Thinking of my dad today
2026-05-01
My father was 32 when I was born. He turned 33 that year.
I turned 48 this year. I'm getting into an age where I remember how my dad was at my age. When my dad was 48, my current age, I was 14-15. I remember how he was at the time, and I can't resist comparing myself to him at the same age — I have his name, afterall! That's the curse you carry by naming your son after yourself, the inevitable comparison.
My dad lost his job when he was 48. I remember it being hard for him to get another job. He's old, I remember thinking, it will be hard for him to find a new job. Ha! Little did I know. I mean, it was hard, but I feel so young at 48!
My dad got a job in a neighboring state. He moved first, since it wasn't a certainty. He would spend the week there, then travel back home for the weekend. For 2 years, 1993 to 1995. I visited him once, back in 1993. He was renting an apartment, and I stayed there with him. The apartment was bare-bones: barely any food in the fridge, an immersion heater ("rabo quente", or "hot tail", as we would call it in Brazil), almost no furniture.
Being back in my RV, alone, made me remember his apartment. I'm spending a few days here. I bought bread, avocado, tomatoes, tea. The same things he probably had at this aparment. I feel connected to him, somehow, over this distance of 33 years and thousands of miles. We were there. I am now here. Only the thread of my consciousness connects those two instand in space-time, only my memories acting like an unreliable narrator.
Sometimes it's hard to think about how much we have in common. His love for avocados and chickpeas. Being a software engineer. Being named Roberto Antonio. A PhD. The same nose. Not eating meat. Do I have any free will or I'm just a continuation of my dad? What choices do I really have, with all this genetic and emotional baggage?
I am Dr. Almeida, software engineer. Son of Dr. Almeida, software engineer.
As I sit every day to work on my open-source projects, passionately, deeply absorbed into the lines of code in the black terminal I remember him. Working on his projects, night after night, programming in a language that had too many brackets for my taste. I remember him showing me his creation, "Breakdown Planner", what a great name!
Cheers, dad.
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