yes, i'm blogging about rob all week long. he rocks that much.
so, he's a smart kid, my brother. he has a masters in physics. he designs circuits for computer chips. he has the patience to explain to me, a half-dozen times, just how an airplane stays in the air. in my mind he's a certified genius.
in addition to his tech savvy he's also got phenomenal interpersonal skills. he's as good with kids as he is with grown-ups. he puts everyone at ease. he a knack for sizing up a situation then melding himself into it. he can talk about anything and everyone likes him.
as kids, though, rob & i endured the sort of cold war enacted by divorced parents. later on, in my early 20s, a lot of the anger i felt about those adolescent years bubbled up. i was in therapy, trying to work out a lot of pent-up angst and emotion. i held a lot of hostility towards my father, also an engineer and a genius (with a patent to his name) but not nearly the outgoing people-person that my brother is.
during this period i wrote my dad some awful, truly awful, letters expressing my anger at his emotional distance. i thought these letters would make me feel better. they didn't. they made me feel worse. i felt like i was suffocating under the weight of my past.
rob and i talked about this stuff a lot, painful as it was. he had somehow already forgiven our dad, but i just couldn't fathom it. during one of these conversations rob said something so simple to me... it effectively changed my life. he said: "dad can't help who he is. he did the best he could, raising us. we weren't abused, and i'm sure he loved us. but when he was growing up, his parents didn't show him any love or emotion... he simply raised us as he himself was raised."
this revelation stopped me cold in my tracks. it was the first time i consciously remember putting myself into someone else's shoes... imagining my dad's life without any hugs or kisses from his parents. and as quick as that i had forgiven my father.
rob changed me at my core that day, and he probably doesn't even realize it. next month he himself is going to be a father... i know he'll be the best the world has ever seen.
Posted by xta at April 21, 2004 01:48 PM | TrackBack