Most people know I have a younger brother. I don't talk about him much, but when I do, I can go on forever. My relationship and friendship with my brother has always been a complex one, but having just had a great dinner with him on my last week in the city, I'm really happy of where we've netted out - and it's taken a lot of work to get there.Alexander Jou was born in 1990, just one year after my parents and I immigrated to Canada. I had the honour of naming him - my parents weren't that familiar with English names, and asked me to pick out something "that wasn't too strange" (I remember this exactly). Being the lazy kid I was, and also not too happy there was going to be another kid to share in the attention, I quickly picked Alexander (it was in the A section and there were just WAY too many names). The name itself comes from the Greek - meaning one that defends/protects, and like all great things Greek, its forged from tragedy. It certainly foreshadowed the early years of Alex's life.
My parents divorced when Alex was four, so he didn't really know my dad all that much growing up. He had my grandfather as a father figure, but he passed away when Alex was seven due to cancer. A final blow came three years later when my mom passed away from the same disease - Alex had to deal with pretty traumatic experiences all before he turned 11. Needless to say, this didn't help his teenage years - he struggled through high school, finding it hard to deal with expressing his feelings over the losses he'd suffered. I wasn't the best brother at this time. I stepped in and behaved more like a father, which I'm sure he didn't appreciate. This role didn't really stop until he got himself to university, to which my entire family breathed a sigh of relief.
In university, he excelled, scoring a 90% average in his first year (helped by an impressive 100% in chemistry) - needless to say, I was floored. How could a kid who I yelled at for five years to do better at school put me to shame in the grades department? Alex finally found something he loved to study - the sciences and his attitude and demeanor totally changed. He matured, he became less reactionary and he was better at controlling his emotions. I always told him he was smarter than I was, he just never applied himself until now.
At the same time, I stepped away from being the dad and started to be his brother - something of which I've since apologized for and he's admitted he had sometimes appreciated. Slowly but surely over the last three years, we've worked on becoming better brothers and friends - both helping each other through the death of our grandmother and having great chats about the next chapters of our lives (with him, it's med school, with me, it's my travels).
At dinner yesterday, I finally told him how proud I was of him for the transformation he's made over the years. I told him how great it was to be his brother and I told him how proud he should be of himself for learning such great independence, even though it was forced upon him. It's something I should have told him much earlier in life, but now was as much of a good time to share that before I head halfway around the world. In the end, I'm grateful we had this chat, it's made me hopeful that our bond will just grow stronger as the years progress.
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