Amy and Mark are born at the exact same time in two different cities. Amy's mother and Mark's mother will never meet in their lifetimes, yet they will come to know and understand each other better than anyone else in the world.
Why?
Because Amy and Mark are each born with a rare genetic flaw, a birth disorder that cripples their chances of living any sort of normal life.
Perhaps I should be more specific:
Amy, at birth, weighs exactly half of what you would expect a normal baby to weigh at the moment their journey begins.
Mark, too, weighs the exact fraction of normalcy as does Amy. Indeed, the baby in the cradle beside Mark is Johnson John Adams, whose infant form is a happy and healthy 7 pounds 3 ounces (which happens to be a very expectable size for a baby) while Mark will not reach this weight until a much later stage in his development. In fact, Mark and Amy's bodies, if combined, would produce a weight precisely that of Abigail Rose Goldwater, the baby in the cradle beside Amy, who is thoroughly average in every way. Apart, their weights are not average, but rather, curious aberrations; yet they have no knowledge of the extraordinary symmetry that stretches, umbilical, between the sleeping infant Amy in her hospital crib and Mark, lying silently awake in his. Had they but been aware of this shared rarity from birth, who knows what kind of discomfort they may have been spared, for discomfort is a reality that they will share daily as they live their tragic lives.
To be direct:
Amy possesses neither a second arm nor a second leg.
Mark's balance will forever depend upon mechanized assistance and patience, rather than the traditional biological options of his peers.
Amy's lung is the perfect size for its cage of 12 ribs, none of which has a pair.
Mark will never have to worry which way he should part his hair.
Amy faces a future devoid of subtlety, wherein her peers will never understand whether she is winking or blinking.
Mark forever will be subject to unwelcome curiosity as passersby wonder from whence came his custom-made clothes, flat on one side to accommodate his natural shape (a sort of awkward triangular prism with the occasional appendage).
Amy, still an infant, is blissfully unaware of her upcoming role in the strange perversions of depraved sexual thrill-seekers who will key on her deformity as a grotesque excuse to categorize her as a fetishized marvel.
Mark and his still-unknown counterpart Amy share a destiny to be horrifyingly isolated throughout their lives: lives that will be rife with constant, all-too-physical reminders that each is only half a person.
One day, however, the isolation will end. Amy will look down at her shoes, or reach intently for a box of cereal on the highest shelf of the store, and the crowd of shoppers will suddenly give way to the astonished half-face of Mark, recognizing his plight in Amy's too-slender form. His mouth, half-size and half-shape, will be anything but half-open. His eye will meet its equal for the first time. Amy's arm will unfold in a wave, hesitant; her profile in this action will remind passersby of childhood math textbooks and of the complementary geometry that exists between acute and obtuse angles. The two will stand half-face to half-face, and two half-hearts will beat fast. Two arms will raise to half-mast and two hands will form a sweaty handshake that is more than a handshake; rather, the grip will join half-person to half-person to make a chain that is regal, holy, unbreakable. Two legs will feel ground and two eyes will search and two halves of a body will touch, and they will feel wholeness in a way they have never before imagined. And it will be rapture, and it will end, as do all raptures, with a sad smile of understanding. Mark will take his left hand from Amy's left hand and rub a tear from Amy's left eye, and Mark will tousle his hair over his left ear and they will part.
But as they leave they will feel alive and special and new, for they will know beyond a doubt that somewhere their other half - their true other half - waits.
Why?
Because Amy and Mark are each born with a rare genetic flaw, a birth disorder that cripples their chances of living any sort of normal life.
Perhaps I should be more specific:
Amy, at birth, weighs exactly half of what you would expect a normal baby to weigh at the moment their journey begins.
Mark, too, weighs the exact fraction of normalcy as does Amy. Indeed, the baby in the cradle beside Mark is Johnson John Adams, whose infant form is a happy and healthy 7 pounds 3 ounces (which happens to be a very expectable size for a baby) while Mark will not reach this weight until a much later stage in his development. In fact, Mark and Amy's bodies, if combined, would produce a weight precisely that of Abigail Rose Goldwater, the baby in the cradle beside Amy, who is thoroughly average in every way. Apart, their weights are not average, but rather, curious aberrations; yet they have no knowledge of the extraordinary symmetry that stretches, umbilical, between the sleeping infant Amy in her hospital crib and Mark, lying silently awake in his. Had they but been aware of this shared rarity from birth, who knows what kind of discomfort they may have been spared, for discomfort is a reality that they will share daily as they live their tragic lives.
To be direct:
Amy possesses neither a second arm nor a second leg.
Mark's balance will forever depend upon mechanized assistance and patience, rather than the traditional biological options of his peers.
Amy's lung is the perfect size for its cage of 12 ribs, none of which has a pair.
Mark will never have to worry which way he should part his hair.
Amy faces a future devoid of subtlety, wherein her peers will never understand whether she is winking or blinking.
Mark forever will be subject to unwelcome curiosity as passersby wonder from whence came his custom-made clothes, flat on one side to accommodate his natural shape (a sort of awkward triangular prism with the occasional appendage).
Amy, still an infant, is blissfully unaware of her upcoming role in the strange perversions of depraved sexual thrill-seekers who will key on her deformity as a grotesque excuse to categorize her as a fetishized marvel.
Mark and his still-unknown counterpart Amy share a destiny to be horrifyingly isolated throughout their lives: lives that will be rife with constant, all-too-physical reminders that each is only half a person.
One day, however, the isolation will end. Amy will look down at her shoes, or reach intently for a box of cereal on the highest shelf of the store, and the crowd of shoppers will suddenly give way to the astonished half-face of Mark, recognizing his plight in Amy's too-slender form. His mouth, half-size and half-shape, will be anything but half-open. His eye will meet its equal for the first time. Amy's arm will unfold in a wave, hesitant; her profile in this action will remind passersby of childhood math textbooks and of the complementary geometry that exists between acute and obtuse angles. The two will stand half-face to half-face, and two half-hearts will beat fast. Two arms will raise to half-mast and two hands will form a sweaty handshake that is more than a handshake; rather, the grip will join half-person to half-person to make a chain that is regal, holy, unbreakable. Two legs will feel ground and two eyes will search and two halves of a body will touch, and they will feel wholeness in a way they have never before imagined. And it will be rapture, and it will end, as do all raptures, with a sad smile of understanding. Mark will take his left hand from Amy's left hand and rub a tear from Amy's left eye, and Mark will tousle his hair over his left ear and they will part.
But as they leave they will feel alive and special and new, for they will know beyond a doubt that somewhere their other half - their true other half - waits.