Granddad and LIFE

• Here Comes Granddad Again: Notes and Refs by James Brody, 3/12/97
  
  

The current "Life" (April 1998) has a cover story on behavior genetics. The final two paragraphs on p. 50 of the "Life" article are particularly salient.

"A few nights ago, watching my daughter arrange her 37 Beanie Babies by color and species, I felt a shock of recognition -- and glanced over at my wife, who wears the same expression when she arranges Shakespeare's plays in chronological order. My lump of putty is eight now, and I don't need a DNA scan to tell me she has inherited her mother's intelligtence, her father's suutbbornness, her grandfather's wit. The genes may be familiar but the mix -- thank heavens -- is unique. Warts and all, she is exactly the child I want.

"When I look at her, I see a part of me. When I look at myself, it seems there's less of me that there once was. At a recent party, schmoozing with one last guest on my out the door, I suddenly thought, "I'm acting exactly like my father!" Having spent my youth fighting to forge my own identity, I find, increasingly, that I resemble the very parent against whom I worked so hard to rebel: his social ease, his sense of humor -- and now that I am in my forties, his thinnning hair and slight potbelly. Indeed, as I get older, I feel that instead of adding layers, I am shedding skins. In beoming more like my parents, I am becoming more myself. I am surprised and delighted that it all feels so comfortable -- not an imprisoning but a coming home." George Howe Colt, "Were you born that way?" "Life," April 1998, pp 39-50.

I experienced fear for weeks before and after posting GrandDad on Behavior On Line a year ago. I expected ridicule but got mostly silence; the essentials are now in Life Magazine.

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