Elyse Schein - Identical Strangers: A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunited

Contents

ELYSE:

For Tyler

PAULA:

To Marilyn and Bernard Bernstein,
without whom this story couldnt be told

Preface

Imagine that a slightly different version of you walks across a room, looks you in the eye, and says hello in your voice. You discover that she has the same birthday, the same allergies, the same tics, and the same way of laughing. Looking at this person, you are able to gaze into your own eyes and see yourself from the outside. This identical individual has the exact same DNA as you and is essentially your clone.

We dont have to imagine. After being adopted as babies and raised by different families, we met for the first time at age thirty-five, after discovering we were twins.

While we grappled with this revelation, our natural instinct was to chronicle our mutual discovery. In the first three months following our reunion, we exchanged thousands of e-mails, comparing favorite films, books, and foods. We soon discovered some uncanny similarities, as well as some surprising differences.

As we immersed ourselves in the task of getting to know each other, we couldnt help but conduct our own informal study of the influence of nature vs. nurture. We wondered which aspects of our personalities were forged by our genes and which parts were influenced by environment.

What started out as an idea to write a personal essay about our reunion became a common project that would unite us for the next two years. As we investigated our biological family and explored the reasons for our separation, we unearthed some unpleasant truths about the adoption agency that placed us. We were disturbed to learn that we were not separated because of fate or circumstances, but rather because of a now long-abandoned theory that twinship imposes a burden on both children and their families. For a time we, along with a number of other sets of separated twins and triplets, were followed by researchers participating in a secret study of identical siblings.

Many of the most memorable twin storiesfrom literature like The Prince and the Pauper to popular classics like The Parent Traprevolve around separated twins who find each other. These narratives tap into a fundamental interest in the nature of self. The timeless story poses the question: what is it that makes each human being unique?

This question has fascinated scientists since 1875, when Charles Darwins cousin, the British anthropologist Sir Francis Galton, conducted the first known twin study. After comparing a small group of identical and fraternal twins, Galton concluded, Nature prevails enormously over nurture. Since that time, separated identical twinsborn with the same DNA, but reared in different environmentshave provided researchers invaluable insight into the eternal question of nature vs. nurture. After Mengeles monstrous experiments on twins in Nazi concentration camps during World War II, the studies dwindled. The idea that behavior was inborn was generally frowned upon and even considered racist.

Today, most adoption agencies forbid the practice of separating twins, regarding it as potentially unhealthy. Lawrence Wright, Pulitzer Prizewinning author of the book Twins: And What They Tell Us About Who We Are, estimates that fewer than three hundred separated twin pairs have been identified in the world. Unlike us, the majority were raised in part by biological relatives, knew of their twinship, or had contact with each other over the years.

Twins have been seen on sonogram images in the womb kissing, punching, and embracing. Clearly, the powerful connection between twins begins even before birth. Nevertheless, having shared the womb for nine months, when we met we were strangers.

ELYSE: My mother, my adoptive mother, my real mother, died when I was six, but throughout my childhood I believed she watched over me from above. I held the few images that remained of her in my mind like precious photographs I could animate at will. In one, she sat before her dressing table, lining her charcoal eyes, preparing to go out with my dad one Saturday night. The scent of her Chanel No. 5 is enchanting.

I can still see her. She catches a glimpse of me in the mirror and smiles at me, standing in the doorway in my pajamas. With her raven hair, she looks like Snow White. Then, after her death, she seemed to simply disappear, like a princess banished to some faraway kingdom. I believed that from that kingdom, she granted me magical powers.

When I jumped rope better than the other girls in my Long Island neighborhood, I knew it was because my mother was with me. When I went out fishing with my dad and brother, my mother helped me haul in the catch of the day. By sheer concentration, I could summon her force so that my frog won the neighborhood race.

Since I wasnt allowed to attend my mothers funeral, her death remained a mystery to me. When other kids asked how she had died, I confidently announced that she had had a backache. I later learned that her back problems had been caused by the cancer invading her spine.

Along with my mothers absence came an awareness of my own presence. I remember standing in complete darkness in front of the bay windows in our house shortly after her death. Alone, except for my reflection, I became aware of my own being. As I pulled away from the glass, my image disappeared. I asked myself, Why am I me and not someone else?

Until autumn of 2002, I had never searched for my birth parents. I was proud to be my own invention, having created myself out of several cities and cultures. In my ignorance surrounding my mothers death, I amplified the importance of the few facts I had accumulatedshe was thirty-three when she died, which I somehow linked to our new home address at 33 Granada Circle. It was probably no coincidence that when I reached the age of thirty-three, after one year in Paris, the urge to know the truth of my origins grew stronger. Turning thirty-three felt the way other people described turning thirty. I felt that I should automatically transform into an adult.

I had recently starting wearing glasses to correct my severe case of astigmatism, which had allowed me to see the world in a beautiful blur for several years. All the minute details I had been oblivious to were suddenly focused and magnified. But even if it meant abandoning my own blissful vision of the world, I was ready to face the truth.

I was working in the unlikeliest of places, as a temporary receptionist in a French venture capital firm in the heart of Pariss business district. Of course, the desire to eat something other than canned ratatouille for dinner had played a part. I assured myself that I wasnt like the suburbanites who commuted every day in order to pay for a satellite dish and a yearly six-week vacation to the south of France.

Initially I had amused myself by observing French business decorum. As the novelty wore off, I entertained myself with the front desk computer. Assuming a businesslike pose, I sat for hours alternating between answering the phone and plugging words and topics into various search engines. I typed in old friends names and discovered that my classmates from SUNY Stony Brook were now philosophy professors and documentary directors. One had even edited the latest Jacques Cousteau film.