This book is an atrocity! I startet perusing through the German version in a bookstore and then found out I could purchase it via amazon.de for 0,01 Eurocent (+ E 3,00 shipping from the UK). So, I did read it, eventually, and was livid afterwards.
I have read other books by the same author and liked them. They were all about indian girls in british society and they were fun, but this one isn't nor is is designed to be.
The plot: Mia is fourteen an telling her story. That her twin brother Jamie is dead she mentions almost first thing on page one. She then proceeds to tell about how she and Jamie and their mother who has bi-polar disorder try to make it through life together. How her beloved grandfather died some years ago after shouldering most of the responsibility of the small family (the twin's father vanished before their birth). How her mother's behaviour becomes more and more unpredictable and bizarre and how Jamie threatens "to do something" and that he "may no longer be there" soon. So, when the rumour runs through school that someone with a gun is in the building, Mia believes it may be Jamie driven to something desperate and she sets out own her own to find him.
She tracks the shooter through the building rather smartly, finds out is is NOT Jamie, manages to lock him into a room, gets rescued just in time, ends up in hospital and when she frantically asks for Jamie meets the astonished gaze of a doctor asking her "Who is Jamie?".
At this point the intelligent reader realizes that Jamie as a figure has remained a bit vague, and for good reason: he died at the twin's birth.
The rest of the story is unraveled at high speed level. Mia sees a psychologist, tells her she has always known Jamie is a ghost. The shrink doesn't believe her. It takes Mia only two more pages to realize that she has made up Jamie herself, that she is even more bi-polar than her mother and has to have therapy. Knowing this truth about herself, she curls up in her bed, whispers "Good-bye, Jamie, I don't need you any more" and finita la comedia!
Thus Narinder Dhami turns the whole subject of twinloss at birth into an illness that can be cured, and in a jiffy!
I tried to contact the author and give her a piece of my mind, but her contact form would bounce back my emails and I couldn't find any other address on the web.
So, if you like a criminal story with a surprising end - or, since this isn't a surprise to you any more, know someone you might like to give it to - go ahead, but as far as twinloss is concerned it is worthless and possibly damaging.
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Monday, October 10, 2011
Books about Twinloss No 7 "The secret twin" by Denise Gosliner Orenstein
This book is special. I must admit I haven't managed reading it through, yet. I read more than half and then started leafing through to find out about later events, because I was too impatient to get their in due time ;-). And this book isn't an easy read. This book is literature to be taken seriously, yes, Sir.
The story sounds simple enough. A little boy lives with his grandmother. She has to go to hospital and a temporary caretaker moves in with the boy. They have a not-too-easy time getting to know each other, but in the end become fast friends, which is all the more beneficial for both because the grandmother dies.
So far, so not-at- all to the clue. Noah is no ordinary boy and his grandmother whom he calls Mademoiselle is no ordinary grandmother. Noah was born a conjoined twin, but it was clear from the start that only one of the twins could survive. An unprecedented operation saves Noah's life and ends his brother's. He keeps the newspaper articles on the event under his bed in a box.
Noah's parents died in a car accident and he grows up with his grandmother. We learn to know her mainly through her grandson's appearance to the caretaker Grace - who has a story of her own about life and loss.
This book is magic and NOT because the author choose to weave the symbols of the Tarot cards into the story. The plot includes a mysterious murderer whom Noah confuses somehow with his twin and who leaves cards of the Great Arkana behind, but the story is magical enough without this feature. Grace's perspective on life. Through food. The way she fights for her own little boy who got lost - her little brother killed in an accident - and later for Noah. The way Noah finds out about his grandmother, how she loved him, how she not loved him and how he loves her, in the end. The way Noah comes to term with his twin and his twinship, how he climbs from being half a boy to being someone like no other, maybe, but still himself, and maybe, most miraculous, the way Orenstein manages to describe a clearly obese and simpe-minded young woman like the most insightful and important and precious person in the whole wordl - not only for Noah.
It's hard to describe this book without adapting the magical style Orenstein weaves. It's sure like none of the other twinloss books I read. I'm still not sure whether I like it or not, but it sure is special.
The story sounds simple enough. A little boy lives with his grandmother. She has to go to hospital and a temporary caretaker moves in with the boy. They have a not-too-easy time getting to know each other, but in the end become fast friends, which is all the more beneficial for both because the grandmother dies.
So far, so not-at- all to the clue. Noah is no ordinary boy and his grandmother whom he calls Mademoiselle is no ordinary grandmother. Noah was born a conjoined twin, but it was clear from the start that only one of the twins could survive. An unprecedented operation saves Noah's life and ends his brother's. He keeps the newspaper articles on the event under his bed in a box.
Noah's parents died in a car accident and he grows up with his grandmother. We learn to know her mainly through her grandson's appearance to the caretaker Grace - who has a story of her own about life and loss.
This book is magic and NOT because the author choose to weave the symbols of the Tarot cards into the story. The plot includes a mysterious murderer whom Noah confuses somehow with his twin and who leaves cards of the Great Arkana behind, but the story is magical enough without this feature. Grace's perspective on life. Through food. The way she fights for her own little boy who got lost - her little brother killed in an accident - and later for Noah. The way Noah finds out about his grandmother, how she loved him, how she not loved him and how he loves her, in the end. The way Noah comes to term with his twin and his twinship, how he climbs from being half a boy to being someone like no other, maybe, but still himself, and maybe, most miraculous, the way Orenstein manages to describe a clearly obese and simpe-minded young woman like the most insightful and important and precious person in the whole wordl - not only for Noah.
It's hard to describe this book without adapting the magical style Orenstein weaves. It's sure like none of the other twinloss books I read. I'm still not sure whether I like it or not, but it sure is special.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Books about Twinloss No 6 "The Survivor" by Lynne Schulz
This book is lying next to my computer, because I like to read in it while our old "snail-top" uploads something and because I frequently recommend it to others on the net. It' small, it didn't cost much and it's priceless.
