2:37 p.m. - 2007-08-17
the twins
Friday, August 17, 2007
OATMEAL & KISSES - THE TWINS
Patricia was now almost forced to review her life. She had never really thought that she was not a fortunate child. In spite of the difficulties growing up during the Depression, she always felt loved. In spite of learning when she graduated from high school that her life had really started in Oklahoma; she didn�t feel cheated. In spite of learning that Bill was not her real father, she knew he loved her. In spite of marrying young and getting a divorce; she thought she had come through it very well. And now, in spite of the death of a grandson when he was only six and in spite of the death of her second husband; she felt she had created a new life for herself.
But now.....the reality of finally learning about her life from the time of her birth was frightening. She had tried over the years to contact her birth father and had been rudely rebuffed. She was almost afraid that the letter from Social Security might cause her even more pain. She had managed to put that part of her early life out of her mind. Did she really want to take the chance? Should she? Would she? COULD SHE?
Most of the people she had trusted throughout her life were gone. Her beloved ex-mother-in law, Leonette had died in 1970 of a heart attack. Her dear Aunt Lucille who always encouraged her to try to find her birth father had passed in 1982. Uncle James Leonard had died in 1967. Of course, her mother, Josephine had been gone since early 1945. Even her second husband who had been her companion for many years was gone.
She had her daughters. Bonnie had remarried in 1988 and lived South of Indianapolis. Ginny did not keep in touch with her sisters or her mother often. Mary was always a source of adventure and encouraged her mother to follow her heart. Terri was married, had a son and a career and saw her mother at least once a week on a regular basis for many years.
Patricia wrote this about her daughters....in 1991
"Last summer I took 3 different short vacations - each one with a different daughter and grew to know each child a bit better.
"The first trip was with Bonnie and we visited Mackinac Island for a 4 day week-end. Bonnie is the third of my four daughters and was the "baby" for eleven years before Mary, the fourth and last child was born.
Bonnie and I share an overgrown Irish imagaination and love of the melo-dramatic. We quickly changed our persona to fit the adventures that awaited us in our travel. I became Lilith McDowell, a free-lance travel writer and Bonnie changed her name to Liz Devereux on the lookout for sites to film educational movies. We indulged in these fantasies only among ourselves. We dined on white wine and shrimp salad luncheons in our public appearances and then pigged out on KFC and candy bars in the privacy of our motel room. We did the requisite touristy things on Mackinaw Island. The horse-drawn carriage ride, buying Island fudge and T-shirts, seeing the Fort and other attractions, but we also spend hours talking of men, marriage, morals and manners. Also Madonna, meals, make-up and motherhood. We came home with a new appreciation of each other that bridged the generation gap."
My second trip was a visit to New York City, a place my husband had always refused to go. He hated the traffic and noise but Mary, my fourth daughter, and I flew into LaGuardia and then took a taxi to our hotel, situated in the middle of the theater district. We quickly learned of the cut-rate ticket outlets and spent 2 hours of our first day standing in line for show tickets that went on sale for that night�s performances. We bought tickets for a blues musical revue "BLACK & BLUE and also for GYPSY for the following evening with Tyne Daily in the starring role. Also during our stay, we took a guided bus tour through upper New York City, Central Park, Wall Street and passed many of the imposing hotels where the rich and famous have suites. We also took a bus trip that led us through Greenwich Village and Chinatown where we had dinner. Saturday included a ferry boat trip to view the Statue of Liberty, the skyline at night ablaze with a million lights and a passing parade of every nationality on the face of the earth. The awe and reverence shone towards the Statue of Liberty was tremendous. Cameras were clicking like popcorn and excited voices in a dozen different dialects beat on my ears.
DEAR READERS....I must interrupt this story written by Patricia to tell you what she did regarding that letter from Social Security.
Patricia asked her daughters, after we read the letter for ourselves, what to do. She told us about how she had been turned away years before with a returned letter and a rude conversation on the telephone. She was afraid. She was anxious. She was unsure. We all encouraged her to call. We were so shocked that she had not heard about or known about her twin brother for over sixty years. And so....she did...
