Jane Isay Reviews One and the Same
Jane Isay is the author of Walking on Eggshells and the forthcoming Mom Still Likes You Best. She has been an editor
for over 40 years and edited such nonfiction classics as Reviving Ophelia, Praying for Sheetrock, and Friday Night
Lights. She lives in New York City, not too far from her children and grandchildren. Read her exclusive Amazon guest
review of One and the Same:
Abigail Pogrebin’s One and the Same: My Life As an Identical Twin and What I’ve Learned about Everyone’s Struggle to be
Singular is a terrific travelogue through the world of identical--and fraternal--twins. She tells the story of the twin
experience from the inside out, and shines a smart and loving light on this special relationship. Pogrebin brings heart
and brains to her own experiences with her twin sister Robin, from infancy to a ripe maturity. And she has done
prodigious a of research, speaking with scores of twins--together and apart--and interviewing dozens of experts on
all aspects of the twin experience.
Modern medicine has given us more multiple births every year, and so more and more people are parents of twins. When
we see so many pairs of kids riding in their double strollers, we ask ourselves so many questions.
What’s going on in their little minds as they grow up together? Do they feel like they’re one person, or two? How do
they relate to other kids in school? Do they feel that it’s a privilege to be a twin, or do they find it a burden? What
about the social expectations that they should love each other best and should be ever so close? How do they separate
enough to get married and form their own families? What is the mistake parents most often make in rearing their twins?
Abigail Pogrebin has answers to these questions and many more. In each chapter she writes a bit about her and her
sister, and then brings in testimony from other twins and the experts. In addition, this book is valuable because of the
light it sheds on all sibling relationships by describing the closest pairs we know. Even people without a twin in their
lives--and most of us are fascinated by twins--will benefit from reading One and the Same.
If you’re considering IVF, if you are a twin or have a twin, or are married to a twin, or dating one, this book is a
necessity. In addition, Abigail Pogrebin’s family is one of those singularly successful and loving ones, and basking in
the warmth of her life is a pleasure.--Jane Isay
(Photo © Robin Holland)
Abigail Pogrebin on One and the Same
Who knows what makes each of us feel distinctive in the world, understood, really known? If individuality is a
hurdle, it’s raised that much higher when you’re a twin. I started my book, One and the Same, to plumb the depths and
intricacies of growing up as a double, but also because I knew that twinship is just a magnified version of everyone’s
challenge: individuality.
What made it complicated for me and my twin, Robin, are the same elements that can make it complicated for any
person: a sense of being blurred, over-compared, generalized; an uncertainty whether the people in your life truly know
you apart from others. Psychologist Joan Friedman, a twin and parent of twins (who counsels both) talks about the
difference between "being noticed, and being known." I know that difference. As an identical twin, you definitely get
noticed; my sister and I were kind of famous just by virtue of looking so alike. (And okay, we were kind of cute before
we hit the merciless stage of adolescence.)
But the inherent "star power" in twinship has a short shelf life. Ultimately you need to feel sure of a separate
worth, an identity beyond twinship. If I’m not mistaken, we all need the clarity of uniqueness. What do I bring to the
table? How will I leave my mark? What do I have with this friend that’s unlike what they have with someone else? It’s
not that we spend all our days self-obsessed, asking how we’re special, but there’s some fundamental need to know we’re
singular.
My parents could not have been more loving, stimulating, or "modern" in their childrearing, but it literally never
occurred to them to spend time with Robin and me separately and that omission backfired at the end of the day. When I
interviewed my mother for my book, and asked her why she and Dad never took us anywhere separately, she looked pained.
"Because we didn’t think that way," she told me. "We just thought in terms of doing things as a family. I should have
been aware of it because I should have been smart enough to figure out that something is gained when you’re alone with a
person. I should have realized that. But it never occurred to us. It always was a matter of 'Let’s. Not: 'You come with
me and you go with him.'"
She said they realized their mistake in one powerful instant when I was eighteen and they invited me to go with them
for a weekend at a bed-and-breakfast. "You said you were uncomfortable coming along because you’d never been alone with
us. It was like somebody us between the eyes; we couldn’t believe it. ‘How could this have happened?’ We never
noticed that we had never been with one child."
"It was clear that you felt you had a performance level you had to keep up," my her recalls, "and you felt that,
without Robin, you wouldn’t be able to hold up your end in terms of pleasing us, as if that was anything you had to do.
So that was a real realization that we’d missed something. I think we were always so careful to have equality of
that it turned out to be undifferentiated."
Psychologist Dorothy Burlingham wrote in her 1954 study of identical twins that mothers can’t connect to their twins
until they get to know them apart from each other. "Several mothers have plainly said that it was impossible to love
their twins until they had a found a difference in them," Burlingham wrote. That could be rephrased for all of us, twin
and non-twin alike: it’s impossible to feel loved, acknowledged, understood, valued unless we’re sure people have "found
a difference" in us. Unless we’re sure we’re uncommon or particular in some way.
One and the Same is a window into the truth about twinship. But it’s also, I think, an unpacking of how we each
ultimately find a way to say, "Look at me alone."--Abigail Pogrebin