“Mom. I’m no longer calling you Mom. From now on, I am calling you Yenita.” 

I stare at my six-year-old son Charlie as he tells me this – his face is deadpan but his eyes (large, dark eyes) have a glint in them. 

“Ok…” I say. “But where did Yenita come from?”

He shrugs and walks away as he says, “It’s just your name now.” But his eyes glint again – he’s delighted by this absurdity. 

Such a strange, funny kid. So different from my other two. My youngest – but only by one minute, since his brother was pulled into the world just slightly before it was his own turn. 

For a long time, I was so preoccupied with the phenomenon of TWINS (as well as the general overwhelm of parenting three kids born within 3 years) that I didn’t think to look closely at my sons’ personalities. Don’t get me wrong – I gave lip service to how different they were, I assigned them their own colors so as to tell them apart, and I reminded family and friends that the boys were individuals. But in an act of blatant (if unintentional) hypocrisy, I tended to function with them like I was handling a pair. A matching set. It took a long time for me to recognize just how different my boys were. 

As if to make up for the first three years of being treated as one of two matching peas in our family pod, Charlie has made sure to drive his unique point of view home. As he has gotten older, his personality has come out. Guns ablazing. 

This is the boy who, for about a year, did not seem to need sleep. The nocturnal animal who would get up at two in the morning and patter out to the kitchen, get himself a snack, and settle down to build a fort or play a game. We would discover evidence of his lunar escapades the next morning as we blearily stumbled to the kitchen for coffee in order to start the pre-school scramble. We would trip over the Lincoln log village that hadn’t been there when we went to bed, or see the kitchen table and chairs transformed into a blanket fortress. And Charlie would be awake, eyes wide, waiting for us to acknowledge his activities and explain the details. 

This is the boy who had a year-long obsession with the Titanic. This obsession which led to countless hours watching Youtube and National Geographic documentaries. It included reading books ranging from the kid-friendly “I Survived” series to adult coffee table tomes with columns of dense texts and photos of underwater debris. His bedroom became wallpapered with drawings of the Titanic crashing. The iceberg was heavily featured. Our entire family became familiar with various bits of trivia because Charlie would inform us that the Titanic had four smokestacks, but one was just for show. Or that the Titanic was one of three sister ships, the other two being the Olympic and the Britannic. Or that the ocean water the night of April 14^th, 1912, was around 28 degrees. 

This is the boy who isn’t, as it turns out, simply a stubborn child (although he is also that). His constant arguing as to why he can’t go outside today, or can’t be gone from the house for very long, or can’t just give soccer a try just for a little while, please? – it’s not him being a dick (as Michael and I secretly wondered for a long time). It’s become clearer that he’s not self-sabotaging when he comes up with excuse after excuse as to why he can’t go get a haircut or take a walk to the park.  It’s a small child’s struggle with general anxiety, without having any of the words to explain what that feels like.  

This is the boy who coped with a move to a new house and a new school, and then a global pandemic, by regressing in his potty training – resulting in me leaving work at one point every day to bring a new change of clothes to preschool (because he had gone through the two extra outfit changes I had left with him that morning). This is the boy who would never say a word when I arrived with his clothes, as I would bring him into the school bathroom stall and clean him up. After the second incident of scraping dried poop off his legs because nobody had done it while he waited for me, we went back to his old school, despite the drive across town. 

This is the boy who is the opposite of his identical twin. Where his brother is dynamic and charismatic – you talk with him for five minutes and realize he’s going to be a future CEO or Tony Robbins – Charlie is standoffish and detached. Where his brother runs to me and gives hugs for no reason, Charlie has to be cajoled to give hugs to visiting relatives. He tolerates a bedtime kiss but never reciprocates. When I say, “Charlie I love you,” his response is to look away, as if he isn’t sure how to respond, and say “Okay.” 

This is the boy who spends hours in the backyard, walking up and down the fence line playing an imaginary game that involves a lot of wild gesticulating and whispering to himself. Sometimes when I watch him from the window, I realize how very far away he is. 

This is also the boy who sings to himself all the time. Sometimes it’s just under his breath, a faint hum. Sometimes it’s a full-blown bellow – which, interestingly enough, he chooses to do frequently at bedtime. After the kids are put to bed, Michael and I will sit out on the couch and hear Charlie from his room, belting out a song that he has made up. My favorite instance was listening to him one evening bawl out, “YOU ARE TIRED AND ALL YOU ARE IS NICE… NIIICE…. NIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICE… YOU… ARE… NIIIIIIIIIIICE…” 

He’s the boy with a sly sense of humor, who delights in finding ways to surprise me with it. “Charlie, please clear your dinner plate.” “CAN DO, BEAUTIFUL LADY!!!” – said with that tell-tale glint in his eyes, and a grin when he hears me start laughing. 

This is the boy who curses, and if it’s not really appropriate, at least he’s correct in his usage. When his brother does something to deliberately tweak him, he will exasperatedly say, “Jack, what the FUCK?” (And while Michael and I always address it in the moment, we usually agree with his sentiment) This is the boy who plays with his LEGO and I will occasionally hear him murmuring about the goddamn pieces being so goddamn hard to pry apart. 

This is the boy who is so very, very different. Who was born so different and has been waiting for me to catch up. 

As I try to figure out how best to parent him, I have so many questions. Who is this little boy that the universe gave to me? What does it mean – because it has to mean something – that he is a twin? What sort of bond do he and his brother have, and how are their past journeys entangled? What are they meant to work through together in this life? 

He was born into this world with a wound in his soul – one that I’ve learned to see through quick glimpses and tiny perforations. Where does it come from and how is it different from the wounds that we all are born with and carry with us? 

What does it mean that he’s here, in this life, and what am I to do with him? What am I to learn from him, and – somehow – teach to him? What could he possibly learn from me? What history do our souls share which affects our interactions without us even knowing? 

As I write this now, he is currently climbing the furniture. I told him earlier to take a break from his iPad game, which prompted curses and recriminations – but twenty minutes later, he is immersed in an imaginary game that weaves in and out of various rooms and sometimes involves his brother (sometimes not). As he wends his way through the kitchen, I hear him muttering to himself as he builds whatever world he is currently in. He passes by me and I say to him, “Hey Charlie. I love you.” 

He stops for a minute, pulls himself out of his world, and then says: “Okay, Yenita.” And without waiting for a response, he submerges back into himself.