Chalk and Cheese

I find it fascinating how children who are birthed from the same parents, who grow up in the same house with the same circumstances turn out so differently. I guess when you throw two different adults together and make a baby; you take potluck with how they are likely to turn out.

Sailing and horse riding are sports with a certain genteelness that I certainly did not grow up with. My son is a fan of both and it matters little to him that no one in the family shares that passion. Similarly, he plays the clarinet. Although we all love music, none of us play an instrument. My daughter briefly played the recorder in grade one, as a requirement of the syllabus but dropped it with little further interest. She did not even try out for the school choir, dismissing it as being for children who needed to learn how to sing.

She sleeps like a log, since an early age has invited all she meets to come round and visit and leaves everything till the last minute because she “works best under pressure”. She's travelled like a dream since she was nine months old. My son on the other hand does not mind his own company (choosing solitary interests to occupy himself) sleeps like a flea and is more focused and conscientious about his work. If it wasn’t for the fact that he looks like me and shares other characteristics too, I would be inclined to believe my daughter’s assertion that he was swopped at birth.

I spent the first two and a half years of his life comparing him to his sister before I accepted that this little boy had his own agenda and was blazing his own trail. Now that adolescence has dawned I find myself comparing them again. My daughter breezed her way through but it seems like it may be pay-back time with my son. 

Both of them have enriched my life in so many ways, teaching me so much and often pushing me out of my comfort zone (like when I decided to take horse riding lessons). If sailing proves to be a lasting passion, I might have to take to the water soon.