We both like tea in the morning and wine in the evening.
We both talk into handheld radios in the summer: she on the volunteer ambulance squad in a little town in northwest Connecticut, I on a fire lookout near Flagstaff.
We’re both likely to delight and probably call each other if we hear a canyon wren in an unexpected place.
But, unlike those pairs of highly bonded twins in the spotlight at the recent winter Olympics, we haven’t shown up at most of each other’s events for years or been inseparable roommates or cheered each other on to a finish line. Well, we did confuse the fielders when we were Jeannie and Joycie on base at the same time in summer softball games. That comedy sketch, “Who’s on First?” was nothing compared to our antics!
I start to squirm when asked too many questions about what it is like to have a twin sister. It amuses me to still be mistaken for Joyce if I’m in her town, but really. I think it’s been decades since we looked alike. And when we did look so similar it might have been due to the identical scratchy dresses we were coaxed to wear for holiday pictures. I haven’t owned a dress in 30 years or so, which is one of our differences. And I skipped the part about having a husband and child, which she has enjoyed with grace and joy and humor.
One thing I don’t mind describing is how we haven’t trusted sharing the details of our separate lives to just phone calls. We write our lives down. We write in the same journal that we mail back and forth, filling pages one by one for decades now. The details of her life thousands of miles from Arizona—the puzzles of clerking at the town office, the politics of the local volunteer fire department, details from the violin section in the community symphony—are traded with my fire reports and wildlife sightings, café sits and poetry readings.
I find winter is an especially dear time to savor the nuances of our pages.
Flagstaff and northwest Connecticut winters both offer plenty of cold fluff and crunch. Like my sister, I’ve shoveled my share of snow. Unlike my sister, I can easily drive away from winter into 70 degrees. It is a couple hours to the valley instead of a flight to Florida. Looking at our journal I see that while she is giving blood and likening it to tapping maple trees for sap, I have bought a new bicycle and enjoy it on a shirt-sleeve eve visiting in Phoenix. And why wouldn’t she delicately preserve the flowers of summer with tiny watercolor drawings: a page full of them is so lovely to savor again with a hot toddy by the woodstove in winter. Meanwhile I’ve used my pen to pin a cowboy hat in Macys to the page, because I especially like the window seats there when snow wafts downward onto the street. And she draws the candleholders lighting her kitchen when the power goes out.
It’s not just a twin thing: this best of all possible luck, sharing a life in such good company. There are many ways to do it, but if your nature leans toward savoring quiet with color, get yourself a blank book, some pens, and watercolors. Don’t worry about spelling or being artistic. Fill a page now and then and mail it away to a life you treasure. You’ll be delighted when it returns.
