Oneness/Sameness

In One and the Same Abigail Pogrebin offers up an exquisitely written, moving, informative and, perhaps above all else, courageous story.  The prose throughout in its journalistic clarity and unpretentious elegance is stunning, most especially in its introduction, which at times borders on the lyrical.   I think that’s because it’s so candidly personal.  As someone who spends considerable time trying to string the right words into coherent sentences I confess my reaction to those pages was, yes, twinish: a combination of admiration and jealousy.  This book is informative, if only in bringing into sharp focus why academics who devote their energy to understanding the human condition and dynamic spend so much of their time studying twins.   It is moving because it tells, sometimes joyfully and sometimes poignantly, her own and other twin stories.  And it is dually courageous because Abigail reveals so much of herself and all the more so because Robin has given her permission to open the door to that other personal self.  Robin’s courage, as she would probably want us to acknowledge, is found in the implicit permission given that is evident and permeates every page and every word.

Full disclosure.  Abigail’s mother Letty and I were college classmates.  We both ended up  living blocks apart on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.  Two of our children, her David and my older son Tommy DOG are age piers.  Interestingly Letty, who is one of the preeminent and most articulate feminists of my generation, chose to use her husband’s name, personally and professionally.  The girls, like my sisters, have not.  In Letty’s case, counter intuitive as it may be, it’s not surprising.  Bert Pogrebin is one of the most engaging and thoroughly decent human beings I have ever known.  Who wouldn’t want to associate with that?  The age difference between the girls and my kids was not that significant but in childhood a few years magnify.  So with what I would call an ad hoc relationship with their parents, my contacts with Abby and Robin were sadly tangential.  Seeing what has become of each of them, makes me aware of how very much I missed.

One and the Same is an important book.  Perhaps Kermit the frog found that being green wasn’t easy, but his challenge couldn’t hold a candle to being an identical twin.  In these pages we’re introduced to twins in all flavors, ages and circumstances.  We see them gathered in convention, making their twiness a business or leveraging it for all its worth.  We see twins who study twins, who live together or in proximity and others who live far apart, in some few cases purposefully as far as possible.  We meet those who still more or less act twinish by dressing alike or in one case creating works of art together.  We meet a twin who has adapted to  the other's sex change and now calls his once brother sister.  We see wrenching tragedy in the twin who lost his brother in the Trade Center (there were others) or the twins whose genes in a statistically unlikely happenstance contributed to the deaths of one of each of their very young children.   She makes us laugh and cry.

Twins are (at least) two things, and Abigail is at once the thorough journalist faithfully conveying tape recorded tales and quoting research that adds substantive meat to the bones of her story but in a profound way always a full participant.  In their narrative or in the expert opinions gathered, she sees herself, she sees her sister.  This book is a very personal journey, and you would think a therapeutic one.  But that would diminish what it really is.   It’s power comes from an unmistakable personal voice, an unvarnished, candid and sometimes emotional voice, but one that never makes you feel like an unwanted onlooker spying into her private self, quite the opposite.  There is, at least there was for me, not a second of unease or discomfort that would befall an uninvited voyeur. 

The power of this story, and the draw of twins is that, while on the surface they seem so different – on some level even exotic – they are as much a mirror of us as they are of themselves.  Their challenge, puts into focus what we all face in navigating between togetherness and apartness.  In that sense, as Abigail listens to these varied stories of fellow twins and sees herself, we can all do so as well.  Perhaps the twin experience is unique, but it resonates.  To me one of the most moving lines comes in a conversation when Abby asks Robin how her life would be if she were gone.  Her sister responds simply, “it would be broken”.  Most of us can relate to that feeling whether with siblings, partners, children or some especially dear friend.

The book’s dustcover presents us with photos of Abigail and Robin; prominently as young children on the front and spine.  But without any hesitation, my favorite is on the back showing two grown women in loving embrace, still in loving embrace.  Abby says they don’t do that much any more, but it remains a vivid window.  They are together, but from everything we’ve learned they are equally singular.  Children together can be adorable; adults engaged  in embrace are ultimately what life is really all about.  We strive so much to individuate, and to do it well, but we yearn equally for connection.  To have both is perhaps best expressed as Nirvana.  This is the journey Abigail takes us on, the story she tells us.