Twins Times Two at Fifty-Seven

         You see me with four children—two sets of boy-girl twins—but you don't know. I am not the grandmother.

         "Can I sit on your lap?" The five year old looks at me. She is as adorable as her mother. Her twin brother wants the other knee as we three peer at black and white lines on the computer. We are choosing Frozen pictures—images from Disney coloring books online.

         You see, I have something their mother doesn't have. I have a printer attached to my computer. They come upstairs almost every day, now to have me print out pictures they can color. We talk as they chose online drawings from the Frozen movie, Croods, Slugterra and Disney princesses.

         Even though I don't have kids of my own, I am comfortable with these healthy bright children. At work, I use my skills in brain health recovery, acupressure, craniosacral therapy, matrix energetics and alternative medicine to treat children with autism, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, learning disabilities, vision issues and more. I also have 15 nieces and nephews. Sometimes I joke that I know more about children's movies than anyone without children should know. Sometimes the children I treat watch videos as I work. Sometimes I go to movies with my nieces and nephews. I know how to play with children, how to feel their moods, and how to respond to their needs for food, shelter, healing and love.

         I have lines memorized from some of my favorite movies, like Kung Fu Panda, where the wise tortoise, Oogway says, "One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it." I was not looking for a new partner as I set off on a 3000 mile bicycle ride across the US, I may even have not set off with Hazon (Vision in Hebrew) last summer if I had imagined how my life would change but still here I am with few regrets.

         Kids are so resilient. These two sets of twins have only known me for a couple of weeks. A picture printed earlier is colored beautifully and hangs autographed by the artist on my refrigerator. Colored by the little twins' eight year old sister, the paper flutters on my fridge, a warm summer breeze blows through the window.

         Three weeks ago, I got a text from their mother, "Can you watch them out of the upstairs front window, while I go back in to get their lunches?"She is rushing to get them to day camp on time. Fifty percent of the time, they live on the first floor of a house converted into apartments. I live above them. The other half of their lives they spend in a house a few blocks away with their other mother.

         I can see them through the window. I know who they are as they play in the sprinkler oblivious to my watchful eyes. I am not sure what I would do if there was a problem because I am not allowed to talk to them yet. They don't yet know who I am—who I am in relationship to them.

         "How old are you?" The five year olds ask as they wait for a picture to print from my computer, today.

         "Fifty-six, I will be fifty-seven in a few months."

         "That is not as old as my great grandma. She is ninety-two!"

         In fact, I am not as old as their grandparents but I am fifteen years older than their mother, who I have fallen in love with.

         Some would say I am having a family backwards. My younger sister has three grandchildren, just a little younger than these two sets of twins. Still, at fifty six, I am blending into this family.

         "Is she going to be our step mom? Will she be mean?" One of the eight year olds asks when they are told, "Mommy has a new girlfriend."

         In the days following that meeting with their two moms, they have more questions for me, "Before you moved here, did you know our mom came with kids?

         "I did know." I knew all about them—but not how much I would love them, so quickly as they reached, like their mother, into my heart.



Kimberly Burnham, has a private practice in alternative medicine at St Luke's Rehabilitation in Spokane, WA and a PhD in Integrative Medicine. She recently moved from West Hartford, CT and has a managing interest in the Creating Calm Network Publishing Group. Some of her other stories, research and poems have appeared in the recently released print book, Parkinson's Alternatives, poetry books from Inner Child Press, including Healing Through Words and The Year of The Poet and her upcoming book, The Journey Home, about her 3000 mile bicycle ride across America in 2013. For more poetry and musings visit her LinkedIn profile.