Lynne Schulz from Australia lost her daughter Megan in utero and wrote a preceding book about this experience, called "The Diary". This second book is dedicated to Megan's brother Rhys, the survivor of the twin pregnancy. Schulz manages to keep the balance between telling personal experience, giving others the opportunity to voice theirs and draw some theoretical and many practical conclusions from these. Scientist may call anecdotical what is told in this book. It's the stories of parents who have lost a twin or multiple during pregnancy, at birth or shortly after, of twins or multiples who survived and live with the knowledge to be closely connected to someone they never saw, and it's also about the reactions of teachers at kindergarden or school, often sceptic of the relevance of these experiences. Schulz knows she is something of a pioneer in this field and she's not afraid to do the work. The last chapter of the book deals with her efforts to establish a support service for women suffering a stillbirth, especially in a multiple pregnancy, in Australia.
"The Survivor" gathers testimonies of several families concerning the actual loss of their children, the reactions of the survivors, the way the parents dealt with the loss (with a special chapter for the father's way to do that. Normally it's expertly overlooked in studies that fathers grieve differently from mothers) and how they communicate the loss to their growing children. It also features a chapter about twinloss in different cultures and the status of research in 2003, quoting -among others - Woodward, Haddon, Pector and Piontelli who more or less laid the foundation of the subject in the 1990s.
Who lacks the time to read the whole of Alessandra Piontelli's or Joan Woodward's studies or just looks for a brief introduction to the phenomenon of surviving twin-children should by all means get hold of this book. Who for any other reason is interested in the topic should, too.
Lynne Schulz from Australia lost her daughter Megan in utero and wrote a preceding book about this experience, called "The Diary". This second book is dedicated to Megan's brother Rhys, the survivor of the twin pregnancy. Schulz manages to keep the balance between telling personal experience, giving others the opportunity to voice theirs and draw some theoretical and many practical conclusions from these. Scientist may call anecdotical what is told in this book. It's the stories of parents who have lost a twin or multiple during pregnancy, at birth or shortly after, of twins or multiples who survived and live with the knowledge to be closely connected to someone they never saw, and it's also about the reactions of teachers at kindergarden or school, often sceptic of the relevance of these experiences. Schulz knows she is something of a pioneer in this field and she's not afraid to do the work. The last chapter of the book deals with her efforts to establish a support service for women suffering a stillbirth, especially in a multiple pregnancy, in Australia.
"The Survivor" gathers testimonies of several families concerning the actual loss of their children, the reactions of the survivors, the way the parents dealt with the loss (with a special chapter for the father's way to do that. Normally it's expertly overlooked in studies that fathers grieve differently from mothers) and how they communicate the loss to their growing children. It also features a chapter about twinloss in different cultures and the status of research in 2003, quoting -among others - Woodward, Haddon, Pector and Piontelli who more or less laid the foundation of the subject in the 1990s.
Who lacks the time to read the whole of Alessandra Piontelli's or Joan Woodward's studies or just looks for a brief introduction to the phenomenon of surviving twin-children should by all means get hold of this book. Who for any other reason is interested in the topic should, too.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Notification from the subconscious. We've got mail!
There are two people who "know" what happened to my twin. One is my mother in whose belly it all happened and the other is me who was there when it happened. My mother couldn't see and I can't tell, so our means of finding out more about my pre-natal trauma are very limited. So far, dreams have served as a useful tool to do so.
My mother recently told me a dream she had back in 1992. Neither she nor I had ever heard of early twin loss, then. She wrote this dream in her diary at that time so o need to rely on - faulty -memory :-).
She said she was holding a male fetus in her hand. His mother had walked away and she was fretting how to put it back into the womb in time for his birth. It troubled her that she didn't know the expected date of delivery. The fetus looked about three months old, with his head much larger than his body but his sex was clearly visible.
My mother didn't think much about the dream at that time, but she did write it down so we could find it almost ten years later.
My mother recently told me a dream she had back in 1992. Neither she nor I had ever heard of early twin loss, then. She wrote this dream in her diary at that time so o need to rely on - faulty -memory :-).
She said she was holding a male fetus in her hand. His mother had walked away and she was fretting how to put it back into the womb in time for his birth. It troubled her that she didn't know the expected date of delivery. The fetus looked about three months old, with his head much larger than his body but his sex was clearly visible.
My mother didn't think much about the dream at that time, but she did write it down so we could find it almost ten years later.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Books about twinloss No 5: "Are you alone on Purpose" by Nancy Werlin
"Are you alone on Purpose" is one of the books I found on amazon.de by inserting "twins", "death" or "loss" for a search. It also is clearly a product of contemporary American creative writing. You learn to detect certain details they ALL use. The main characters in these books are shaped by using three different columns: Clothes, food and hair. The reader is constantly told what the characters are eating - and they do a lot of eating - what they are wearing - and they change clothes several times per day, and NEVER is a shirt just a shirt but the colour and brand HAS to be mentioned - and how they are wearing their hair. Its colour, texture and degree of waviness is of utmost importance, especially in boys.
It's a bit annoying that books tend to be more and more similar, but it also provides a challenge to distinguish the good ones from trash.
"Are you alone on Purpose", re-printed in 2007 (amazon doesn't give me the date of its first publishing and I'm too lazy to find out, now) isn't bad.
It deals with twinloss in a very special sense. 14-year-old Alison Shandling's twin brother Adam is very much alive, but he is autistic and so Alison is very much on her own. In the book's last chapter when she, who always was the good child, at long last flies off the handle and tells her parents how she really feels, she realizes she has never been a little girl. For her own perception she has always been the "normal" child, the one who had to make up for Adam being not "normal". There's a parallel in that to many stories told by surviving twins how they feel they have to make up for their twin's death.
I especially liked that the book is settled in middle- to upper-class American Jewish community. After the death of an uncle Alison's not very religious parents are shocked at her daughter's casual question "What's kaddish?" and decide to join a synagogue. It's not quite clear why, for the Rabbi there promptly annoys Harvard Professor Shandling's family by making a boring sermon and asking tactless questions about Adam. Still, they keep trying to fit in with the community and want to enroll their children into Hebrew Classes. Rabbi Roth refuses to accept Adam because he fears the special needs of the autistic boy and Adam's and Alison's mother makes a scene in his office peaking in her clearly spoken wish his own son, Harry, who's a bully at Alison's school, might be even more handicapped than Adam.
