The Twins Are Away Again

They were  here two days and two nights. Not long enough to leave echoes behind. Long enough to remind what it's like living with very small children who can move about.

There's a picket missing from the railing at the top of the basement stairs. The first night they were here, I didn't sleep  because of that missing picket. I wanted to get up and do something about it but I figured they would waken up if I did. So I didn't.

I mentioned it to  Vanessa. She picked up the coffee table that had been taken out of the sitting room to make room for their play-pen cribs and put the legs through the picket spaces and Voila, the problem was fixed.

Heather came down  in the morning with a length of  stick. She hadn't been able to sleep thinking about  they might be able to  open the sliding door and get out to the pool.

Theresa whose  room is downstairs under the sitting room couldn't sleep because she  heard unexplainable noises  all night long.

Reid found every button on every appliance ,including the washing machine which makes noises when buttons are pushed. At one point an alarm  chimed  loudly in my bedroom.  I had never heard it before. It's the alarm to locate the mobile phone if  misplaced.. I didn't even know that button existed and I've  had the phones for years.

Claire can step more than two feet high in a single step. Running as fast as she can, and it's fast, is  sheer delight. Jumping over and over and turning somersaults is also how  she entertains herself .

While Reid  quietly presses every button in sight on the television .

He  can count to ten . I heard him count backwards from five while pushing buttons on the telephone. . Vanessa says he counts to ten in French and  Spanish . I believe it.

Theresa brought a decorated board from the Market with the name Aurora.painted on it. Without prompting, he read and pointed correctly to every letter on the board.

It reminded me of something I read .. Children learn more in the first three years  than they do in their entire lives.

I'm not sure how that could be measured . But it also reminded me of something else  I thought when my own were going to school.  Considering how much they had learned by themselves before going to school, it occurred to me , the time came when they needed new opportunities. to learn. They  needed to go to school .

Then, more than once, it occurred to me one of the  lessons they learned in school was about failure.
School  taught them to doubt themselves and  lose confidence.

Whatever they felt or thought about it, when the time came,I was glad when they had done with school.

Watching the  twins, marveling at  what they have  already learned, no doubt with the help of television,between or during spurts of energy, in the short span of their lives, I wondered what their school experience will be like.

How will they adapt to sitting quietly at a desk  listening and learning at the pace of twenty-four other children  their age.

Inevitably they will learn.  Intelligence never falters.

What about the way forward;.how many clunkers will they encounter along the way? Will they recognise them when they see them,.skip on over . jog right on past or be identified with attention deficits?

I read something else years ago . When people were living in caves and dressing in skins , they had the same intelligence as modern man. It surprised me. Then it surprised me  that it surprised me.

Of course they had the same intelligence.  How else would we have advanced  from being hunters and gatherers.

So the twins will do just fine. Nothing will hold them back....for long