These two little phoebes fledged from their nest in a pouring rain.  I pleaded with them, “Don’t go, don’t go today.” But whatever internal clock drove them, they had to leave.  However, they only flew as far as my porch, got waterlogged, and sat on the back of a chair for hours waiting for the downpour to end.  Their parents flew back and forth feeding them.

I am a twin. This photograph brings back the years that my twin and I sat side by side, went to school and camp side by side, to church, out to play, and biking down the street as a pair.  We slept in the same bed, prayed to God, and had the same friends.  I wonder now what how we clung to each other when we were babies?

If one develops inside the womb with another chick do we continue to make decisions with the other through some kind of symbiotic or nonverbal methods?  I have loads of photographs but no first-person accounting. I do know that we’ve traveled through life in similar ways – finishing college, first jobs, getting married, and having children all within a year or even months of one another.  We even sent our mother the same Mothers’ Day card one year, each of us living very far away from each other!

What were those first months like? I never asked until looking at this photograph again, seeing two little phoebes not quite ready to fly, together, wing to wing.

Join me for Memoir Evoked by Place workshop, June 25, 10 am – 4 pm, with Mimi Edmunds!  She’s a fantastic teacher and we’ll have a wonderful time digging beneath our memories. Go to www.26splitrockcove.com/workshops to sign up now!