Fate aka the author wills it that Harry has an accident that very same day and ends up in a wheelchair. He also improves a lot, turns out to be nice and sensitive boy and finally - quelle surprise! - becomes Alison's boyfriend.
What interested me - beside my chronic philosemitism - was how Alison is described as a twin and yet on her own. The twinship is an issue only in a few sentences, when Adam calls his sister "Alison Shandling" thus showing he recognizes her as a member of the family and his own special universe, or they sit together in front of the dishwasher which Adam likes to watch. Alison is very much a twinless twin of some sorts. It's unclear, even, whether Adam knows he's a twin or if it means anything to him. Alison more than once says she used to hate her brother and it's clear he got much more attention from their parents than she got and than she needed. But it's also clear, as Harry once says to his father, "she cares about her brother". He uses this sentence to describe Alison and why he likes her when it is very difficult for him to speak to his father at all. The bond between those twins has to be picked from all the words used in the book by bits and pieces and then it becomes a quite clear picture to those who can see. I found the book to be inspirational for my own task to be a twin without my twin - and to be myself at all.
It's a bit annoying that books tend to be more and more similar, but it also provides a challenge to distinguish the good ones from trash.
"Are you alone on Purpose", re-printed in 2007 (amazon doesn't give me the date of its first publishing and I'm too lazy to find out, now) isn't bad.
It deals with twinloss in a very special sense. 14-year-old Alison Shandling's twin brother Adam is very much alive, but he is autistic and so Alison is very much on her own. In the book's last chapter when she, who always was the good child, at long last flies off the handle and tells her parents how she really feels, she realizes she has never been a little girl. For her own perception she has always been the "normal" child, the one who had to make up for Adam being not "normal". There's a parallel in that to many stories told by surviving twins how they feel they have to make up for their twin's death.
I especially liked that the book is settled in middle- to upper-class American Jewish community. After the death of an uncle Alison's not very religious parents are shocked at her daughter's casual question "What's kaddish?" and decide to join a synagogue. It's not quite clear why, for the Rabbi there promptly annoys Harvard Professor Shandling's family by making a boring sermon and asking tactless questions about Adam. Still, they keep trying to fit in with the community and want to enroll their children into Hebrew Classes. Rabbi Roth refuses to accept Adam because he fears the special needs of the autistic boy and Adam's and Alison's mother makes a scene in his office peaking in her clearly spoken wish his own son, Harry, who's a bully at Alison's school, might be even more handicapped than Adam.
Fate aka the author wills it that Harry has an accident that very same day and ends up in a wheelchair. He also improves a lot, turns out to be nice and sensitive boy and finally - quelle surprise! - becomes Alison's boyfriend.
What interested me - beside my chronic philosemitism - was how Alison is described as a twin and yet on her own. The twinship is an issue only in a few sentences, when Adam calls his sister "Alison Shandling" thus showing he recognizes her as a member of the family and his own special universe, or they sit together in front of the dishwasher which Adam likes to watch. Alison is very much a twinless twin of some sorts. It's unclear, even, whether Adam knows he's a twin or if it means anything to him. Alison more than once says she used to hate her brother and it's clear he got much more attention from their parents than she got and than she needed. But it's also clear, as Harry once says to his father, "she cares about her brother". He uses this sentence to describe Alison and why he likes her when it is very difficult for him to speak to his father at all. The bond between those twins has to be picked from all the words used in the book by bits and pieces and then it becomes a quite clear picture to those who can see. I found the book to be inspirational for my own task to be a twin without my twin - and to be myself at all.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
To you
I started talking to you very early.
I remember when I was about six or seven and started to walk the streets on my own I always talked to you. It felt absolutely natural to do that. Maybe, shrinks would tell me I was just having an imaginary friend for lack of real friends, like so many lonely children have.
Maybe, some of these lonely children are twin-survivors, too.
But I was "talking to myself" even earlier, at age four, or so my parents report.
And when my younger sister was born, when I was three, I said "I don't want her. I want another brother."
It was all about you, Enjy, all the time, all these 47 years.
I remember when I was about six or seven and started to walk the streets on my own I always talked to you. It felt absolutely natural to do that. Maybe, shrinks would tell me I was just having an imaginary friend for lack of real friends, like so many lonely children have.
Maybe, some of these lonely children are twin-survivors, too.
But I was "talking to myself" even earlier, at age four, or so my parents report.
And when my younger sister was born, when I was three, I said "I don't want her. I want another brother."
It was all about you, Enjy, all the time, all these 47 years.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Books about Twins or Twinloss No 4 "I miss you, I miss you"
This was one of the first books I ever read about twinloss, ong before I knew I am a twin. It's originally in swedish by Peter Pohl and Kinna Gieth and it's Kinna's story although she is called Tina in the book and says at the beginning she can't bear to say "I" when telling about her twin-sister Jenny's death.
Jenny is called Cilla in the book and the story weaves in and out of the girls' early childhood, the story of the mother they cannot remember, of their new life with their father's new wife, Monika, her son Jonny who becomes their big brother and their growing up in a small swedish town. They are quite normal teenage girls, Tina and Cilla. At age 13 Tina's main interest ist boys, then boys and then probably boys, while Cilla thinks about the world's future, works on a theatre play and secretely writes poems. Pohl describes very convincingly how being a twin has it's pros and cons for the girls, how they get in trouble with their father, with his mother, Grandmère from France where they were born and how they slowly, ever so slowly develop their individuality, glide away from one another, back into their childhood closeness, learn to know themselves and each other even better ...
All this is brutally terminated when Cilla is killed in a road accident on her way to school on her step-mother's birthday. Sometimes I read just this chapter again and again. Pohl doesn't spare the reader anything although he never describes a single drop of blood, but the reader sees everything as Tina sees it and it slowly dawns on her what has happened, that her twin-sister is dead.
