Different and The Same

Eustacia and No. 1

I was wide-awake at 3:00 this morning because that’s just how it goes sometimes. I never get up and snack or watch TV when that happens. I just try to will myself back to sleep. Sometimes it takes an hour or two of conscious willing to get there, but again, that’s just how it goes sometimes.

Very early this morning, all my discipline wasn’t working, so I picked up my cell phone and checked Facebook to discover the top two posts on my newsfeed were put there by my daughters. No. 1, a tutor who teaches Arab immigrants, started a blog nearly two years ago but let it go dormant until just recently (check out the Knitosaurus in the sidebar), and she linked to her latest post about dialectics and the usefulness of metaphors. Eustacia, winding down another year of college, complained about a blinking cursor and how she thought it might at least change colors or something. She’s an artist and doesn’t care much for writing papers, and she must have been sitting there not writing one.

I lay in the dark listening to the sound-asleep breathing of Big Puppy who had settled in nicely on floor, and I marveled at the differences in my two children. One expounds on thoughtful subjects, and a few thousand miles away, the other simultaneously curses the cursor. They have always been that way—complete opposites in their approach to the world around them. We used to joke that when the four of us would be walking down the street, No. 1 would walk ahead with Husband and proceed with purpose, and Eustacia and I would lag behind looking at the pretty colors or whatever. That’s a gross simplification of the truth, as most jokes are, but it represented the general difference.

But, as I lay in the dark listening to the sound-asleep breathing of Big Puppy, occasionally interrupted by his sighing or the shifting of his big feet, I marveled at the similarities of my two children. They can both ponder deeper issues and can both be eloquent about them according to their nature. They can both live independently of their parents, thinking things and doing things of their own accord, yet they are still and will always be directly connected to us. And like it or not, they can trace their various traits back to us, whether they be proceeding with purpose or looking at the pretty colors. That’s just the way it goes sometimes.

So, opposites resolved. They appear different yet are the same in many ways. Take a look at the photo above taken when they were much younger. They are three years apart, and although I don’t see it, people used to stop us in the street and ask if they were twins. Hardly, yet sort of.