The challenge
Robin was the only child in his family, growing up in Barbados in a home where albinism was never discussed. His parents were traditional and strict, and very protective — he says they lacked the kind of emotional intelligence he needed, and he believes they simply wanted him to feel as normal as possible. In practice, it meant that the one thing he most needed to talk about was the one thing nobody ever mentioned. He had no brothers or sisters to turn to, and he had never met another person with albinism. So when the questions came, he had nowhere to bring them.
What helped
Time, and understanding. As Robin got older and learned more about psychology, he came to see that his father did not know how to take a question like that, and did not know how to respond. He says he cannot hate his father anymore and is not angry with him — today they have a good relationship, even a fun one. And the moment did not disappear: he later wrote it into a poem, a retelling of the whole afternoon, from the question that came to him to his father’s reaction and what was left afterwards.
In their words
One Sunday afternoon, after lunch, Robin’s father was sitting in front of the television. Robin was about seven or eight years old. He does not remember where the question came from, only that he asked it out loud: why did God choose him to see through these eyes?
His father did not react well. He was not angry — he simply dismissed the question and moved on. “I was looking to have a conversation about who I am,” Robin says. “It wasn’t possible.”
The question was never picked up again. At school he was dealing with constant bullying, and at home the subject stayed closed. He was a child with something big to ask and no one to ask it to. “You’re hurt,” he says, looking back. “You have no one to talk to.”
Years later, he turned that afternoon into a poem. It follows the whole moment — what led him to ask, how his father responded, and the quiet that came afterwards. Writing it down was a way of finally giving the question a place to live.
Today Robin does not hold it against his father. Their relationship has become a good one, even a fun one. Studying psychology helped him see that his father was a man who had never been taught how to answer something like that. “As you get older and you learn psychology more, you understand it,” he says. He is not waiting for an answer anymore — but he still thinks about the boy who asked, and that boy is part of why he keeps writing.
Two other topics from the interview I could write up next, if you want more entries: the dream he had to give up (wanting to study music or art, being told it would never pay, and ending up in tech he came to resent), or the poems he kept secret (writing from around 17 but hiding it for years because of what people in his culture said about boys who write poetry).