From then on the story unfolds in a tumble. How Tina tries to cope with her unspeakable grief, of the desperate effort to keep her sister present in her life, of being afraid her parents might do themselves in, of Martin, her brother's friend, who drove the car that hit Cilla, and finally of Tina herself and how the fourteen year old girl in her wants to go on living with a zest the bereaved twin does not always understand.
For my personal taste there is a little too much "boys" in that book. Romance never hooked me that much in novels (I was always very much interested in reading books about brothers but not about lovers), so I just can't understand how important it is for Tina, but I felt the impact of the unbelievable, the loss of a twin, from the very first time I read it. It's a very authentic book which doesn't come as a surprise since it is written by a twinless twin as co-author and sometimes it seems to be more of a documentary than a novel, when Tina does say "I". It's not a light read but with all the "normal teenage stuff" in it also readable for kids not so much interested in twins at all and one of those books that reveal to them: life can be over any day and then what would have been most important in YOUR life, therefore a strongly recommended book.
Jenny is called Cilla in the book and the story weaves in and out of the girls' early childhood, the story of the mother they cannot remember, of their new life with their father's new wife, Monika, her son Jonny who becomes their big brother and their growing up in a small swedish town. They are quite normal teenage girls, Tina and Cilla. At age 13 Tina's main interest ist boys, then boys and then probably boys, while Cilla thinks about the world's future, works on a theatre play and secretely writes poems. Pohl describes very convincingly how being a twin has it's pros and cons for the girls, how they get in trouble with their father, with his mother, Grandmère from France where they were born and how they slowly, ever so slowly develop their individuality, glide away from one another, back into their childhood closeness, learn to know themselves and each other even better ...
All this is brutally terminated when Cilla is killed in a road accident on her way to school on her step-mother's birthday. Sometimes I read just this chapter again and again. Pohl doesn't spare the reader anything although he never describes a single drop of blood, but the reader sees everything as Tina sees it and it slowly dawns on her what has happened, that her twin-sister is dead.
From then on the story unfolds in a tumble. How Tina tries to cope with her unspeakable grief, of the desperate effort to keep her sister present in her life, of being afraid her parents might do themselves in, of Martin, her brother's friend, who drove the car that hit Cilla, and finally of Tina herself and how the fourteen year old girl in her wants to go on living with a zest the bereaved twin does not always understand.
For my personal taste there is a little too much "boys" in that book. Romance never hooked me that much in novels (I was always very much interested in reading books about brothers but not about lovers), so I just can't understand how important it is for Tina, but I felt the impact of the unbelievable, the loss of a twin, from the very first time I read it. It's a very authentic book which doesn't come as a surprise since it is written by a twinless twin as co-author and sometimes it seems to be more of a documentary than a novel, when Tina does say "I". It's not a light read but with all the "normal teenage stuff" in it also readable for kids not so much interested in twins at all and one of those books that reveal to them: life can be over any day and then what would have been most important in YOUR life, therefore a strongly recommended book.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Prenatal memory
All in-utero loosers have to struggle with the fact that we can never 100% be sure that we really remember being in the womb with our twins and not imagine things from post-natal ideas. Here is a story I read on the internet I found encouraging: A father was commenting on a blog on pre-natal development. He said he took care of his daughter soon after birth since her other felt overwhelmed by the task and later left the family. She hadn't wanted the baby to begin with and had tried to hit her belly during the pregnancy to evoke an abortion. He never told his daughter that but when she was about three he was looking at a picture of his wife during the pregnancy, when suddenly the girl said "I was crying for help then". When he looked at his daughter, shocked, and asked her "why did you cry for help?" the girl punched her tummy with her fists and said: "Mummy was doing like this."
He says he didn't use to believe in pre-natal memory, ut he does now.b
He says he didn't use to believe in pre-natal memory, ut he does now.b
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
How I know what happened
When I was born in 1963 ultrasound was just developing (almost pre-natal, you could say) and many twins were discovered at birth. So, the only records I can rely on are my mother's memory of her pregnancy and my subconsciously stored memory. I have learned many interesting facts about neurology while working on my twinloss and my amygdala (no, this is NOT a princess from Star Wars) has become a fast friend. I call her Amy sometimes and blame her for my difficulties in life.
But there is one incident I firmly believe told me what happened to me and my twin in utero.
I had a dream one night that was unlike every other dream I ever had. Even while I was doing the finishing touches to the kitchen before going to bed I had the most curious feeling that something very important was going to happen. Like I had an appointment I was a little nervous about but also thrilled and expectant. I even thought I might die that night and was sorry for my family but not afraid.
I can still recall this feeling of expectancy.
That night I dreamed I was sitting on a window sill with one other and suddenly we both lost our balance. I was clutching at the window frame, terrified lest I tumble out of the window. The other one was clutching at ME, pulling me out after him (or her). I was fighting to get free, panicking and then I felt myself tumble down on the SAFE side of the window, inside the room, while my twin was falling, falling outside into not-being-there-anymore.
I woke up in the middle of the night with a piercing ache in my right temple, fell asleep again and had exactly the same dream again.
I never had another dream like that, but I believe it told me as clear as possible we BOTH were in danger of miscarriage that day and for some reason I managed to hold on and my twin didn't.
This also would explain my resentment to touch even as an infant and the panic that grips me when I catch somewhere, e.g. my sleeve on a handle.
But there is one incident I firmly believe told me what happened to me and my twin in utero.
I had a dream one night that was unlike every other dream I ever had. Even while I was doing the finishing touches to the kitchen before going to bed I had the most curious feeling that something very important was going to happen. Like I had an appointment I was a little nervous about but also thrilled and expectant. I even thought I might die that night and was sorry for my family but not afraid.
I can still recall this feeling of expectancy.
