Shelley: Twins
Shelley and I were/are (probably) identical twins.
The “were/are” part is there because now that she’s gone, it feels extremely weird to be a different age to her. She’ll be forever 50, and I’ll march on towards greyness and clicky knees.
The “probably” part is there because nobody is 100% sure that we’re identical. We had blood tests when we were much younger, but they were inconclusive, one test even indicating that Shelley, our brother Michael and I weren’t related at all. The tests were conducted by a family friend who was a forensic analyst and had worked on the Azaria Chamberlain case, if that’s an indication of the limitations of forensic testing at the time. We just never got around to genetic testing once it was available for relative cheaps.
If we’re fraternal twins (widely regarded by identical twins as inferior, and simply same-day siblings) then we’re astoundingly alike. If we’re identical, we’re a tiny bit different.
Shelley was born with a congenital heart defect: I wasn’t.
I was born colourblind: Shelley wasn’t. That said, every punnet square in the world will tell you that the combination of my mother’s colourblindness and my father’s non-colourblindness (add recessiveness on the X chromosome if you want to get even more science-y) means that I can’t be colourblind unless something unusually spooky happened after the egg split and before I first chose a green pencil to colour in a person’s skin in a colouring book.
Shelley was right-handed, I’m left-handed. Handedness isn’t genetic, but we liked to imagine that we were smooshed up against each other in the womb, leaving one hand each free to become dominant and, presumably, give each other high-fives.
There have been hints at identical-ness, like our baby teeth often falling out within days of each other, albeit on the opposite side — if my right front incisor fell out on Monday, Shelley’s left incisor would probably be gone by Wednesday.
We’d compare freckles and moles on our arms, sure that any we found that were in the same spot were testament to our genetic similarity. Let’s not interrogate the scientific rigour too closely on that one, please.
One thing Shelley and I absolutely had in common was our refusal to believe that there was anything magical or mystical about twins, much to the dismay of any of our woo-loving friends. We definitely thought twins were special, but not in a telepathic way.
Twins can seem like they’re reading each other’s minds purely because of almost all humans, they’re the most likely to think the same thing at the same time. If your brains were built at the same time, with the same-shaped squiggles, subject to the same input (at a slightly different angle) throughout much of your young lives, it would be weirder to not sometimes say things in unison.
Admittedly we did have the same dream on the same night once. We dreamt about a man wearing a cape in our room, playing a flute. We checked, and there was no man in a cape in our room that night, playing any instrument at all. “PROOF!” the seekers of spooky might exclaim. “Proof that you have a psychic connection!”. I did the maths though, and one similar dream out of over 18,250 nights of sleep is definitely nothing to get statistically excited about. We did dream about broken toilets a lot, but I understand that’s pretty common amongst good-looking, clever people.
The special comes in twins when — for those who choose to embrace it — you realise you have an accomplice in a million things. Someone to have a first day of school with, to share clothes with, to discuss absolultely everything with, to fall into step with at all times, and to compare every day with.
For our entire lives we never ran out of things to talk about. We could speak about all our life experiences and loves and irks and wonders and confusions knowing that the audience would be equally as interested, annoyed, enthusiastic or sad. We spoke nearly every day, even if it was just for a minute or two.
When Shelley died and we were all deeply, catastrophically grieving, it was a couple of weeks until I realised that I could still talk to her if I wanted to. The conversation would be one-sided, but I could still tell her about what was going on in my life, about her kids, about world events, and I discovered that that part of my day needn’t be completely gone.
I was taking my morning walk along the beach in the cold of July, mired in hopelessness, when I started talking to Shelley, and the relief came in such a rush that I smiled for the first time in a fortnight and shouted “it’s so GOOD to TALK TO YOU!”. Every morning since, I’ve gleefully embraced looking like a crazy lady, chatting away under my breath at sunrise. I don’t care how it looks, it feels fantastic. It makes me understand why some people believe in ghosts, or spirits, or the afterlife. I’m still pretty stubborn on all of those things, but I’m a lot gentler around the people who believe in them now.
One of Shelley’s poems is about us being twins, and she wrote it on our forty-second birthday The last couple of lines are an absolute gut-punch to read now and she was utterly correct, but her words still make me big happy. So I’ll close with them.
Because we will never run out of things to say
Two girls in matching home-sewn frocks
And straight-cut brunette fringes
Grew up through skates and fluoro socks
And late-night rock-pig binges.
Each day they speak, as is their wont,
Of food and films and art,
And how Australians say “croissant”
And whether sparrows fart.
Ensconced in the loquacious now
For forty-two years long;
If two were only one, somehow
The world would seem quite wrong.
