2003-06-03 - 9:07 a.m.
This entry was sparked by an entry for the May collaboration of On Display.
NEVER THE TWIN SHALL MEET
Day-Hay hates her middle name. Many teenage girls hate their middle names or even their first names (take my daughter Kat, for example, who has attempted to give up her first name entirely). But I suspect Day-Hay�s reason for hating her middle name is different. I think her middle name seems dead to her.
Day-Hay, you see, began life as a twin and she knows it. I am not sure that she would have known it, as she puts it �forever,� if not for Kat. Kat, who has always been the type of child who forgets her key regularly but never forgets that six months ago you promised to do something, was just less than three when I miscarried Day-Hay�s twin. Nevertheless, she remembered that once were two babies in my uterus (and yes, she would have said �uterus.� She always has loved language and words and insisted on a precision of terms unusual in a small child.) �There were two babies,� she would say as Day-Hay toddled around (at the ridiculously early age of nine months). �But now there is only one.
But Day-Hay grew up knowing that once, long, long ago (in her mind at least), she had a twin, an identical twin. We know her twin was identical because they shared a sac and a placenta. One did not make it past sometime in the fourth month of my pregnancy. Day-Hay, the child of enormous will, survived. While Kat�s arrival created unmitigated feelings of joy and triumph, Day-Hay�s arrival created a more tinged joy.
And in that tinged joy, Mr. Philately and I made a decision. We, who had never been those people ill-prepared after eight or nine months to name babies, decided to change Day-Hay�s name before it ever had been bestowed. We changed her middle name. We took the middle name we had originally chosen out and named her after her twin. While that link has worked for me, it apparently does not work for Day-Hay.
Over the years, the pain of the loss has eased. I still feel twinges when I see identical twins and probably always will. I felt a pang when I cleaned out the linen closet and, in the back, I found the partially knit, purple, baby afghan (which, around here, would have been called a �bebe,� not a �blankie.�) I inwardly cringe when I have heard Day-Hay long for a sister just like her.
But other times I look at Kat and wonder how costly the twins would have been to her. I wonder how, in the years of occupational and other therapy, we would have been able to put in the necessary time with her. I look at Day-Hay when she is in a snit and wonder how she would have done competing not only with Kat but with another sister.
But neither Day-Hay nor I will ever meet her twin. The closest we will get to meeting her is Day-Hay herself.
And that�s why I like Day-Hay�s middle name�even if she doesn�t.
LAST YEAR: No entry�but yesterday�s My Other Name is Sam was by Kat and made her a finalist for a Diarist Award.
TWO YEARS AGO: I Married a Latent Philatelist
Not Being There
The Art of the Nap
The Go-Go Girl is Gone-Gone
Phoning It In
Creativity
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Copyright 2006 by Ellen |