That night I dreamed I was sitting on a window sill with one other and suddenly we both lost our balance. I was clutching at the window frame, terrified lest I tumble out of the window. The other one was clutching at ME, pulling me out after him (or her). I was fighting to get free, panicking and then I felt myself tumble down on the SAFE side of the window, inside the room, while my twin was falling, falling outside into not-being-there-anymore.
I woke up in the middle of the night with a piercing ache in my right temple, fell asleep again and had exactly the same dream again.
I never had another dream like that, but I believe it told me as clear as possible we BOTH were in danger of miscarriage that day and for some reason I managed to hold on and my twin didn't.
This also would explain my resentment to touch even as an infant and the panic that grips me when I catch somewhere, e.g. my sleeve on a handle.
Books on Twins and Twinloss No 3 "The Last Payback"
"The Last Payback" by James VanOosting (1997) is one of my treasures I found through amazon. The story is simple and simply told. It kind of unfolds in the reader's mind rather than on the pages of the book.
Twelve-year old Dale and Dimple, (DON'T call her Dorothea) are twins and since they moved to Cuthbur they have formed a secret club, the Twin Protectors. That was necessary. Being the new kids in town and twins to boot they had to stand up for one another and Dale and Dimple ALWAYS stand up for one another. So Dale's idea to always live together and be Twin Protectors and never marry isn't far from logical.
Still, Dimple hesitates. After all, she MIGHT not mind to marry Ronnie Delaney one day. And then it is at Ronnie's place that Dale is shot and dies in hospital and nobody will tell Dimple what really happened and that's where the book begins.
Dimple is tough and she is very determined to find out the truth which she thinks she already knows. It was Ronnie's fault. And hers. Because she let Ronnie kiss her one day, some time ago. But the twins had a rule: never delay a payback, and to payback Ronnie is Dimple's duty, if it is the last payback she'll ever do.
The story is told entirely through Dimple's eyes and in present tense. The reader hardly learns anything about other people's thoughts or feelings, just how Dimple perceives them, and Dimple is a down-to-the-earth kind of girl. She doesn't muse much about her brother's death, she knows what to do. But through Dimple's thoughts, feelings and memories the hidden despair of the twin-girl cries out louder from every of the 150 pages until on the very last page she finally is able to cry for her brother and can think "For the rest of my life I'll think about him". It wasn't Ronnie's fault, after all, nor was it really hers. It just happened. It is terrible, but it is real.
This is one of the best books about twinloss I read, although the word twinloss isn't mentioned once and neither is twinship at all. I just see it at work as a reader in Dimple's story. The book doesn't tell and even less explains - it shows.
Twelve-year old Dale and Dimple, (DON'T call her Dorothea) are twins and since they moved to Cuthbur they have formed a secret club, the Twin Protectors. That was necessary. Being the new kids in town and twins to boot they had to stand up for one another and Dale and Dimple ALWAYS stand up for one another. So Dale's idea to always live together and be Twin Protectors and never marry isn't far from logical.
Still, Dimple hesitates. After all, she MIGHT not mind to marry Ronnie Delaney one day. And then it is at Ronnie's place that Dale is shot and dies in hospital and nobody will tell Dimple what really happened and that's where the book begins.
Dimple is tough and she is very determined to find out the truth which she thinks she already knows. It was Ronnie's fault. And hers. Because she let Ronnie kiss her one day, some time ago. But the twins had a rule: never delay a payback, and to payback Ronnie is Dimple's duty, if it is the last payback she'll ever do.
The story is told entirely through Dimple's eyes and in present tense. The reader hardly learns anything about other people's thoughts or feelings, just how Dimple perceives them, and Dimple is a down-to-the-earth kind of girl. She doesn't muse much about her brother's death, she knows what to do. But through Dimple's thoughts, feelings and memories the hidden despair of the twin-girl cries out louder from every of the 150 pages until on the very last page she finally is able to cry for her brother and can think "For the rest of my life I'll think about him". It wasn't Ronnie's fault, after all, nor was it really hers. It just happened. It is terrible, but it is real.
This is one of the best books about twinloss I read, although the word twinloss isn't mentioned once and neither is twinship at all. I just see it at work as a reader in Dimple's story. The book doesn't tell and even less explains - it shows.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
If my twin was a girl ...
I do not have any real proof for my twin's gender. When the miscarriage occurred my mother didn't stop to investigate, she just flushed the toilet.
I mentioned that I have always been searching for a brother and therefore "decided" on my twin being a brother but a small grain of doubt will probably be with me for ever.
There is one picture that seems to indicate a sister and I will share it here because it is part of my twinship one way or another. I painted it at age four with water-colours. My mother has kept it since through my parents separating and she moving from one flat and town to others. She says it hang always on her walls although she never could explain to herself why.
I used to explain that the girl with one foot on the ground is me, still bound to the confines of this life and therefore looking a little sorrowful, while my sister has both her feet in the air and is clearly having fun.
This picture means a lot to me. And after all, IF my twin was a girl, Enjy is a very pretty name for a girl, too :-).
I mentioned that I have always been searching for a brother and therefore "decided" on my twin being a brother but a small grain of doubt will probably be with me for ever.
There is one picture that seems to indicate a sister and I will share it here because it is part of my twinship one way or another. I painted it at age four with water-colours. My mother has kept it since through my parents separating and she moving from one flat and town to others. She says it hang always on her walls although she never could explain to herself why.
I used to explain that the girl with one foot on the ground is me, still bound to the confines of this life and therefore looking a little sorrowful, while my sister has both her feet in the air and is clearly having fun.
This picture means a lot to me. And after all, IF my twin was a girl, Enjy is a very pretty name for a girl, too :-).
Books about Twins and Twinloss No 2 "Alessandra Piontelli "Twins. from Fetus to Child"
This weekend I had time to engage with a new book. "Twins. From Fetus to Child. 2002" by Alessandra Piontelli. Piontelli is an italian psychoanalyst, a Professor for Child Neuropsychiatry and Researcher at the University of Milan/Italy. Her book "From Fetus to Child" provides the first long-time study on children before and after birth using utrasound. Piontelli's main interest then was to examine if birth really is such a turning point in life or if character traits that appear after birth are also recognizable before. Her study proved that they do.