She Called! The phone was answered by a woman. Patricia prepared herself to be on receiving end of another rude conversation. She explained that she had received a letter from Social Security and before she could say another word, the woman asked very quickly. "Are you Jack�s sister?". Patricia told the woman her name and the next thing she heard was " Jack, come quickly. Your sister is on the phone!"
Patricia was so nervous that she barely remembered the conversation with Jack. All she did remember was telling him she had coincidentally already planned a trip to New York City. Jack told her he would send her a letter with directions because he lived close enough that she could take a train to his town. He was so happy to hear from her and wanted to meet her face to face as soon as possible.
***
July 20, 1990
Dear Patricia:
It�s hard to believe we have finally made contact! I really thought it was going to happen one day but it was still a real surprise when you said you were Patricia on the phone. I had sent a letter to my New York Senator, Alfonse D�Amato, and asked if he would contact Social Security and request a name check, that was on May 29, 1990.
I�m happy to hear you were planning on coming to New York soon. You will have to plan on coming up to see us. I am enclosing a train schedule and you can see there are a number of trains each day from New York City to xxxxxx. We also have a airport in xxxxx where American Airlines, Continental, Delta, Eatern and Northwest are available. If you wish, you could fly home from xxxx.
In the last two years I�ve become interested in genealogy and have been able to trace the Hill family back to 1777 and the Crim family back to about 1820. I am enclosing a page on my family and also one on our ancestors. Our two daughters both live here in the Northeast. Bonnie lives in _____, Vt and two hours away and Joan lives in Pa, about six hours away.
I forgot to mention it when you called. Our older brother Jimmie was killed in the war in 1943 in an Air Force training flight. He had married in 1942. I had met his wife when he and I worked in Ca. After his death, there was very little contact with his wife and I don�t kow what happened to her.
My wife, Florie and I have lived in New York since 1948 in various locations. Florie and I are looking forward to seeing you and your daughter, Mary. We have plenty of room and would love to show you some of the upstate New York.
Love Jack and Florie
******
So to continue with Patricia�s essay....
"Our last day was spent on a train from New York City speeding to xxxxx, N.Y. where I was destined to meet my twin brother for the first time in over 60 years. But that�s another story. Mary�s youthful sense of adventure made the over-priced and underdone meals all worth while during our trip to New York.
Patricia and Jack had a good first meeting. A local newspaper came to the train station, took pictures and wrote an article about the two. Patricia and Jack were fraternal twins. Although they did not have all the same features, they did share a few. Their eyes were the same light hazel; they had several identical mannerisms and they enjoyed many of the same things including music, reading and chocolate. Their upbringing had been very different and their lives to that time were far apart. Jack had been married to his wife Florie for many years. He had been employed for the State of New York for over 30 years and also retired from Union College in Schenectady for 10 years. He had traveled often and had lived a comfortable and good adult life. He had two daughters. And oddly enough, his youngest daughter was also named Bonnie just as was Patricia�s third daughter. The girls even resembled each other. His older daughter, Joan, looked very much like Mary in her facial features and her coloring.
Jack had no recollection of his mother, Josephine. In fact, what he had been told by his step-mother was not very flattering or in some cases even true. He had a very real anger about Josephine and until he talked to Patricia and she was able to tell him what their mother was really like; he had no interest in learning about her. Once Patricia shared her version of Josephine; he became much more comfortable with seeking information, photos and stories about his mother. He did tell Patricia that after his father married his second wife, Dolly, life was very harsh for the boys. He said Dolly never was affectionate. She cooked, cleaned and cared for the home but did not enjoy her role as a step-mother. Jack is sure that it was Dolly who returned Patricia�s letter years before and also was the woman who so cruelly talked to Patricia on the telephone. He did recall that Dolly told him when he was 40 years old that he had a twin sister who might be trying to contact him. His stepmother said he should have nothing to do with her. After that, Jack said he waited for a letter or another phone call to come but it never did. He also thought his father would talk about it at some time but his father never mentioned a previous marriage. He then was sure that when his father passed in 1989, he would have left a letter explaining the details but there was no letter.
