Twins

I showed up unexpectedly at school to surprise my twins during their snack time today. Here were their extremely different reactions:

As soon as Meya saw me, she ran with open arms and gave me a huge hug. "Mom! I'm so glad you're here!"

Tman was only a few feet away when he realized I was sitting at his snack table. He stopped dead in his tracks, then took a couple tentative steps closer. "Mom?" he asked. "Hi Truman," I smiled. He thought for a moment then pleaded, "Please tell me you're here to take me home."

He recovered pretty quickly after I broke it to him that I was only here to share snack time, and he would have to stay at school for the whole day.

Meya chattered away easing from subject to subject as though she was flipping randomly through a book. She covered PE, the morning bus ride, what her friends were doing at recess, the afternoon schedule, and "by the way, how was your morning, Mom?" all in the matter of a couple minutes. Tman answered my questions but seemed more interested in the riveting tether-ball game just a few feet away. When he finished his snack, he asked if I would make chocolate chip cookies for him for an after-school snack. "Can you cook them so they're still warm when I get home?" he asked, then bound away to join the tether-ball line.
 
Oh my twins. How I love you. How I love your differences. Meya with your gift of gab and Tman with your very male-centric interests: food and sports.

It was only twenty minutes on a Thursday morning. Sitting together at the round tables outside the cafeteria. Talking over the sounds of an elementary school: giggling girls, squeaky swings, boys yelling on a soccer field, and a basketball pounding the cement.

Only twenty minutes. But my favorite minutes of the day.