"Twins" is the necessary sequel to her first book. It is a study done on 30 pairs of twins from 10 weeks gestation to the children's fourth birthday. 15 were monozygotic and fifteen dizygotic. The book contains numerous tables and pictures and is a scientific but understandable read.
What struck me first when reading it was something I also noted in Piontelli's first book and left me annoyed even then. She doesn't seem to like her study's subjects. or rather she treats them just like that, subjects, not people. She comments on the people's behaviour, outfit and mental state in a way I can only call embarrassing.Sometimes her style borders on contempt. As reader I didn't like that.And I don't like it in "Twins", either. of course, her comments are probably true. She tells how parents complain about expecting twins, how mother whine about the pregnancy, how ideals are shattered and newborn babies are preferred or rejected and you may say this is just unemotional scientific style of writing. I still don't like it.
Also, as a psychoanalyst she probably can't help to see sexuality left, right an centre. It was even more prominent in her first book where she describes in detail the behaviour of a three-year-old as a little Lolita intent on nothing but sex. It reminded me of Joan Woodward's, author of "The Lone Twin" on the treatment she received from a psychoanalyst after the death of her twin-sister at age three. That woman blamed little Joan's distress not on her sister's death from diphteria but on surpressed childish sexuality. Joan Woodward told her to stop asking her rude questions and let her play with the toys. Good on you, Joan!
Nonetheless, Piontelli's "Twins" is an immensely interesting read which provides tons of informations for twins and non-twins alike. Still, I'd advice to take it with a grain of salt. Piontelli is either discovering or assuming certain "facts" about twins. At the end of the day she describes only monozygotics as "real" twins even quoting the French term of "vrais jumeaux" = true twins for identicals and "false jumeaux" = wrong twins for fraternals. Monozygotics are constantly described as having more contact and interest in one another, as behaving and being treated more like twins from parents, peers and other adults alike. Fraternals appear to be more or less ordinary siblings accidentally born at the same time. I don't say her research isn't accurate, I just wonder if the fact that this IS the main attitude towards twins in Europe and as I know from experience not necessarily the same in the US, for example, may have coloured her motives.
Furthermore, she interprets twinship more or less as the result of parental treatment. Psychoanalyst to the core, again, she blames twin's relationship mostly on the way their parents treated them, made them sleep in the same cot, let them face one another, dressed them alike and so on. This process she calls "twinning" and according to it twin's demand to be seen as twins doesn't stem from the children themselves but from their parents.
Also, and now I become really impertinent, there is an element in her book I would like to psychoanalyze myself. I would say, Piontelli is subject to an emotion not uncommon among singletons: twin-envy. Throughout her book I feel a clandestine need to prove that twins either are not that special as they make out to be or that their specialness is something their parents trained them into. This even leads to contradictions when she states in one passage that twin-infants show not the slightest interest in their co-twins and the next page shows pictures of three-months-olds interacting quite intensely.
For example, the often curiously close bond between opposite sex fraternals she explains as the experience "we are all brothers and sisters underneath", which is very philosophical and the Dalai Lama would certainly applaud her, but I still believe the connection between boy-girls twins runs deeper than that.
The attention many twins receive from the public Piontelli calls "social glamour", a term that - imhO - does sound envious. She could have chosen "public attention", couldn't she? It's very interesting to read her book right next to Nancy Segal's "Entwined Lives" which Piontelli knows and quotes. The strain of envy I believe to detect in "Twins" is totally absent there. But then, Segal is a twin herself.
All in all "Twins" is an important and highly interesting book and worth a read and a purchase, it just shouldn't be taken as gospel concerning twinship.
"Twins" is the necessary sequel to her first book. It is a study done on 30 pairs of twins from 10 weeks gestation to the children's fourth birthday. 15 were monozygotic and fifteen dizygotic. The book contains numerous tables and pictures and is a scientific but understandable read.
What struck me first when reading it was something I also noted in Piontelli's first book and left me annoyed even then. She doesn't seem to like her study's subjects. or rather she treats them just like that, subjects, not people. She comments on the people's behaviour, outfit and mental state in a way I can only call embarrassing.Sometimes her style borders on contempt. As reader I didn't like that.And I don't like it in "Twins", either. of course, her comments are probably true. She tells how parents complain about expecting twins, how mother whine about the pregnancy, how ideals are shattered and newborn babies are preferred or rejected and you may say this is just unemotional scientific style of writing. I still don't like it.
Also, as a psychoanalyst she probably can't help to see sexuality left, right an centre. It was even more prominent in her first book where she describes in detail the behaviour of a three-year-old as a little Lolita intent on nothing but sex. It reminded me of Joan Woodward's, author of "The Lone Twin" on the treatment she received from a psychoanalyst after the death of her twin-sister at age three. That woman blamed little Joan's distress not on her sister's death from diphteria but on surpressed childish sexuality. Joan Woodward told her to stop asking her rude questions and let her play with the toys. Good on you, Joan!
Nonetheless, Piontelli's "Twins" is an immensely interesting read which provides tons of informations for twins and non-twins alike. Still, I'd advice to take it with a grain of salt. Piontelli is either discovering or assuming certain "facts" about twins. At the end of the day she describes only monozygotics as "real" twins even quoting the French term of "vrais jumeaux" = true twins for identicals and "false jumeaux" = wrong twins for fraternals. Monozygotics are constantly described as having more contact and interest in one another, as behaving and being treated more like twins from parents, peers and other adults alike. Fraternals appear to be more or less ordinary siblings accidentally born at the same time. I don't say her research isn't accurate, I just wonder if the fact that this IS the main attitude towards twins in Europe and as I know from experience not necessarily the same in the US, for example, may have coloured her motives.
Furthermore, she interprets twinship more or less as the result of parental treatment. Psychoanalyst to the core, again, she blames twin's relationship mostly on the way their parents treated them, made them sleep in the same cot, let them face one another, dressed them alike and so on. This process she calls "twinning" and according to it twin's demand to be seen as twins doesn't stem from the children themselves but from their parents.
