Twinspiration

Yesterday we journeyed what felt like a great distance (but was really only 100 miles or so) to join in the celebration of our sweet nephew (and cousin), Tucker, on his first birthday. As we drove, with all three kids happily restrained and watching a movie on the dvd player in the third row, Lena and I marveled over all that has transpired in the year since Tucker's birth. I remember feeling so excited for Lena to finally get to witness a normal and natural childbirth by supporting her twin sister through labor (in a way that she had never been able to support me since I had two scheduled c-sections). And I hoped that maybe, just maybe, the experience would inspire her to have a change of heart in regards to her feelings about her own reproductive abilities.

When Lena arrived home after the birth, high on adrenaline and bursting with life energy, I made her tell me every little detail about the labor and the birth and tiny baby Tucker and the new mama, Addie. And then, I asked her, carefully, "so, now do you want to have a baby? Now that you've seen how amazing it can be?" And without hesitating, Lena responded that no, she most certainly did not EVER want to have to go through what her amazing sister had just gone through. She hadn't wanted to get pregnant before, and she definitely didn't want to get pregnant now. Feeling somewhat defeated, and a little disappointed, though not entirely surprised, I gave up on the dream of having a pregnant wife and chose to focus my attention on thinking about our brand new nephew.

a green peas first birthday t-shirt for Tucker

It was less than two months later when Lena first mentioned that she might be interested in having a baby after all. And while Lena now insists that there was no conscious connection between her twin sister giving birth and her decision to get pregnant (after years of adamant opposition to the idea), she can't deny that it does seem a bit suspicious. We talked about this on our drive yesterday, since it was just a little bit comical, knowing all that came before, to be traveling to Tucker's first birthday with Lena's bulging belly in tow.

Not being a twin myself, I of course can't really know what it feels like to have a twin sibling. But being the mother of twins, and married to a twin, I do think I have a pretty good idea about how one twin's experiences can influence the other twin. About 10 minutes into our drive yesterday, Lukas shouted out from the back seat, "Mom, Mama! I just lost my tooth!" We'd known that the tooth was loose, but he hadn't been talking about it much at all, so Luke's announcement came as a total surprise (Lena was so startled that she decided--forgetting she was 6 months pregnant--to unbuckle her seat belt and hurriedly clamber to the back of the minivan, as if Lukas had instead just exclaimed that he was about to be sick). I pulled over as soon as I could, and Lena returned to her seat, winded, with the tooth in hand.

My attempt at taking a "lost tooth" picture of Lukas;
he didn't quite get the "smile with your mouth open" instruction.

Luke was calm and happy--maybe a little proud, but not gloating at all. Jasper, however, instantly became a mess. Within 30 seconds of Luke loosing his tooth, Jaz was in tears. It wasn't fair. Never mind that Jasper has had a missing tooth for nearly a year (he had one of his front teeth pulled last summer), he and Lukas are the same age, and they are supposed to loose their teeth at the same time.

I pointed out that they didn't get their teeth at the same time; I told Jaz that he got to be the first one of them, as babies, to grow a tooth, a whole month before Lukas did.

"Well, then that means that I should have been the first one to LOSE a tooth!" Jaz growled in response. "I've had my teeth for longer!"

"It doesn't work like that," I said. "Everyone loses teeth at different times. But everyone gets to lose the same number of teeth in the end."

"But it's just not fair! Everyone's going to be talking about how Lukas lost a tooth and they're going to give him a poem at school, and it's not fair AT ALL!"

While Jasper ranted and raved about the injustice of deciduous teeth, poor Luke just sat there silently. I would have loved to be able to celebrate this milestone with him somehow, but it just didn't seem possible with Jaz being so upset. Instead we had to totally downplay the whole thing in order to survive the remainder of the car ride with Jasper in such a sorry state. Unfortunately, Jasper's foul mood persevered for the rest of the day and, come to think of it, the weekend as a whole. It's so hard to believe that something like the loss of a tooth could upset the balance in Luke and Jaz's twinship so dramatically. After many months of relatively smooth sailing, they fought all day today.

At times like this I can find myself feeling so angry about the fact that Luke and Jaz had to be born as twins. About all that was robbed from them (and us) when they began growing inside me simultaneously. The level of competition between them is so extreme. It must be exhausting for them. It's certainly exhausting for me. But I also know that competition isn't always a bad thing. That for every unbalanced day of struggle, there's another day full of love and support. That sometimes the competition between them can inspire them to be better people.

Tonight a weepy Luke told me, dejectedly, that he's changed his mind and he doesn't want to have kids anymore when he grows up.

"It would be so crazy. There would be too much fighting all the time."

As I pulled him into my lap and helped him process through his rough weekend of sibling rivalry, I wasn't actually thinking about the many conflicts we negotiated our way through in the past two days at all. Instead I was thinking, secretly to myself, "I bet that after Jaz has his first baby, THEN Lukas will decide that he wants to have kids after all."