- My twin brother and I have always been best friends.
- After I had my first child, he and I moved with our families across the street from each other.
"They're so cute! Are they twins?"
When people ask this question about my son Julian and his cousin Lyla as they run happily around the playground, I stop and explain — "No, they're not, but their parents are."
My twin brother Dan and I have different skin tones and eye colors, he's a foot taller, and he's a devoted athlete, while I am devoted to saying I'll get into yoga again someday. But when you put our faces together at the same height, you see the twin thing instantly. Our superficial differences belly how close we are, so close that after a decade of living in different cities, we now are raising our kids as communally as we can, so much so that we get asked if our little ones are twins themselves.
We've always been best friends
This wasn't part of some grandiose twin scheme. Yes, we've always been best friends. But in our 20s, my brother explored living in many places, including Scotland, Massachusetts, Miami, and Albany, NY, while my husband and I, who met in college, did not. Instead, we explored living in various rental apartments in uptown, New York, within a few miles of where my brother and I grew up.
But then Dan got serious with his future wife, and my first child, Mikey, was born in 2016. My brother, a devoted new uncle, got engaged and came home. And a few years later, anticipating growing families, we found apartments on opposite ends of the same Manhattan street — my brother, who had just found his own place, alerted us about the listing for ours.
We both had kids in 2019, and excited about our new proximity, decided to put them in a shared childcare setup with my longtime babysitter, raising them together for as long as possible.
Our brilliant plan lasted about six weeks before COVID-19 hit, and we ended up separating and going into lockdown.
To make the situation worse, my husband was medically vulnerable, having just finished chemo, and Dan's physician wife was heroically treating COVID-19 patients. We had to stay apart. But living nearby helped us overcome that, too. We started hanging out in the park with masks on, clucking at each other's babies. Finally, when our kids returned to school, we started the nanny share again. Our little ones developed a love and closeness that goes deeper than cousin-dom, with my oldest happily indoctrinating them both into mischief.
We have more family close by
Our family closeness doesn't stop there. My parents live in our old apartment, and my husband's sister, who happens to be the director of our kids' wonderful preschool, moved back from Brooklyn to Uptown Manhattan. We all share babysitting, pickups and dropoffs, and open-ended playground time. I jokingly call ours a "shtetl" existence after the tiny villages in Eastern Europe our great-grandparents fled in order to build a more expansive life in America.
My brother had a second child this year, and the nanny share ended, but our little ones go to school together and hang out afterwards more days than they don't.
Of course, nothing is perfect — sometimes, I think that family nearby makes me too inclined to stay in the neighborhood instead of making the effort to make new friendships or visit other places. I often feel guilty when one of my kids gets sick, and then everyone in both families gets sick.
But these are tiny hiccups compared to the enormous benefit our kids feel, the sense that a large group of adults is nearby looking after them, squabbling and laughing, the sense that they are part of a group much bigger than our little family unit. They have their cousins for life, and it makes me feel secure knowing they will face an uncertain world by each others' sides.
And once or twice a week, when my brother and I drop off our kids at preschool at the same time — usually late, we're Aquarians — we grab a cup of coffee or walk a few blocks together. My daily life is richer and more complete because my twin is in it, and I know my kids feel the same way.
Sarah M. Seltzer is the Executive Editor of Lilith and the author of "The Singer Sisters," a novel coming out with Flatiron in 2024.