Reflections on Brotherhood

Reflection #1

Today, Cameron asked me to tell him a story about when I worked at the hospital. (For those who don't know, I worked for many years in a high-risk obstetrics unit at a hospital.) I began to tell him a story about a patient who was told during her ultrasound that she was having twins. The story was interrupted when Cameron asked, "I'm not a twin, right?"

"Right," I said. "Twins are when two babies grow in a mommy's belly at the same time. Some twins are identical -- they look just the same -- and some are fraternal and they do not look exactly the same." (I considered teaching him the terms monozygotic and dizygotic just 'cause it'd be a cool thing for a five-year-old to know, but decided to focus my energies elsewhere.)

Cameron thought about this and then said, "But me and Matthew are not twins, right?"

"No, you are not twins."

"Huh. Because we do kind of look alike."

Reflection #2

On our drive to school today, we were listening to the book "Clementine" by Sara Pennypacker. (It's delightful, by the way.) One of the characters noted that when there are two kids in a family, "one is always the easy one and one is always the hard one."

"Who do you think is the easy one in our family then?" I asked Cameron.

Without missing a beat he said, "Me, of course. Matthew's the hard one."