That was when Jack decided he would have to try to find his sister himself. And so he did. He was very happy and very surprised when his sister called a few weeks after the letter had been sent. They didn�t exchange any pictures before they met for the first time but knew each other instantly and felt a connection.
In October of 1990, Jack and his wife came to South Bend to meet Patricia�s daughters and families. The local newspaper did an article about the twins re-connection, including photos and an interview with the twins.
A few weeks later both of the twins were contacted by the University of Minnesota Twin Research group. They were conducting research on twins who had been separated at a very young age. They wanted to determine what was genetic and what was environmental. The Research study offered to pay for the twins, Jack�s wife Florie and Patricia�s daughter, Terri to come. They would be using Florie as a environmental research side study and Terri as a genetic blood relative to check other variables of the research on the separated twins.
This brings me to the rest of Patricia essay on vacations with her daughters.
My third and last trip was to Minneapolis, Minn on a week-long trip and stay at the University of Minnesota. This was a research project testing twins who had been reared apart. My twin brother, Jack and I plus a family member each were tested in every conceiveable way. Jack brought his wife and I brought Terri, my oldest daughter as a a family member and a traveling companion. Our expenses were paid by the University of Minnesota and though we put in long days of tests, from 8:00 A.M. until 5:00 P.M. for six days, most of our evenings were free. Jack and I had a lot of time to talk and catch up on each other�s lives. It was an exhausting week, mentally and physically and I was glad to have Terri along. She is very efficient and reliable, plus we had a chance to talk without the others around in our motel room, and on the plane trip to and from Minneapolis.
My three trips were all different as my daughters are also different but there was pleasure and a sense of discovery in each one - both in the trips and my daughters.
*****
November 16, 1990
Dear Ones:
Should fill you in on my trip to Minneapolis and so here goes.
We arrived about 2 P.M. Saturday and received a phone call shortly from Nancy Segal, Asst. to Prof. Boucher. We�d be picked up at noon Sunday and start our mental testing. We were at the Univ. for six hours on Sunday and really had our brains picked. It was a general intelligence test and covered a little bit of everything. We also had 4 work books about an inch thick which contained 100s of questions to which we were to answer Yes or No....or sometimes Never, Seldom, Occasionally, Often or Always. We were told we would have answered about 15,000 questions by the time we are done.
There were about 100 basic questions in each book but worded in various ways so you couldn�t get away with a lie very often. We worked from 8 A.M. till 5:PM each day but Tuesday - when we stayed until 9 PM. We were sent home in blood pressure sleeves that measured our blood pressure all night long every 10 minutes. The pressure of inflation was enough to keep you awake all night. Terri and Florie had to wear that contraption the next night. They had some of the same tests we did but not all. Terri did more than Florie as she was a blood relative. We were weighed and measured in every possible way, nose to mouth, ear to ear, shoulder to elbow, knee to ankle and etc.
We had an eye test, dental exam, manual dexterity, spelling, reading comprehension, color blindness, retention of numbers, math and more. Also handwriting specimens, several private interviews with an assistant on life stresses, life as a child, then Nancy did an interview with me on SEX which included my sexual fantasies. I started to concoct a story for her, I got carried away and told her an entire Gothic romance. She couldn�t shut me up as I spewed forth every titillating tidbit in my imagination. Poor woman! She was as worn out as I was when I finished. Wish I could have taped it and sold it to Harlequin Romance!
Jack, Florie, Terri and I usually had breakfast and dinner together and we had some grand meals. Terri had to spend time with Florie when Jack and I were being tested but she bore up pretty well. All in all, it was an exciting and exhausting experience and I�d love to do it again.
Ok, according to Jack, we are eligible for DAR membership if you care.
Love Mom
******
Everyone enjoyed the research project but were more than glad to go back home to settle back into their own lives and see what was in store for them in the future..
