Parenting the Child in Front of Me

I guess it was inevitable for me to just assume there was only one way to parent a child.  From the moment those two small beating hearts flashed and flickered on the screen, I thought of them as one, a matched set.  

I had no blueprint or roadmap for the journey. I felt that I had been parented the same as my siblings, even if it was apparent to me that the three of us were indeed different in temperament and personality. Twins were a new, unexplored world of mixed milestones and simultaneous want I didn’t really understand until much later.  

When the gender reveal came, “You’ve got two fifths of a basketball team in there!” it cemented it. The Boys. Our boys. My boys. “Boys” would be said and heard for eternity. For as many times as I’ve been known to shout, scream, whisper or exclaim a single name ,it is more often that I  am heard bellowing “BOYS!!!!” through the hallways of our home, down the street, or across the gym in a futile attempt to corral them. To this day when I am holding one I am looking for the other, always.

Their unique and different personalities meant nothing to me in their infanthood. Survival (mine and theirs) meant that I didn’t have time or inclination to attend to their needs in different ways. Instead, I fed them from the same kind of bottles, changed their diapers in an identical rote fashion, bought them identical outfits and I didn’t give one thought to them as individuals. I would sooth them similarly, never imagining they needed anything else from me. I was taught they needed a good mother, a thoughtful, doting parent, and so I gave them myself in equal amounts, spooned out; a little here, a little there until everyone was temporarily satisfied 

That is until they began to grow; crawl, walk and speak. Until I couldn’t ignore the differences in the timbre of their voices or the talents they possessed. For one son that was an uncanny ability to draw, create and memorize lines of movies. An actor in every sense, he became the boy who would dress and mimic the characters he loved to distraction. His focus was easily shifted, his outfits questionable, and his hand was forever holding a pencil, crayon or marker.

The other had kicked through and broken my water, a sure sign of the aim he’d display at the goal net. He walked later than his twin, but once he found his footing it was obvious that he was an athlete through and through. A sensitive, soft-spoken shy boy with huge brown eyes and a propensity to run, jump, kick, shoot and score. His competiveness seemed to be rivaled only by his determination.

It happened overnight, this need to tend to my sons differently. To use one voice with the artist and another with the athlete, as if their hearts were accessible to me if only I used the correct key. I wasn’t prepared the day it happened, I was too busy pushing straws into juice boxes and carrying on a meaningful conversation with another soccer mom while trying to get some sun on my pasty white face.

I saw the artist son struggle on the field, trip over his own feet, and fall into a patch of dirt that stained his white sock. His face twist in annoyance as the rest of his team sprinted by and he, instead, rubbed vigorously at the dirt mark.