Twin mementos

It's difficult to find a memento for someone who never had a name nor a face. Still, I assembled a collection of them over the years and here are some of them:

 This is a silver pendant showing two dolphins. I chose it - and engraved it myself with names for me and my twin - because they jump in different directions and are still connected.

 This is another silver pendant of two little angels kissing.

                                               
 This one is special. It's an ammonite fossil I found at Mainz Christmas Market two years ago. What makes it special is there are two of them. Ammonites are prehistoric marine animals whose shells are often found as fossils. They resemble a very young embryo in the womb. The booth trading in minerals at the Christmas Market had many petrified ammonites that day but only one that had two in one.

 Sometimes, when the unfairness of being a twinless twin hits me hard I take to this pendant. It's a pewter one showing twin skeletons in a fetal position twins often take in the womb, when one twin faces downward and the other upward. It may look a bit morbid but I still wear it sometimes. It's a reminder that not only life before birth is real but so is death. On the old ultrasound it may look as if a twin vanishes, like a soap bubble in the air. In reality the twin DIES and there will be a skeleton however tiny.

 This one is more comforting. It's made from Tibetian yak bone and shows the sun and the moon kissing. I choose it when I feel my twin may, after all, have been a brother, because there is more of a male and female completing one another quality in it.

You can order customised dogtags all over the internet and I have a huge collection of the ordinary US-Army type, but this one is made in the fashion of the German Bundeswehr. I assumed my twin was a girl when I ordered it and it's engraved with the names I chose for me and my (girl)twin and the words "Once a twin - always a twin". It's a bit large to wear it so I have it stored in my treasure shrine.

Here's another find from Mainz Christmas Market. These adorable little bears hugging I embossed with the letters A and B which may just indicate twin A and twin B or the names I chose. The little pendant hanging from them I orderer from a Dutch website where you can find all kinds of things made to order with your own photos. I used the water colour I made at age 4 of two identical girls rope skipping I described before on this blog.

Here is one of my dogtags US-Army style I ordered with the words "Once a twin - always a twin". The other "dogtag" I made from fimo and it bears the words "Surviving twin". I wear it when I'm in the mood to encourage myself. I made it to this life for a reason! One day I will know which one.

Last but not least the most fitting memento for my twin I ever found. It's a bone carving showing two dolphins positioned like embryos in the womb. Sometimes I wonder why I ever take it off.