Hearts are supposed to be one on Valentine’s Day.
But when a Massachusetts judge split custody of the Raymond identical twins that day, twins everywhere seemed to cry “ouch.”
“I was furious,” said Wendy DeMarco, of Wayne, Pa.
“A very disturbing decision,” said Raymond Brandt, a Ft. Wayne, Ind., psychologist.
“It’s appalling,” said Wendy Walloff, of Philadelphia, the mother of identical twin daughters, 12.
“I can’t believe anybody in the 1990s would do that.”
What Probate Judge James R. Lawton did was order 10-year-old Sheena Raymond out of her father’s house in Waltham, which she had shared with her twin sister, Tara, and into her mother’s home six miles away.
Lawton no doubt supposed his custody ruling wise, even Solomonic. After all, the girls remained classmates in the same elementary school. And Sheena “wanted” to live with her mother.
But the fuss over his decision suggests that it takes more than a legal mind to comprehend that curious union of souls known as identical twins.
“Twins are a uniqueness unto themselves,” said Brandt, 65, who speaks of twinship in near-mystical terms.
In 1949, he and his identical twin, Robert, were employed as electric linemen. They were working several miles apart on July 5 that year when Brandt, who was standing on the ground, “had this powerful electric jolt. I knew instantly what happened. I felt my twin’s spirit rise up in me and separate.”
Robert had touched a high-voltage line and died instantly.
“I still can feel his presence, especially in the early-morning hours,” said Brandt, who said he has never gotten over his brother’s death 46 years ago.
In 1983, he founded the Twinless Twin Support Group Inc., for twins who have lost a brother or sister.
“You never stop grieving,” said Brandt, whose organization claims 1,000 members. “I’d walk on my hands and knees all the way to Massachusetts if I could hug my brother again for just one minute.”
It’s important for twins to develop separate identities, said Marion Lindblad-Goldberg, director of family training at the Philadelphia Child Guidance Center and an identical twin.
She notes that the poet Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote of “two solitudes (that) protect and touch and greet each other,” she said. “And I think that’s nice. . . . The image is not one of merger or fusion. I see (twinship) as dancing in moments of intimacy that only you can share, and then off.”
Lindblad-Goldberg believes that it usually is healthy for young identical twins to attend separate classrooms. “School is a culture for exploring differentiation.” But separating them into separate households “in the wrenching ways this judge did-no. . . . Children learn from their siblings, whether twins or not.”
Nancy Segal, director of the Twins Study Project at California State University at Fullerton, believes that it’s “disgraceful what the judge did” in the Raymond case. “To separate twins at a young age can be traumatic.”
But Sheena’s and Tara’s living in separate homes “absolutely cannot compare” to the loss that twins feel on the death of another, said Segal, a fraternal twin.
After surveying more than 300 twins who have lost their twin and another family member to death, Segal has concluded that the death of an identical twin is, on average, significantly more painful than the death of a mother, father, grandparent, aunt, uncle, friend or other sibling, and rivals the death of a spouse.
“I may get a little weepy,” Loretta Kearney warned as she began to recite the ways her life intertwined with her sister Eileen’s.
“We had our first children within 24 hours of each other, and our second children within 12 hours.” Both became accountants, had three children, lived within 10 blocks of each other and often took vacations together. They often bought each other the same birthday card. Both their marriages ended in divorce or separation.
“A lot of people assumed I knew what she knew-like we were reading each other’s mind. But we didn’t.”
Still, Loretta Kearney was “very angry with myself” when Eileen was diagnosed with brain cancer in 1990. I said, `How come I didn’t know it?’ ” But when Eileen died, Kearney said, “I felt a part of me died too. Nothing can fill the void.”
As girls growing up in Wayne, Pa., Wendy DeMarco and her identical twin, Robin, shared a bedroom. They roomed together in college and later shared an apartment. They had a joint bank account and worked as nutritionists at the same retirement center.
“Why bother to get married when you have such a great best friend?” asked Wendy DeMarco, who said she believes that twins “share the same soul.”
