your love is like a dance. and so is mine.

They creep into our bed at night. If one comes first, the other is soon to follow. And after that, there is always a battle... of who will sleep closer to me. Or who will sleep closer to Hal. Or who will want the other thing the other wants first. 

Some nights I carry them one at a time to their beds. Usually, I'm mid-dream, muttering and accidentally bumping up against the walls. I exist in a sort of in-between on most days. In between children. In between listening and trying to ignore. In between sleep and wakefulness.

Four years have moved like cloud cover -- the changing shapes of daughters and sons and self. Of mind and matter and parenting philosophy. When you have two such different children at the same moment in time, at identical ages, you realize how little control you have over everything.

Which is terrifying and also a relief. 

"I can't sleep with you because you kick me. I love you but you kick me." 

Some nights are like a cotillion. We change partners in our sleep. I wake up in Revi's bed and Hal wakes up with Fable and Archer and Bo are in our bed and nobody knows where they are. And then there are the nights they end up with each other. On the floor in a heap of toys and blankets with markers in their hands and pictures on their foreheads.

Pretending to sleep. 

Pretending to snore. 

Trying not to smile. 

"Just kidding, we're awake!" they say. 

And then they go back to pretending... 

In the morning, they fight over the same chair and then decide to sit under the table together. Revi brings Bo her cereal and bowl. She brings her an apple. A napkin. She would bring her the moon if she could. She would bring us all the moon, if she could. I just wish she would bring the moon to herself sometimes. I have watched her give away her last piece of pasta and take the dress off her back to give her sister. 

"But, Revi, are you sure?" 

"Yes," she says unwaveringly. 

Her heart is as strong as any muscle I've ever seen. 

She is the youngest  of us all but we all call her "mama." 

And when Revi asks Bo to do something, she does it. 

I will never have that kind of power over Bo and I have learned to accept it. To wait it out. To stand by until she's ready. To take a load off in the front seat of the car until she decides to sit down.

"Sit down, Bobo," Revi will say. 

And Bo will sit down. 

When they dance, they dance as equals. Their hands on each other's hips or shoulders, fingers clasped. They turn left and then they turn right like a scale. 

They are give and take and push and pull and I am, too. 

Bo is filthy and happy and covered in paint and dirt while Revi has just disappeared to wash her hands again and I wonder if they react to each other in some ways they are unable to react to themselves. Is that something that twins do? When one gets dirty, does the other wash her hands?

Their dance is like mine when I'm with them. Here and gone and up and down, holding and pushing away... what must it feel like, I think, to have a partner that you have never known life without. I cannot move the way they do. I always lead when I shouldn't and end up tripping over my own feet. 

They don't do that.

They come together without speaking and they pull apart at the same time. There is method to their madness. There is magic.

In the early days, they woke each other constantly. Bo learned to climb out of her crib early on and would climb into Revi's in the middle of the night. Soon enough both girls knew how to climb out of their cribs. They learned how to sneak into the kitchen, open the freezer and hide out with a box of frozen waffles.

One night I found them seated on the couch with a carton of ice cream, watching late night Cheers.

"What are you doing?" I asked them.

"Nothing," they said. "Go back to bed."

They were two.

They still sneak out together when we assume they're long asleep and then we find them in the bathtub reading books.

We find them in the morning, trying to sneak chips from the seats of chairs. And in the afternoon, crouching behind trees with empty packs of gum and swollen cheeks. 

"What am I going to do with you," I say. 

"You're going to love us," Bo says. 

"Yeah. You're going to love us." Revi agrees. 

And I do.

Fiercely. 

GGC