Sign In Forgot Password

Twins

11/22/2022 08:32:57 AM

Nov22

It started in utero. At first, the fight seemed comical: Twin A seemed to be kicking Twin B through the thin membrane separating the two, and Twin B responded by twisting around and placing two tiny butt cheeks directly in the face of Twin A. Touché, Twin B. Touché. As the woman housing the tussling twins, however, I found myself less and less amused by their antics. A kick on one side seemed to ricochet from the other, and on more than one occasion, I jokingly asked my potential mixed martial artists to hold off on fighting until I could get in there and referee!

As the weeks wore on, the situation seemed less humorous. Ultrasound after ultrasound, non-stress test after non-stress test, it became increasingly evident that Twin A was winning the battle, growing larger and active while Twin B stayed tiny and still. Close up images of Twin A showed a sweet face with a perfect pyramid of a nose; Twin B, on the other hand, did not have enough bone density in her skull to make it appear solid on the ultrasound. By the time the emergency C-section was performed, I was terrified that the fight might be over before one side had even been given a chance.

Twin A, weighing in a healthy 5 lb. 12 oz., cried loudly upon arrival. His lungs quickly filled with oxygen, and he did not hesitate to give his vocal cords their first workout. Twin B, on the other hand, did not make a sound. She was quickly rushed off to the side of the room, where several people gathered around her, and when they finally held the pale, silent baby up for me to see, all I could say was, “She’s so tiny! She’s so tiny!”

With a million thanks to the dedicated staff in the Yale New Haven Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, I was finally able to bring my 3 lb. 9 oz. bundle of joy home to join her brother, and the race was on. Who would sit up first? Speak? Walk? Write their name? Learn to read? From the very beginning, they have been locked into competition. Surely, one of them is supposed to WIN this game of life?

Needless to say, this week’s Torah portion, Toldot, took on a deeper meaning for me when I became another Rebecca, mother of twins. I see firsthand how hard it is to always be measured by another human being. Some differences are worn as a badge of honor, while others bring outrage and barely veiled shame. It’s hard to imagine how the biblical Rebekah must have felt when the “Eternal One said to her: Two peoples are in your belly; two nations shall branch off from each other [as they emerge] from your womb. One people shall prevail over the other; the elder shall serve the younger.” Long before Jacob wrestled with an angel, he wrestled with his other half, his shadow self, the one to whom he would forever be connected but would never be, destined to win the competition between the two, but unsure of how he could make this come about.

Even if we are not blessed with a twin, most of us can sympathize with elements of this story. We are all too aware of the competition that fuels our human world, pitting brother against brother, neighbor against neighbor, country against country, and race against race. To date, no one individual or group has ever emerged as the clear winner, but that doesn’t stop us from striving, even scheming, to get ahead. One might think that Jacob’s might be enough of a cautionary tale to keep us from falling into the same traps, but his story also underscores the involuntary nature of our competitive drives, something that can seem programmed into us before we ever see the light of day.

Since we know the end of their story, Twin B’s deception, Twins A’s plot for revenge, B’s inevitable flight, followed by the fear and struggle strewn along the road to the reconciliation, you might think that we would be eager to circumvent similar dramas in our own lives, to skip over the pettiness and the need for domination, so that we might also receive the latter part of Isaac’s second blessing, to “break [the] yoke off [our] neck” (Genesis 27:40). In this case, the yoke around Esau’s neck represents the requirement that he serve his brother, but it seems to me that there is another way to flip the script: it is in serving each other, caring for each other, and celebrating each other’s victories that we break the yoke that keeps so many of us locked in to the dog-eat-dog, every man for himself model that we see all around us. Our “brothers” may not always look like us or act like us, but we will always be connected to each other in ways that we cannot explain or ignore.

Perhaps Jamie Lee Curtis summed it up best, in her children’s book entitled Is There Really a Human Race? :

Sometimes it’s better not to go fast.

There are beautiful sights to be seen when you’re last.

Shouldn’t it be that you just try your best?

And that’s more important than beating the rest?

Shouldn’t it be looking back at the end

That you judge your own race by the help that you lend?

Shabbat Shalom

Fri, March 29 2024 19 Adar II 5784