My brother, Rob, flew in yesterday. He and a bunch of friends, mostly doctors, are going to Tahoe for a week. I met up with them today and went to Napa with them for wine tasting. It confounds me profoundly how my brother consistently surrounds himself with genuinely funny, clever, intelligent, good-hearted, conscientious people.

In high school, Rob's group of friends were creative, funny, intelligent, interesting, and fun to be around. In college, his group of friends were intelligent, funny, interesting, and witty. And it continues now. All of them basically good people.

It must be a reflection of his character. I don't think he's that much different from me in terms of social interaction, but something at his core is a magnet that attracts really good people into his life.

At my core is a magnet that attracts misfits and crazies who I love dearly for as long as they last in my life, but are more about crazy than . . . the "good life" (that is to say "crazy" is artistic and creative and facing demons, and the "good life" symbolizes normative and mature).

However, Rob is also the "distant" sibling. When he is around, he's kind, warm, and accommodating. A great brother by any measure, but when he's not around, he does his best to have as little to do with the family as possible and he's hard to nail down.

He's a wall that none of us can read. He was the middle child who was caught between fights between me and our other brother and me and our parents. We exchanged our share of fisticuffs as well. And whatever I went through to mess me up, he went through, too.

The emotional toll, I shouldn't wonder, was significant, which is why all slack gets cut for him now. As far as I'm concerned, he can do no wrong, but it is frustrating when he's vague and elusive.

There was one summer that I stayed with my brothers when they were living together in Providence, Rhode Island, where they both attended Brown University. I was shocked to witness Rob venomously cutting down Tom, our oldest brother, for doing some slight thing wrong.

Tom just stood there and took it (one of my thoughts at the time was that Rob would never talk to me in that tone of voice). I don't think he is proud of that behavior, which might explain why when he acts or does something in a way that might objectively be perceived as being inconsiderate or 'not thoughtful' to me, he'll go into a mumbling waffle, subtly addressing, defending, or justifying why he didn't do this, or why he didn't do that, in narrative form, when he doesn't need to justify anything to me.

I don't think I'll ever get to know what's inside him, or how he feels about what he went through with the family. Come to think of it, though, I think all I need to know about him is reflected in the friends who surround him.