One of the things I've had to learn to live with as the mother of twins has been random comments from strangers about how I must have my hands full or how hard it must be to take care of two babies. Some of the comments have sounded vaguely warm hearted, while others have definitely seemed to display abject horror on the part of the commenter regarding what it would be like to walk in my shoes. Fortunately people also stop us to comment on how cute they are and ask me about them. I always oblige with a few vague details like their ages, sex, and names. Of course the nicer comments are far more welcome than the negative sort of things I've mentioned above.
This afternoon I decided to head out on a quick walk with the boys while the cleaning ladies performed their biweekly scrub down of our condo (one thing I could never live without, even though I'm a SAHM there is never enough time in the day for me to keep our place as clean as I want it to be on my own.) I bundled the boys into their snowsuits, buckled them into their stroller, and headed out into the cold afternoon. Because it was their nap time I wandered around for a while hoping that the constant motion would lull Max and Nathan to sleep. But eventually the cold got to me and I decided to head to the grocery store to stock up on some needed items and simultaneously warm up a little.
As I wandered around the store a friendly women stopped me to ask me about the boys. I smiled and offered the standard information I always give. She told me that she was from Nigeria originally, and about how her people consider twins to be very lucky. She explained that twins were considered a wonderful blessing from God by the Yoruba, and that their births are always heralded with celebration and excitement. After we chatted a while she wished me luck and I thanked her for her kind words. After I had finished my shopping and arrived back home I let the boys get in some play time so I could ask Google some more about what I had learned from the nice women in the grocery store. While it was sad to read about the rituals created for lost twins among the Yoruban people it was also fascinating to learn about how valued and even revered twins are in their culture.
Up until this afternoon I had been getting more and more aggravated by the goofy and insensitive things I had been hearing from strangers about the twin thing. But I have to admit that my random encounter in the grocery store has sort of restored my faith in people's basic ability to be nice and say kind things that they actually mean. Not that I'm a skeptic or anything (me? no, never...) but my adventures in infertility had already shown me that people can say some really stupid things for no apparent reason. Now at least I know that some people think that Max and Nathan are the blessing I believe they truly are.
