How twins fight cancer by creating and cooking.

The other day, Monterey resident, King City native and gifted local artist Amanda Burkman learned her sister Amy has cancer.

Amy’s not just any sister, but Amanda’s only sister, best friend and identical twin. The cancer isn’t any cancer, but a very rare and extremely invasive ovarian tumor. Only a handful of doctors in the country have treated it.

Amy was faced with her mortality at 35. Amanda was faced with a question: What do you do when half of your heart gets deathly ill?

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One day, when Amy and Amanda were little, they were playing in their room, coloring, drawing, crafting.

Suddenly, in the window, a woman appeared – with nylons pulled over her head – leering menacingly at the twins.

They froze. The lady stared. Gradually they recognized the eyes, the nose. It was their mom, Jeanne, playing a joke.

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Amy has every right to be angry. Heartbroken too. The cancer meant even as she survived surgery, her chances at giving birth would not. And she really wanted kids.

But her spirit is inspiring. Her nurse calls her “thebomb.com.” Her close friend Shelby Gale writes Amy “is a pillar of strength and light to those around her… Amy doesn’t just see the bright side, she lives in it.”

Amanda marvels too.

“Amy made the news bearable,” Amanda says. “She was more worried about us than herself.”

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Amy isn’t normally the one who deals with health complications. That is Amanda, who constantly battles the memory gaps and complications that arrive with epilepsy. Unfortunately medications can be as harrowing as the seizures, with cruel side effects that include paranoia and insomnia. After one treatment, the seizures actually got worse. A recent prescription sent Amanda into a maze of vertigo, for weeks straight. Now, thanks to another type of meds, the gifted athlete who played three sports in high school and once biked to Oregon in 60 – and 70-mile chunks, breaks out in rashes when she sweats a little bit. (She’s adapting to vigorous yoga just to the point of perspiring.) Her regular 8 – or 12-mile runs are no more.

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In a lot of ways, Amanda’s been like a sister to me. Over years of mutual friends and dinner parties and shows at now-defunct Monterey Live, we got tighter. When she needed a place to live, she rented a room at my house. Her mural of a misty forest now covers that room. One of her eye-catching portraits of a woman in the wind lives in my backyard, another of the dancing Cuban woman in the living room. She painted the house too, color-matching the purple on the front door to the princess tree flowers nearby.

She’s since moved out, and I’m not the only one who misses her. My puffy cat sticks his tongue out when he’s happy; he seems to do it less now she’s not around. I also miss her piano playing – and willingness to wrestle other ladies after dessert.

But I miss her cooking the most. For dinners we’d make up ambitious, all-organic menus and she’d whip it together. She’s a former private chef, skilled with salmon – stylish teriyakis, in pesto BLTs, over wasabi cauliflower. She’s been a private chef and a pantry chef at one of Sacramento’s best spots. Her jambalaya and chocolate mousse cake are elevating.

Amy and Amanda connect in so many ways, but cooking ranks up there with art. Amy has narrowed her diet, but has a twin sister/consultant with a similarly focused regimen. So now, both vegan, they talk recipes and find healing in food.

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Last summer Amy and Amanda spent two months on a San Diego wall working on their most recent collaboration, a sweeping mural for a doggie day care showing pooches playing in the ocean, traversing the beach, running hills. It covered 3,500 square feet.

A few months later, they had a different mission. Amy was so weak from surgery and prescribed drugs she couldn’t break anything, including wind. Pressure mounted steadily, bringing unbearable pain.

They labored for an hour and a half in the bathroom, then took a walk, at 1am, sister and sister. Finally Amanda asked her to bend over. Out came glorious noise.

“She was in a lot of pain,” Amanda says. “I never thought I’d be so happy about a fart.”

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One day when Amanda and Amy were in their early teens, their mom asked Amanda to sit down on the couch. She had something important to say.

They had won the lottery. Seriously.

Amanda jumped, squealed, laughed. Overjoyed would be an understatement.

Then their mom added one other thing: April Fools.

~ ~ ~

With the help of a couple of big-hearted friends named Molly Nance and Francesca Garibaldi, Amanda is readying an art show. Much like her, it will be unique, artistic and homespun, and a little chaotic.

The shindig occupies OAS Design Group’s large studio space with a view, across from El Torito on Cannery Row, 6-10pm Friday night, Jan. 31. Amanda’s art – spirited forests, portals to surrealistic places, portraits, women – will coat the walls and be available to take home, for a donation. The swampy and original Suborbitals, a pioneering local group with strong lyrical, sax and stand-up bass elements, will play. Post No Bills will furnish beer and wine by donation too.

Amy made it through surgery, buoyed by $20,000+ in Gofundme.com donations in exchange for art by Amy herself.

But chemo awaits. Amanda heads south to accompany her through it, hoping to take a chunk of funds with her.

~ ~ ~

Amy and Amanda’s grandpa lost a finger to a freak carpentry accident, the family had some fun with the twins and a fake finger.

“Our mother made us laugh,” Amanda says, “and taught us love.”

I can’t help but think the pranks are strangely helpful, like they prepared the twins for strange surprises.

Or maybe that makes no sense. But that would be appropriate too. It doesn’t make sense that a younger woman developed a cancer that normally affects post-menopausal women. Or that a superior athlete has become allergic to sweat. Or a fart becomes beautiful. Or a healthier half of a heart suddenly gets fragile.

So what do you do when the nonsensical strikes? You do what does makes sense. For the twins, that’s painting and cooking. Of late they’ve painted and cooked more avidly than ever. Both are loving that piece of the process, whether it makes sense or not.