“You two are like chalk and cheese!” my mother once declared to my sister and me when we were teenagers. Her happy declaration left me deeply confused, for I believed exactly the opposite.
I had modelled myself on my sister. Our voices were the same, our gestures, our intonations, our opinions. Even our friends. What on earth was my mother talking about? My sister learned French at high school and I learned German, but otherwise we were practically the same person.
