Plenty of people told Sandy how lucky she was to be having twins,
she’d get her family in one go with only having to be pregnant once. She thought that too, at first, until she
outgrew all her clothes by 12 weeks, looked 9 months pregnant half way through
and developed stretch marks almost an inch wide. If only she’d have realized at the time that
those things were the upside to having twins.
And true, she did only have to be pregnant once, although there were
still two births to get through. But
then she swore she’d never have another child, sending her husband for a
vasectomy just a few months after the boys were born.
Richard was older by eight minutes and Robert was taller by 0.5 cm,
but otherwise there were as identical pair of twins as you would find anywhere. Sandy dressed them alike at first but soon
the novelty wore off and she grabbed whatever shirt or babygro was closest. Her husband David liked the boys to wear the
same outfits when his mother visited because she liked that, but Sandy realized
that plain colour t-shirts and jeans equalled dressed the same. Her mother-in-law was non-plussed, hoping for
matching sailor boys or Lord Fauntleroys and Sandy didn’t much care.
In her darker moments she nicknamed the boys Ronnie and Reggie. Two babies weren’t twice the work, they were
the work squared. Sandy seemed to be
feeding or changing or washing or burping or feeding or winding or bathing or comforting
or dressing or feeding in every waking minute.
And almost all of the minutes in every 24 hours seemed fair game for
waking minutes. David was working so she
took night duties as well as day. Often
she slept no more than a couple of hours in a whole day and week after week of
such sleep deprivation plus working so hard whilst she was awake, Sandy felt
like a zombie horde had hollowed out her brain and her soul.
The first year passed in a blur of milestones and firsts, most of
which may have been Richard’s or may have been Robert’s. Sandy resorted to dressing Richard mostly in
blue and Robert mostly in red, and then she thought of them as boxers and
remembered which corner won each round.
The red corner was winning by six knockouts and a submission.
The boys were now close to their third birthday which meant hours of
weekly free nursery provision for them both and which Sandy was holding in her
mind as a beacon of hope for a partial return to normal life. Until then, shopping trips to SupaValu
included two small boys whose favourite word was ‘no’ and who seized anything
shiny or colourful within reach of their grubby fingers. Sandy would plonk them both into a double-seated
shopping trolley and try to steer it down the middle of every aisle to minimize
what they could grab for and therefore what she had to retrieve, argue about
and re-shelve.
Today’s shopping trip had included “Can we have ice cream?” and “Can
we have cake?” and “Can we have pizza?” then “You don’t like pizza.” then “I
do. Robert doesn’t like it.” then “I do,
just not the last one you got.” Sandy
loaded her trolley with milk, bread, cereal and other staples, ignoring shouts
of “But Mum…” and little out-stretched hands, and headed for the checkout. There weren’t too many people queuing but
there were fewer tills open so they still had a bit of a wait. Then she packed away the shopping in bags as
the boys tried to rifle through them and see what she had bought.
Exhausted by even that short a trip, Sandy pushed her trolley out of
the store and towards the car, thanking whatever deity thought up parent and
child parking slots near the front of stores.
The boys continued to raid the shopping and tried to open a packet of
biscuits they found. Just outside the
main doors a red car was speeding across the car park and careered into a blue car
reversing from a parking space. The
idiot driver jumped from the car and looked like he was off to give the other
driver a hard time. Sandy already sided
with blue under-dog as red came out stronger yet again.
“OK boys,” said Sandy as she tugged on car-seat straps, “time to
calm down or I’ll knock your heads together just like those two cars over
there.”
No comments:
Post a Comment