But in 1990, Robin began to complain of severe headaches; she died last March of a brain aneurysm.
“Half of me died,” DeMarco said, “but half of her stayed in me. . . . People don’t understand the loss. I don’t know how to be one person. I was always two.
“I’ve been following this (Raymond) case, and I’m really upset,” DeMarco said. “You can’t separate twins. You just can’t.”
The Case of the Separated Twins is not a pretty one and probably says more about custody battles than twinship.
Dana Raymond, a chronically unemployed cable installer, last year was granted legal custody of Sheena and Tara after divorcing their mother, Jeanne Ardinozi. He says she is a drug abuser. She says she has “problems.”
Soon after Christmas, Sheena said she wished to live with her mother. Raymond objected. Ardinozi petitioned for a custody hearing.
Because Tara wanted to stay with her father, Lawton assigned each child to the parent of her choice.
Simple, yes?
Hardly. Custody battles rarely are. Raymond went to the media complaining that Tara missed her sister terribly.
“They are lost without each other,” he told the Associated Press. “They have a bond that shouldn’t be broken.”
But Paul Tarbo, Ardinozi’s live-in boyfriend, paints a less rosy picture: “In photographs, people see these two girls with the same blond hair, but all they do is fight.”
Tarbo speculated that Raymond may want Sheena back because her departure has cost him some income from Aid to Families with Dependent Children.
Not so, Raymond said.
“I just turned down the National Enquirer, which wanted to pay me big-time for my story,” he said in a telephone interview from his home. “I’m not trying to exploit this situation.”
He then called out to Tara and insisted she talk to a reporter. A young voice could be heard protesting, but then said, “Hello?”
Tara conceded that she was “kind of” tired of talking to reporters. When she was asked if she missed her sister, her father’s voice was audible in the background. Tara then said, “Yes. Even though we get mad at each other, we hung out together. Seeing each other in school is not enough.”
On March 11, Lawton ordered that the girls spend alternating weekends together in each parent’s home. He has said he would reconsider his separate-custody order.
To 14-year-old twins Brian and Keegan Callanan, of Riverton, Pa., the prospect of growing up in separate households is unthinkable.
“No way,” said Keegan.
“We enjoy being separate,” said Brian. “One or two nights a week we sleep over at my grandmother’s just to get away from the other.
“But it’s not so much that we fight,” said Keegan. “We irritate each other.”
The Callanan brothers are about as identical as twins can be. Both are tall, weigh about 130 pounds and have wavy brown hair. They are tops in their 8th-grade class at Riverton Elementary School and consistently earn nearly identical scores-in the 98th and 99th percentiles-on standardized tests. While in 7th grade-to get into a summer writing program at the University of Maryland-both scored a respectable 430 in the verbal component of the SAT exams (although Brian scored 430 to Keegan’s 410 in the math SAT).
Keegan got his revenge this year, though. He scored 99.9 on the entrance exam to Holy Cross High School in Delran-the top score among all applicants-and won a full scholarship. Brian scored third, with a 97.9.
“What drives me is the competition,” said Keegan, who is eight minutes older and an inch taller. “If I didn’t have anyone to compete with, I don’t think I’d be so interested.”
Brian describes himself as more “dominant” however. “If we both come downstairs wearing the same clothes, which we hate, Keegan will usually change.” They agreed that Brian is more “sociable and extroverted” and Keegan more “reserved and judgmental.” Both play the piano, collect political memorabilia and plan political careers as conservative Republicans.
Their goal?
“The Senate,” said Brian.
“The House,” said Keegan. Brian frowned at his brother. “In a leadership position-like speaker,” Keegan replied-sharply-to some unspoken but mutually understood disagreement. Brian shrugged and nodded.
The boys campaigned for conservative candidates in 1992 and 1994, much to the bafflement of their parents.
“My husband and I are liberal Democrats,” said their mother, Michele.
But to Brian and Keegan there’s no mystery to their conservative politics. “It just clicked.”
