Happy Birthday to me!

Happy Birthday to me, Happy birthday to me, Happy Birthday dear Kit-ty, Happy Birthday to me!

Today is the anniversary of my birth. People who know me will call me with good wishes, offer to buy me drinks while we are out, bring me presents, and generally make best efforts to ensure that this otherwise totally arbitrary day is a special one for moi. But one thing that these well intended folk are probably not thinking about: I am actually half of a pair. I have a twin brother, a brown haired Undercover Brother out there, and he and I have shared this special day since our time on this earth began.

I'd like to take this opportunity to discuss my Undercover Brother, and the curious dynamic that is our twinship. You see, Undercover Brother is my twin, sure, but we are about as opposite as opposite can be. Let's review:

Undercover Brother is quite and shy; I am outgoing and personable.

He is obsessively self-disciplined; I am peer pressure's easiest target.

He is very strong and works out every day; I count lifting my wine glass as bicep exercise.

Undercover Brother is a doctor. Like, he's been officially referred to as Dr. Undercover Brother on a daily basis as of this past June, when he graduated from med school. I am a publicist and a writer and also a waitress. And I'm officially referred to as "Miss Kitty" half of the time.

Undercover Brother is good at math and science and...cutting people open. I am good at grammar (ha!) and writing and liberal arts and "spin."

We are as different as different could be, and shared everything there was to have before we moved away from home to go to college. Until then, on every birthday there was a cake that featured two names, mine scrawled across it in pink frosting, his scrawled across it in blue. When I was little, I wondered what it would be like to have a birthday cake that is only pink: pink flowers, pink icing, and just one name, mine, written across it?

But now, as a grown-up, I miss our two-toned cake, our yin & yang life. And I miss him.

I don't think I'll be having birthday cake on my birthday this year: we're going to dinner at a fancy restaurant, and my "birthday cake" will be whatever dessert I order. But if I were to have cake, I'd want both of our names to be scrawled upon it, in pink and in blue. Even if Undercover Brother is 3,000 miles away in San Diego, locked up in a hospital working on his residency. Even though he doesn't eat sugar because his primary focus is "getting ripped."

Happy Birthday to us both!