‘IN MY MOTHER’S WOMB’

She kicked me again with a forceful thrust!  I had grown rather frustrated with this other little person with whom I was sharing the tiny corralled space.  I was wearisome from her constant-mini tantrums.  It seemed there was not enough room for both of us.  It was no great surprise that true to her character trait when the ‘call was sounded’ she heard and responded first, bawling her eyes out in delight, scampering out, taking the first opportunity to exit the womb, grabbing a gush of fresh oxygen and leaving me to spend the next eleven minutes trying to follow in her wake.  After a fitful struggle, I bit my way through my mother’s canal and I joined my twin sister in the outside world.  The snatched recollection of this improbable memory was to define our relationship for more than forty-three eventful years.

This is how deep in my subconscious I recall my first encounter with my twin sister.  She was always there, a familiar presence, one that occupied my every thought.  Now I confirm that since she transitioned into the heavenlies, leaving me to carry on the ‘good work’ my memories have been accentuated and my power of recall exaggerated.  However, deep down I believe in the authenticity of the experiences recounted here.  What is indisputable is that as a twin I had and still have a unique relationship, which non-twins may never fully comprehend.  When presented with the knowledge of my twin’s transition, a common question from some about the nature of our relationship is ‘Where you close?’  I suggest this sums up the limitations of their understanding.

Our relationship as twins was a complicated and intense one and sometimes as we were growing up it ranged from over-identification and excessive closeness to profound estrangement and conflict.  We had to deal with the significant emotional pain of separation in adolescence but as we matured as adults and got married, we came to love each other more and admire each other more as individuals.

We were born in a South Clapham Hospital, London which used to occupy an imposing but now dilapidated Victorian building opposite the Clapham South tube station in early 1966, and from there we moved with our parents to their home in Wandsworth, a suburb of London.   Both of us were very chubby and big babies, however, my twin sister took upon my father’s resemblance from the darker skin tones to his looks, his lips and his smile, and this accounts for her second name, ‘Feyisara’, ‘we used this one as a covering’ and I was mostly blessed with my mother’s fairer looks.

“Snow, snow, Mummy why is it so white?”

I was only three years old in 1969 but my inquisitive nature had the better of me, I needed my mother to spell out to us why the white powdery stuff falling from above was so freezing cold.  My twin the more resilient and reserved stared at me wondering what was the matter with all these questions.  We trod carefully along the slushy path on the way through Clapham Commons with my mother pushing the enormous pram, which contained my younger brother’s bounteous frame.  He, ’Debo had big rosy cheeks, its tenderness invited a stroke from many onlookers, he was quite a handful and large for his age, some portend to the six feet three inches in height he later attained.  Read more...https://www.createspace.com/4943826