952.

We didn’t have much money growing up, so the arrival of another set of twins was a shock for my mom. I’m surprised she didn’t keep us in the trunk of the car because there was so little room in the house. But somehow she figured it out. A crowded house with eight people always included lots of antics, and we always had fun even though we were poor.

Teresa and I shared a double bed while my older sister Lynn slept in a lumpy single bed on the other side of the room. When Lynn had a lousy date, Teresa would often console her in the middle of the night.

As for me? I just wanted to get some sleep.

As we got older, my brothers were happy to have two tomboys to enjoy sports with them. Many of the afternoons were punctuated with football. If the weather was challenging, we played pickle in the house. The latter game resulted in my tripping and hitting my head on the marble top table.

We didn’t have expensive furniture or thick rugs to cushion the blow, but when we fell, we couldn’t be accused of breaking anything valuable.

My brothers also taught us how to box when we were five and I remember several black eyes from that activity. Teresa and I continued our athletic pursuits until she got very sick at 12. At one point in time I weighed twice as much as she did because she had colitis and had to be homeschooled.

To this day, I’ve always wondered why I was so much healthier than she was. I must’ve sucked all the blood out of my mom’s abdomen during her pregnancy. I guess that’s why I’m 4 inches taller than she is.

As we’ve aged, we’ve both remained athletic, but she is far more mobile than I am now. Even though she has a lot of auto immune disorders, she gets up every day and goes running. She spends hours working in her garden and even tackles the roof of her house to clear the moss. I know she’s uncomfortable physically but she carries on doing what she can for as long as she can.

I am a wimp. I have endured two broken knees, and that has impacted my activity level tremendously. I don’t want to do anything to put me in danger or exacerbate my discomfort so a lot of things that came easily for me years ago are off the table now. Thankfully, my partner does a lot of maintenance around our house, but eventually that will change, so we will pay to have those things done.

I admire my sister, despite her fiercely independent nature and her lack of caution when it comes to doing certain physical things. She’s headstrong, and despite my worrying, she continues to do things that I would never dream of doing.

I hope I don’t get a phone call one of these days telling me that she has slipped off of the roof because of her stubborn nature. Or that she was hit by a car because she continues to run on black ice. Or that some homeless person jumped in front of her when she was riding her bike at 4 AM in the rain.

But as we all know, you can’t change someone’s basic nature. I’m sure there are things about me that perplex her, but my life works for me and I try to accept my sister the way she is.

Do you have a lot in common with your siblings or are they very different from you? Let’s share some stories.