Life With My Irish Twin

Today is my sister Tammie's birthday, and just like the previous 48 years of our lives, we are the same age for exactly one month. We are called "Irish twins" - siblings born within 12 months of each other. And like real twins, we have our own language that no one else understands. Actually it’s just English, but we since we constantly finish each other’s sentences, it may seem like some other rude, interrupting language. To us, it’s a closeness that can beat any team in a game of Taboo.

We were too close in age for Tammie to wear my hand-me-downs. Instead, my mom dressed us like twins in identical outfits. Mine was blue and Tammie’s was always red, as if people needed help telling us apart. We didn’t. I was a blue-eyed blonde. Tammie was a brunette with brown eyes. She always had a golden tan, while I suffered through an endless cycle of burn-blister-peel.

In elementary school I was the butt-kissing teacher’s pet. The next year, Tammie would get the same teacher and hear the identical line from all of them: “Why can’t you be more like your sister?” I was a tough act to follow and she didn’t even try. I stressed out memorizing multiplication tables and studying for spelling tests. Tammie was perfectly happy with her B’s and C’s. It turns out that I was the only one competing.

Throughout high school, Tammie and I shared a bedroom, which was actually a small converted den with a coat closet. We also shared a double bed. The setting was a little too close for comfort and we did not get along. At all. Tammie thought I was hogging too much of our small closet (I was) so one morning on trash day she threw out all my platform shoes. I hated her at the time, but looking back, I can’t blame her. Who did I think I was? Imelda Marcos?

In 1983 we both got married. It wasn’t a Brady Brides double wedding, but we were each other’s bridesmaids. My fruitless marriage lasted a year and a week. Tammie made it to seven years, producing a new baby every other year.

Our adult lives have continued to weave back and forth through lack and abundance, good luck and misfortune. I sped through college and grad school and landed a successful career in the entertainment industry, working so many hours I virtually lost an entire decade. Tammie struggled to single-handedly raise her three children with the help of welfare and food stamps. She cleaned houses, did childcare, and frequently went without utilities or a car or the rent money. She hated asking for a loan.

I had money and no time. Tammie had time and no money. I mailed her kids gifts and stuffed animals, not realizing what my sister really could have used was a nice visit, and maybe a little help with the laundry.

I remarried. Tammie had a new relationship that was short-lived, but productive. She had another daughter in 1995 and I gave birth to mine the next year. And just like the two of us, our daughters - who are only one grade apart - could not be more different.

By the millennium, the entertainment industry starting reigning in my long hours and Tammie started working double shifts job as a psychiatric technician for the criminally insane. I got my time back just as Tammie was losing hers.

We both gained new husbands within a year, and we describe them both as “low maintenance.” My son was born ten months after Tammie’s granddaughter, and now Chloe gets to prep Jake for his first year of kindergarten.

We both went back to school recently. Tammie earned a degree in education and I got mine in library science. We both share stories of juggling work, school, children, housework, volunteering, gardening and husbands who just shake their heads when they hear us say “yes” to yet another thing.

Now that we're both pushing 50, it's kind of fun being just 11 months apart to the day. Tammie can tease me that I'll always be older, and I can remind her that she's not far behind. There’s rarely a day that goes by that we don’t talk on the phone.

Today, my Irish twin lives 70 miles away from me. And although I don’t want to go back to sharing a double bed and a coat closet, I fantasize that one day we’ll roommates in a nursing home, sharing the age of 95 for a single month, and beating the other old ladies in a game of Taboo.