Twins Separated as Infants Reunite Later in Life

Oct. 5, 2007 — -- Elyse Schein and Paula Bernstein knew they were adopted; what they didn't know until recently was that they were identical twin sisters who were separated and had, for a time, been part of a confidential study on separated twins.

When Elyse and Paula reunite, they begin to explore the puzzle of their early lives and find out more about their birth mother.

As the women get to know each other and build a relationship, they discover fascinating similarities between them but also must cope with the challenges and frustrations of getting to know an identical twin later in life.

Their co-written memoir, "Identical Strangers," details their fascinating story. You can read an excerpt below.

Identical Stranger: Chapter 1

ELYSE: My mother, my adoptive mother, my real mother, diedwhen I was six, but throughout my childhood I believed shewatched over me from above. I held the few images that remainedof her in my mind like precious photographs I could animate at will.In one, she sat before her dressing table, lining her charcoal eyes,preparing to go out with my dad one Saturday night. The scent ofher Chanel No. 5 is enchanting.

I can still see her. She catches a glimpse of me in the mirror andsmiles at me, standing in the doorway in my pajamas. With herraven hair, she looks like Snow White. Then, after her death, sheseemed to simply disappear, like a princess banished to some farawaykingdom. I believed that from that kingdom, she granted memagical powers.

When I jumped rope better than the other girls in my Long Islandneighborhood, I knew it was because my mother was with me.When I went out fishing with my dad and brother, my motherhelped me haul in the catch of the day. By sheer concentration, Icould summon her force so that my frog won the neighborhoodrace.

Since I wasn't allowed to attend my mother's funeral, her deathremained a mystery to me. When other kids asked how she haddied, I confidently announced that she had had a backache. I laterlearned that her back problems had been caused by the cancer invadingher spine.

Along with my mother's absence came an awareness of my ownpresence. I remember standing in complete darkness in front of thebay windows in our house shortly after her death. Alone, except formy reflection, I became aware of my own being. As I pulled awayfrom the glass, my image disappeared. I asked myself, Why am I meand not someone else?

Until autumn of 2002, I had never searched for my birth parents.I was proud to be my own invention, having created myself outof several cities and cultures. In my ignorance surrounding mymother's death, I amplified the importance of the few facts I hadaccumulated -- she was thirty-three when she died, which I somehowlinked to our new home address at 33 Granada Circle. It wasprobably no coincidence that when I reached the age of thirty-three,after one year in Paris, the urge to know the truth of my originsgrew stronger. Turning thirty-three felt the way other people describedturning thirty. I felt that I should automatically transforminto an adult.

I had recently starting wearing glasses to correct my severe caseof astigmatism, which had allowed me to see the world in a beautifulblur for several years. All the minute details I had been obliviousto were suddenly focused and magnified. But even if it meant abandoningmy own blissful vision of the world, I was ready to face thetruth.

I was working in the unlikeliest of places, as a temporary receptionistin a French venture capital firm in the heart of Paris'sbusiness district. Of course, the desire to eat something other thancanned ratatouille for dinner had played a part. I assured myselfthat I wasn't like the suburbanites who commuted every day inorder to pay for a satellite dish and a yearly six-week vacation to thesouth of France.

Initially I had amused myself by observing French business deco-rum. As the novelty wore off, I entertained myself with the frontdesk computer. Assuming a businesslike pose, I sat for hours alternatingbetween answering the phone and plugging words and topicsinto various search engines. I typed in old friends' names and discoveredthat my classmates from SUNY Stony Brook were now philosophyprofessors and documentary directors. One had even editedthe latest Jacques Cousteau film.

Meanwhile, bringing espressos to hotshots in suits, I was beginningto doubt that my particular path would somehow lead me torealize my own dream of directing a cinematic masterpiece. Aftercollege graduation, I had migrated to Paris, leaving New York andmy boyfriend behind to pursue the life I imagined to be that of anauteur film director. My Parisian film education consisted of regularscreenings at the cinémathèque and the small theaters lining thestreets near the Sorbonne. Sitting in a dark cinema, I returned to thesafety of the womb, united with an international family of strangers.I wanted to go far away, to become someone else. In the Frenchtongue, my name, "Stacie," sounded like "Stasi," the word for theEast German secret police. Wanting a name that could be pronouncedin any language, I took Elyse, my middle name. I couldn'tchange my name entirely, though, for as far away as I wanted towander, I always wanted to be easily found.

My family still called me Stacie, but not in person because Ihadn't seen them in four years. My schizophrenic brother couldbarely leave his house, much less get on a plane. My absence wasconvenient for them. I criticized their überconsumerism, while theycouldn't understand my reluctance to join them in civilization.Though they would have bailed me out if I couldn't pay my$215/month rent, I wouldn't ask them to. My relationship with myfather and my stepmother, Toni, consisted of a biweekly call to Oklahoma,where we had moved when I was eleven.

"Is everything okay?" they would ask.

"Yeah. Is everything okay?" I would echo back.

