Double-Take on a Special Bond Between Brothers, Sisters

What does it mean to be a twin? To Debra and Lisa Ganz, it means “we each have the kind of permanent friend other people spend their whole lives looking for.”

The Ganz twins are co-owners of Twins, a Manhattan restaurant staffed entirely by twins, and authors of “The Book of Twins: A Celebration in Words and Pictures” (Delacorte Press, $27.50, written with Alex Tresniowski).

In its pages we meet 37 pairs of twins--and one set of triplets--and learn about the unique ties that bind them (a special energy the Ganzes call “twinergy”). There are identical and fraternal twins, 94-year-old brothers who still talk twice a day by phone and 2-year-old girls born conjoined and successfully separated.

Los Angeles area twins include John and Larry Gassman, hosts of the vintage radio program “Same Time, Same Station.” They have been blind since their birth in 1955. John says, “I never knew what loneliness meant.”

Woven into the text are statistics on twin births, which have increased dramatically in recent years because of fertility drugs and women waiting longer to have children, thus increasing their chances of having twins. Today, 1 in 80 babies born in the United States is a twin, though only 1 in 250 births is of identical twins.

The Ganzes offer “The Top 10 Most Annoying Twin Questions,” such as, “Are you two twins?” “Do you have the same parents?” “Can your parents tell you apart?”

The book also dispels some common misconceptions about twins, including that the firstborn is older. Twins are exactly the same age, regardless of birth order, because they were conceived at the same moment.

In “Twins,” we visit with twin brothers who are impersonators, twin models who once posed nude together for a Playboy centerfold, twin psychics, twin funeral directors, twin brothers who are New York cops, twin sister belly dancers who perform with a boa constrictor, twin sisters who are dentists married to twin brothers, and twin sisters who are dealers at an East Coast casino.

Lori Waller, who’d had a miscarriage before giving birth to twins Alex and Brett, says, “I thought that twins was God’s way of saying, ‘Sorry, here’s two.’ ” Among her coping tips for mothers of twins: “When one twin gets up, you wake the other one up too and feed them both. Otherwise, you’ll be up all night.”

Richie Boudreau lost his twin, Ralph, like him a former high school football star, to cancer five years ago. Losing your twin, he says, is “like cutting you right in half. . . . It’s like everything in my life has turned to black and white. There is no color anymore.”

Some twins carry togetherness to an extreme. Alice and Clarice Rainer, 65, piano teachers in Alabama, say, “We prefer to be thought of as one person, because that’s exactly how we feel.” Never married, they have always lived together, eat identical meals, sleep in the same bed and have twin poodles as pets.

Other twins admit that twindom is not an unmitigated joy but, rather, a competition to be worked through. For Lisa and Lori Longo, born in Korea, abandoned by their father, who wanted boys, and adopted by an American couple, it’s been a bumpy road. Lisa says, “Because we felt so unwanted together, we had to fight to be accepted on our own, apart from each other.”

Identical twins Roger Brooks and Tony Milasi, 59, were separated at birth when relinquished for adoption. Fate was to reunite them. A young man employed by Tony in Buffalo relocated to Miami, where Roger lived, and took a job in a pancake house. One night Roger walked in and the young man did a double-take--”My God, I just left a man in Buffalo who could be your twin.”

When they finally met, on the tarmac at Miami International Airport, Tony put his arms around Roger and said, “Hi, I haven’t seen you in 24 years.”