Also, and now I become really impertinent, there is an element in her book I would like to psychoanalyze myself. I would say, Piontelli is subject to an emotion not uncommon among singletons: twin-envy. Throughout her book I feel a clandestine need to prove that twins either are not that special as they make out to be or that their specialness is something their parents trained them into. This even leads to contradictions when she states in one passage that twin-infants show not the slightest interest in their co-twins and the next page shows pictures of three-months-olds interacting quite intensely.
For example, the often curiously close bond between opposite sex fraternals she explains as the experience "we are all brothers and sisters underneath", which is very philosophical and the Dalai Lama would certainly applaud her, but I still believe the connection between boy-girls twins runs deeper than that.
The attention many twins receive from the public Piontelli calls "social glamour", a term that - imhO - does sound envious. She could have chosen "public attention", couldn't she? It's very interesting to read her book right next to Nancy Segal's "Entwined Lives" which Piontelli knows and quotes. The strain of envy I believe to detect in "Twins" is totally absent there. But then, Segal is a twin herself.
All in all "Twins" is an important and highly interesting book and worth a read and a purchase, it just shouldn't be taken as gospel concerning twinship.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
You can't miss what you never had
It's the most popular reaction an early loss twinless twin gets when we first tell our story to others. You can't miss your twin, you never knew him/her.
This is true. You don't miss what you never had. I know that from experience.
I was born with my nose slightly more narrow than comfortable for breathing through it. I never knew that until some years ago - I was well in my forties then - a doctor examined me and casually-like mentioned "your nose is very narrow, you must have trouble breathing through it". I was like "Oh. Yeah. Right. Probably." The truth is, I had never thought about that before. My way of breathing was just my way of breathing. It's only in moments like last weekend when I swallowed a fly while riding my bike with my mouth open (for breathing) I realize I REALLY can't breathe too good through my nose. But I don't miss doing it because I never did it.
I do miss my twin, though.
I have always missed him. I have been talking to an invisible brother as long as I can remember. People used to smile at my "imaginary brother" at age four. Now, at age 47, I am subject to psychotherapy, of course, still talking to him. But inside me nothing has changed. He's still there. A silent, absent presence - if such a thing is possible.
It's true - you can't miss what you never had. The fact that I miss you so much, Enjy, is proof I had you.
This is true. You don't miss what you never had. I know that from experience.
I was born with my nose slightly more narrow than comfortable for breathing through it. I never knew that until some years ago - I was well in my forties then - a doctor examined me and casually-like mentioned "your nose is very narrow, you must have trouble breathing through it". I was like "Oh. Yeah. Right. Probably." The truth is, I had never thought about that before. My way of breathing was just my way of breathing. It's only in moments like last weekend when I swallowed a fly while riding my bike with my mouth open (for breathing) I realize I REALLY can't breathe too good through my nose. But I don't miss doing it because I never did it.
I do miss my twin, though.
I have always missed him. I have been talking to an invisible brother as long as I can remember. People used to smile at my "imaginary brother" at age four. Now, at age 47, I am subject to psychotherapy, of course, still talking to him. But inside me nothing has changed. He's still there. A silent, absent presence - if such a thing is possible.
It's true - you can't miss what you never had. The fact that I miss you so much, Enjy, is proof I had you.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Your Christmas Gift
I was walking the Christmas Market looking for some presents. Christmas Markets in Germany are neat. The sound of age-old carols wafting through the air combined with the smell of wafers and cinnamon and spiced wine. Stands selling christmas decoration, artsy-craftsy things as well as jewelry, handmade candles, toys or sweets, fries&sausage or anything you name. I was looking for a present my twin could have given me. I already had one I would give to him.
I ended up in front of a stand selling rings and other jewelry, stainless steel and pearls and feathers. I put out my hand and lifted up a ring, touched it, tried it. It fitted my finger perfectly. It had a four-leaved clover engraved and the words "Be Happy".
So, this it was, your gift to me. To wear it always, to remind me that you do not want me unhappy or feeling sorry for myself, or for us.
And it's ever so often I catch myself thinking "Enjy would like me to do that".
Because you want me to be happy.
;-)
I ended up in front of a stand selling rings and other jewelry, stainless steel and pearls and feathers. I put out my hand and lifted up a ring, touched it, tried it. It fitted my finger perfectly. It had a four-leaved clover engraved and the words "Be Happy".
So, this it was, your gift to me. To wear it always, to remind me that you do not want me unhappy or feeling sorry for myself, or for us.
And it's ever so often I catch myself thinking "Enjy would like me to do that".
Because you want me to be happy.
;-)
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Books about Twins or Twinloss No 1 "Surviving Sam"
"Surviving Sam" by Karen Rivers (Polestar, 2001) is my altime favorite on my copious list of books about twins or twinloss. (99% of those are children's or young adult's books, but I will discuss some scientific works, too.)
Three years after the death of her twin-brother Sam 17-year old Pagan has survived eight attempts to kill herself and worked out numerous shrinks. They call her depressed, but following Rivers' description Pagan is suffering rather from Posttraumatic Stress Disorder than depression.
Sam was killed in an avalanche on a snow-shoe trip the twins did with their father and uncle for their fourteenth birthday. He fell down a cliff and to this very day Pagan can feel the rope that connected them on the trip slackening after her brother's fall. How is anyone supposed to understand what happened to her? How can she understand it herself? She was severely wounded in the accident, too, but her body has healed and she is the able athlete she used to be, member of the swimming and the volley-ball team. Her soul hasn't healed. Pagan has dumped all her former friends, withdrawn from everyone and almost everything. Sam's death has ripped her soul and the wound is slow in the healing.
But heal it does, partly, almost without noticing by either Pagan or the reader.
Rivers describes Pagan's way into a new identity with meticulous clarity, but always one step after the other, never giving an overview for the reader from the perspective of an all-knowing author. Consequently, the book is written in present tense. The reader walks with Pagan when she collapses on her way to school, when she detects she still likes to ride her bike and goes farther and farther on it just to move around in life, when she meets handsome Joe, the cop, or tries to re-discover her friendship with Dan, her brother's friend, who has problems of his own. As reader I see through Pagans eyes and what she sees makes perfect sense to me.
