Last night, after a dinner out with my husband, I crept upstairs to kiss my children goodnight only to discover a tactfully placed note outside not one but both of my son’s doors. The note alerted “I’m sleeping in Annie’s room”…as if we might conclude he had run away.

True to form, I found him huddled under his big sister’s quilt, slumbering deeply in the cocoon of her double bed. As I leaned over to kiss him, his sister rolled over and, in half sleep, mumbled, “I don’t even know why he’s here.”

I had to laugh. It was a perfect snapshot of my children and, more poignant, a litmus test of the power of genetics.

There, curled under the mountainous blanket lay me, in tousled hair, freckled face, little boy form.

Like my son, I would worry that my absense from my bed- in fact, any deviation from my normally scripted routine- would sound my parents’ alarm bells. Like him, a quickly scribbled note would surely allay all fears and dispell all worst case scenarios. Never mind that for me, and likely my parents, there was not one shred of doubt this was not the kid to pack his bags and sculk into the night. In fact, the very sponteneity of the act of running away splintered all perfectly laid plans and well-considered packing lists…not to mention the seven day lead time needed to perfectly execute any excursion into foreign territory.

And now…to exhibit two.

Her cherubic sleeping form belied the devil to his angel. Not that his sister does not have her angellic moments. However, upon discovering her darkened, evacuated room, I would have no misconceptions about her potential motives. Certainly, there would be no note…much less two. The bed would not remain pristine in her absence but rather ruffled, a bit plumped up, likely emulating the very body absent from it. Even as mom combed the room, palms sweating, heart pounding, she would cower in the depths of her closet, snickering in amusement.

“Let mom believe I have run away,” she would muse. In fact, “Let her call the neighbors, the grandparents, the authorities, if necessary. It will only make the homecoming that much sweeter!”

Any chance to fool mom or just to simply to commit a practical joke, these traits gleaned from the other half, the non-mom half, of her genetic make-up. After all, he was the one who scampered on hands and knees under cafeteria lunch tables to surprise unsuspecting victims, who scribbled anonymous notes decribing false events, ghost invitations, who lurks behind doorways just to cause a scare.

Changing it up, throwing them off the scent, scavenging on the road less travelled, the unpredictable to the predictable, the ying to the yang. Like their parents, our children were a case in opposites attract, a mirror image of one another. And yet, watching over their sleeping forms breathing in near unison, it is clear that these differences mean little…or maybe they explain everything. It is a random Tuesday night and in the darkness, they have sought out one another, nestled together under the giant quilt, and drifted off to sleep… Even if one has craftily camoflagued herself under the sheets while the other has left a trail of breadcrumbs in his wake.