"Everything's okay. The same." The same meant that mynephew was still causing mayhem. My family adopted my nephewTyler as an infant, when my brother, Jay, and his then girlfriendabandoned him. Struggling with the onset of schizophrenia, Jay andDarla, a seventeen-year-old high school dropout, were in no positionto raise a baby. Though I never saw them do drugs, I'd heardrumors that Darla sniffed paint while she was pregnant.

Since the moment I snuck into the hospital room and watchedTyler enter the world, I have felt like his guardian angel. I even consideredsmuggling him into Canada to raise him as my own. Nowthe child in whom I had put so much hope had become an orneryteenager. The apple had not fallen far from the tree: Tyler had begunto use drugs. Disagreeing with my parents on how to handle him, Iwas excluded from his life.

***

The hum of the computer filled the silent office. Monsieur Grangehad ordered me not to disturb him in his important meeting, so Iwas able to hide behind my polite mask while making contact withthe outside world via the Internet.

On a whim, I typed in "adoption search" and the die was cast.Countless sites appeared. I sorted through them until I foundwhat seemed to be the most reputable, the New York State AdoptionInformation Registry. Unlike some states and other countrieswhere adoption records are open to adoptees, New York seals adoptionrecords; they can only be opened by petitioning the court. TheAdoption Registry allows biological parents, children, and siblingsto be put in contact, if all parties have registered.

Maybe my birth parents were simply waiting for me to registerand I would soon be reunited with the mysterious and formidablecharacters who had shadowed my life. Perhaps, after searching formany years, they had been unable to find me. On the other hand, asa temp, I certainly was not at the pinnacle of my minor artisticsuccess, and the thought of disappointing these imaginary figureswas daunting. Maybe they would reject me again. Or perhaps theywouldn't be fazed at all, having come to peace with their decisionyears ago. I would be a hiccup in their reality. The scenarios and possiblerepercussions of my inquiry multiplied infinitely in my mind, amillion possible futures.

I filled in a form requesting identifying and nonidentifying informationabout my birth parents and sent it to the registry in Albany.

PAULA: In one of my earliest memories, I am sitting on the brickstoop in front of my grandma's row house in the East Flatbush sectionof Brooklyn. My pale, skinny legs crossed Indian-style, I peckaway at a black manual typewriter. Doing my best to sit up straightand look grown-up, I practice "playing piano." When I press toomany keys at once, the metal spokes of the typewriter jam togetherand I fear that I've broken it.

I like to think that my childhood fascination with the typewriterwas an early indication of my eventual career as a writer. Morelikely, it was simply the closest thing to a toy that I could find in mygrandma's house that balmy summer afternoon. No doubt, I alsodwell on the memory because it is one of the few that involve mygrandmother, who died two years later.

She was the only grandparent I had the chance to meet; the othershad died before I was born. Growing up, I grilled my parents withquestions about these phantoms and envied friends with grandparentswho showered them with attention, not to mention gifts.

I now see that there was another element of my grandparent obsession:they were a link to a past that did not include me. The onlyevidence I had that they had ever existed were the photos my parentspreserved in musty old scrapbooks in the attic. Since all of theirpictures were in black and white, I reasoned that my dead grandparentshad lived in a time before the world had turned to color. Unlikemost kids, I couldn't study these grainy old photos looking to find aresemblance to myself.

How were these antiquated strangers related to me? Just because I considered my adopted parents my "real parents," did that automaticallymake their parents my grandparents?

Despite the conventional wisdom that "blood is thicker thanwater," I had always believed that family is something you createrather than something you are born into. "Never forget for a singleminute,/You didn't grow under my heart -- but in it," read part of apoem my mother clipped from a "Dear Abby" column and pastedinto the inside cover of my baby book.

One fall afternoon, soon before my sixth birthday, I snuggledclose to Grandma on her stiff twin bed at the nursing home whereshe spent the last year of her life. By today's standards, she was relativelyyoung at seventy-one, but at the time, she seemed ancient.Calmly, she cupped my tiny hand in her bony one as we sat there insilence for what felt like an eternity. Although we didn't exchangewords, her eyes said good-bye.

Since my mother didn't have biological children and my auntnever married or had children, my grandmother's genes would diewith my mother and her sister. Still, I am certain that my grandmanever felt any less connected to me because I wasn't her genetic descendant.

Now, as an adult, I'm back in Brooklyn, not far from where mymother was born and raised and my grandfather owned a kosherbutcher shop. But, along with my grandmother, the rest of mymother's family has long since died or moved South. "You're movingto Brooklyn?" my mom asked incredulously when I informedher of our plans to move to Park Slope. For her, the suburbs werethe Promised Land. Why would we want to settle in the place shehad worked so hard to leave?

ELYSE: Six months after I wrote to the adoption registry, I receivedthe only information about my birth mother I ever expectedto have. The registry wrote me that they had contacted Louise WiseServices, the adoption agency I knew had handled my case, and re-quested that they send nonidentifying information to me. As a consolationprize, they enclosed a form listing my birth mother's variousattributes, of which only nationality (American) and age (28)are filled in.