I own two copies of this book. One to write in, underline sentences, mark whole passages with neon-pink textmarker. Another one, virginally white, just for reading. This book flicks on the raw for a twinless twin, especially when the twin was killed in an accident, and I wouldn't recommend it to every one. It's liable to re-open wounds scars have already covered.
But I myself tend to carry it with me a lot. For in this book I see much of what I experienced myself put into words. There are many comments in my "write-in copy" that run just !!!!!.
I have no idea how Rivers came by her ideas for this novel. If anyone knows, please, share here. It is not a soothing book, its healing powers. if it has any, lie in the expressing of an otherwise too often inexpressible pain and as such I cherish it a lot.
Three years after the death of her twin-brother Sam 17-year old Pagan has survived eight attempts to kill herself and worked out numerous shrinks. They call her depressed, but following Rivers' description Pagan is suffering rather from Posttraumatic Stress Disorder than depression.
Sam was killed in an avalanche on a snow-shoe trip the twins did with their father and uncle for their fourteenth birthday. He fell down a cliff and to this very day Pagan can feel the rope that connected them on the trip slackening after her brother's fall. How is anyone supposed to understand what happened to her? How can she understand it herself? She was severely wounded in the accident, too, but her body has healed and she is the able athlete she used to be, member of the swimming and the volley-ball team. Her soul hasn't healed. Pagan has dumped all her former friends, withdrawn from everyone and almost everything. Sam's death has ripped her soul and the wound is slow in the healing.
But heal it does, partly, almost without noticing by either Pagan or the reader.
Rivers describes Pagan's way into a new identity with meticulous clarity, but always one step after the other, never giving an overview for the reader from the perspective of an all-knowing author. Consequently, the book is written in present tense. The reader walks with Pagan when she collapses on her way to school, when she detects she still likes to ride her bike and goes farther and farther on it just to move around in life, when she meets handsome Joe, the cop, or tries to re-discover her friendship with Dan, her brother's friend, who has problems of his own. As reader I see through Pagans eyes and what she sees makes perfect sense to me.
I own two copies of this book. One to write in, underline sentences, mark whole passages with neon-pink textmarker. Another one, virginally white, just for reading. This book flicks on the raw for a twinless twin, especially when the twin was killed in an accident, and I wouldn't recommend it to every one. It's liable to re-open wounds scars have already covered.
But I myself tend to carry it with me a lot. For in this book I see much of what I experienced myself put into words. There are many comments in my "write-in copy" that run just !!!!!.
I have no idea how Rivers came by her ideas for this novel. If anyone knows, please, share here. It is not a soothing book, its healing powers. if it has any, lie in the expressing of an otherwise too often inexpressible pain and as such I cherish it a lot.
Friday, April 8, 2011
In a dream ...
I have dwelt on these words often, long before I knew I'm a twin, long before I started believing in God consciously. They have been a source of hope to me from early age on. I often felt so out of place in this world and longed for the "real dawn" to break.
Sometimes, I feel it's hard to pray. Sometimes, I am mad at God to set me on such a rough road through life and not even the credit of being visibly handicapped. Sometimes, I learn I CAN pray even in those moments when I imagine doing it together with my brother. I somehow think he loves Jesus.
And I always wanted to follow my brother in what he deems right to do ;-).
Welcome to Enjy's Place
Enjy and Anjy, that would have sounded so good.
Of course our parents wouldn't have called you that. They would have chosen an ordinary name, not too much like mine. They were like that in those days. Maybe, they'd have called you Thomas. I always liked that name and he was a twin, the disciple of Jesus who bore that name in the Gospel.
Sometimes I call you Kaleb. That's when I need you as my older brother. You are that, you know? Older by five months. Sometimes I need you to tell me what to do and where to go. You are so much advanced compared to me.
But my favorite name for you is Enjy. It used to be just short for Enjolras. Big name. Look it up in a heavenly dictionary. But it became a name of his own. Of YOUR own, really. And id WOULD have sounded nice. Angela and Enjolras. Anjy and Enjy.
We didn't have much time together. Not much quantity but, oh, so much quality. It was the time when our hearts started beating, remember? When we grew from a bundle of cells into human shape within a couple of weeks. We have never again changed so much in such a short time. Well, I haven't. You have changed a lot in those moments when you were torn from the womb much too early.
What have you changed into, Enjy? I'd so like to know. An Angel? A spirit? A soul?
But I do know you're still my twin, and since you have no other place in this world I made this for you. I shall come here to write about me and you, or about twinship in general, or about the special case of an early loss twinless twin. Wait and see what it will turn out.
Of course our parents wouldn't have called you that. They would have chosen an ordinary name, not too much like mine. They were like that in those days. Maybe, they'd have called you Thomas. I always liked that name and he was a twin, the disciple of Jesus who bore that name in the Gospel.
Sometimes I call you Kaleb. That's when I need you as my older brother. You are that, you know? Older by five months. Sometimes I need you to tell me what to do and where to go. You are so much advanced compared to me.
But my favorite name for you is Enjy. It used to be just short for Enjolras. Big name. Look it up in a heavenly dictionary. But it became a name of his own. Of YOUR own, really. And id WOULD have sounded nice. Angela and Enjolras. Anjy and Enjy.
We didn't have much time together. Not much quantity but, oh, so much quality. It was the time when our hearts started beating, remember? When we grew from a bundle of cells into human shape within a couple of weeks. We have never again changed so much in such a short time. Well, I haven't. You have changed a lot in those moments when you were torn from the womb much too early.
What have you changed into, Enjy? I'd so like to know. An Angel? A spirit? A soul?
But I do know you're still my twin, and since you have no other place in this world I made this for you. I shall come here to write about me and you, or about twinship in general, or about the special case of an early loss twinless twin. Wait and see what it will turn out.
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