My twin brother, Michel, is named for the seventh song on the A-side of Rubber Soul—though on the album, of course, it’s Michelle, the female version of the name. The radiographer didn’t see his willy during the ultrasound. Apparently, the two of us were too closely bound for the doctor to make it out. Errare humanum est. Then: big surprise during the delivery. But the name had already been chosen, and changing it was out of the question. Dad simply dropped the l and the e, and my brother spent the first three years of his life in a bedroom with pink walls and an Alice in Wonderland mural, and the rest of his life explaining to everyone that he wasn’t French. One visit to a shortsighted radiographer can yield some truly unexpected consequences.
Those whose high level of education rivals their own hypocrisy tend to fidget uncomfortably as they explain that Michel is “special.” Prejudice is the prerogative of people convinced they know everything. The world Michel inhabits is blind to violence, pettiness, hypocrisy, injustice, and malice. To doctors, his world is full of disorder. But for Michel, every last thing and every last thought has its proper place. His world is so spontaneous and sincere that I sometimes think we’re the ones who are “special.” These same doctors have never been able to confirm whether it’s Asperger’s or if Michel is just different. Maybe the truth isn’t that simple.
Michel is an incredibly sweet man, a true wellspring of common sense and an endless source of laughter. If I’m the terrible liar, Michel’s weakness is that he can’t keep from telling the truth, saying the first thing that pops into his head. Michel waited until he was four years old to start speaking. While queuing up in the supermarket, he opened his mouth to ask a woman in a wheelchair where she’d found her “carriage.” Overcome with emotion at hearing her son finally utter a complete sentence, Mum swept him into her arms for a kiss before turning beetroot red with embarrassment. And that was only the beginning . . .
My parents were deeply in love from the very first night they got back together. As with all couples, there were some wintry patches when things ran cold. But they always made up and never failed to treat each other with the utmost respect and admiration. I once asked, after a particularly rough breakup of my own, just how they managed to stay in love for a whole lifetime. My father replied, “The key to lasting love is knowing how to give.”
My mother died last year in the middle of a dinner out with my father. The waiter had just brought out dessert—rum baba, my mum’s favorite—when she suddenly dropped facedown in a mound of whipped cream. The paramedics couldn’t revive her.
Dad went to great lengths not to weigh us down with the pain of his loss, knowing that each of us was suffering in our own way. Michel kept trying to call Mum every morning, and my father would invariably explain that she couldn’t come to the phone.
Two days after we buried Mum, Dad gathered us all around the kitchen table and declared that wallowing in misery would be strictly prohibited from that point forward. Mum’s death should in no way ruin the close-knit, joyful family that my parents had painstakingly built over the years. The next day, he left us a note on the refrigerator door. My sweet children, all parents die eventually, and it’ll be your turn one day, too, so enjoy the day. Love, Dad. A “logical point,” as my brother would say; don’t waste a single moment feeling sorry for yourself. When your mother kicks the bucket by doing a face-plant into her rum baba, it certainly puts things into perspective.
Every time I’m asked what I do for a living, I get to sit back and watch people turn green with envy. I write for National Geographic, and am paid a salary—a meager one, but still—to travel, take photos, and write about the world’s diversity. The strange part is that it took traveling to the ends of the earth for me to realize that what I was looking for was right there in front of me the whole time. All I had to do was open my eyes and start noticing the wonder of the world outside my front door.
It’s not as glamorous as it sounds. Imagine spending all your time on planes. Or sleeping three hundred nights of the year in hotels, sometimes comfortably, but more often uncomfortably due to budget restrictions. Imagine writing your articles aboard bumpy buses, and nearly dying of pure joy at the sight of a clean shower. In a job like mine, once you finally make it home, all you want to do is put your feet up and sink into the sofa, not budging an inch, with a TV dinner in front of you and your family close at hand.
My love life has been a handful of flings and short-lived relationships, as rare as they are fleeting. Traveling constantly is like being condemned to singledom for life. My longest relationship was with a Washington Post reporter. It lasted about two years, though I had wanted it to go on longer. What a lovely feat of self-delusion it was. We shot emails back and forth and tried to tell ourselves we were “close” without ever having spent more than three days in a row in each other’s company. All in all, the time we spent together over two years added up to just over two months. Our hearts would flutter wildly every time we reunited, and again when we said goodbye. Eventually, the palpitations got to be too much, and we had to call it quits.