Counting Bricks

Folks, I was disappointed that no one had responded to my challenge, and so to get some discussion going, I thought I'd offer a piece hinted to during the class. Not so long ago, I imagined what a meeting with my birth father, who left when I was 4.5 years old, would be like. This is how it turned out...


Flight 88 landed as smoothly as it had taken off an hour ago. Mike parked the rental car and made his way into Spring Haven Hospital to finally confront his birth father.

Having just learned of Al’s hearing and sight deficiencies, Mike felt invisible as he stared at what he’d waited his whole adult life to see. In the full-length mirror on the front of the closet door, he could see his wheelchair-bound dad’s eyes fixed in a gaze out the window. The on-duty nurse had explained Al’s terminal prognosis.

Al was nearing the end, his liver liquor-pickled and his lungs ravaged by a lifetime of nearly everything able to be smoked. His reflection revealed eyes wilted to a squint by the sun, and a face creased by years spent contemplating the events that contributed to his present condition. Through his father’s raspy-sounding breathing, he couldn’t help noticing those eyes. Deep brown with whites hidden by an alcoholic’s roadmap of bloodlines, it was impossible to ignore the fixed stare.

Mike couldn’t help feeling sympathy for the old man. However, a lifetime of anger and planning these moments gave way to an internal conflict he couldn’t contain. Still, how should he approach him? Should he live out his recurring dream of planting a laser-guided fist to the nose of the son-of-a-bitch and say ‘hello, Daddy’? Maybe he should just grab the folding chair from the corner of the room and sit waiting for him to notice him and see what he said. Or maybe he should just leave and forget the whole thing. No…he’d waited too long, and he wouldn’t have another chance.

“Hello, Asshole!” he said, walking toward the folding chair. Relieved that, judging from an unchanged expression, his dad hadn’t heard him, he switched on the fly to a different approach. Mike unfolded the chair and sat beside Al. He leaned forward, put his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands, and mimicked his father gaze.

After what seemed like hours of silence, he realized there was nothing to look at. A small eight-stall parking lot, a dumpster and the brick of another wing without windows. Quiet was broken by the rustling of the occupant of the chair next to him.

“3,946.” Mike said.

“What the sam-hell are you talking about?” Al asked, irritated at this space invading stranger.

“Bricks. 3,946 bricks, isn’t that what you were doing? Counting bricks? Nothing else worth looking at.” The number was random, just a feeble ice-breaker. All he had detected was his father’s Bostonian taint, and ignorance of Mike’s identity.

Al turned as fast as an 84-year-old could and wheeled away from the window. “I don’t know why you quacks don’t just leave me alone. Every day it seems some self-proclaimed genius is invading my space thinking he’s going to get inside my head. Can’t I just be left alone?” He reconvened his staring into the hall, since his window had been violated.

“I’m not a shrink.” Mike said.

“Whatever, I’m just as tired of doctors. Will you please leave…now??”

“I’m not a doctor either, Dad” Mike replied, wondering if his father was paying attention.

With no reduction in anger, he continued his tirade. “Look, if you aren’t a doctor you have no reason to be here. So, take your sorry ass out of…” he stopped mid-sentence and turned his chair around 180 degrees. Mike saw the same gaze he saw in the mirror, only this time it was fixed on him. “What did you say?”

“I said I wasn’t a doctor.”

“No you didn’t. You said you weren’t a doctor, DAD! What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Al slowly rolled closer to Mike, never once breaking the stare into his eyes. While the two faces moved closer together, they both began noticing the similarities in features. Mike could tell his father was putting it all together.

“My…good…God!” Al was not only out of breath from the most contracted verbal exchange he’d had in years, but stunned by what was in front of him. “Reuben Michael? Ruby? Is that you?”

“Mike…my name is Mike now. I changed it when I was adopted. But yes, it’s me.” The years of frustration were suddenly replaced by an overwhelming feeling of connection between a boy and his father. “Al…Dad, I can’t believe I’m talking to you. I’ve waited so long.”

“My…good…God,” Al repeated, “every single hour of every passing day since I ended up in this place I’ve contemplated how I could find you, face you and tell you how sorry I was for everything. And now, looking at you, seeing some of me in your eyes, I feel like you know.”

“I do know, Dad, and I’m sorry, too. Sorry I waited so long, sorry I’ve held these feelings of anger, sorry for…” his words were broken by his father’s interruption.

“Ruby, enough of that. Know that I love you, and I would have given anything to have undone everything I did that caused all this pain. But it’s over now, Ruby, its over.”

Before Mike could say any more he saw his father inhale deeply, and exhale a long, final breath. Words were unreachable as he watched his father’s eyes close for one last time. As they closed, a single tear emerged and traveled down Al’s cheek, eventually converging with a perceptible upward wrinkle in the corners of his dad’s mouth. He was gone. Even so, he passed with a settled spirit.

On the flight back Mike felt lighter, like a weight had been lifted. Gone was the anger, the resentment, the rage that had brought him. In its place was the satisfaction of reuniting with his father and knowing that despite everything, he loved his father – and his father loved him.

Back in his home town, Mike stopped at the courthouse and asked the clerk for the forms he needed to officially change his name. In the required box for the name being requested, he proudly spelled out…Reuben Michael...and then his last name.