A Tribute to Irving Brooks, Sr.

Not once did my father stop looking for me. You see, I was one of those children who was passed from parents to foster parents. When I was ten months old, my mother couldn’t handle the responsibility of being both a drug addict and a mother. She had to make a choice and motherhood was the expendable one. Don’t feel sad for me, it was done with the lot of us; all eight of us – four boys and four girls. I was the youngest; therefore, I was the last of the Mohicans to get the proverbial boot from the nest. I spent years fantasizing about what it would be like to belong and what my father was thinking about me missing from the brood. Isn’t it interesting that I never thought about my mother? I thought it was. I wondered and wondered about my father. I judged my mother, but never thought that he could have been to blame for my removal from the family. Well, guess what? I was right! Imagine that…after years and years of my made up notions, to come to find out that it was true. You see, I was sitting in the living of my very best friend’s home (that had become my home) and the phone rang. She was, Cherrie that is, sitting doing her daughter’s hair – twists and curls – it was beautiful. She stopped to answer the phone and handed it to me. It was my ‘godmother’ calling to give me some news. I had been googled, or searched out by someone making grandiose claims of me being her baby sister. The room grew quiet … a little too quiet, if you ask me. There I was, in the middle of what should have been one of the best moments of my life and there was no pomp and circumstance – not even from me. I think about that moment and wonder about my emotional freedom. It’s laughable, now. I wrote down the number that was being recited to me, then pressed and released the what-ya-ma-call-it (I never did know it was called). Oh yeah, the receiver button! I dialed the number and waited. Ring…ring…ring, “Hello.” I sit and listen to a stranger recant details of my life; details that I had heard from those I had come to mistrust. It was true! My sister, Pat, told me that she had been given the task, by our father, to do whatever it took to find me. He had been having her search for years. And, as you would guess, I met this man. The man I had fantasized about in my youth. He reached out and took my hands into his and said, “Yep, those are the thumbs.” ‘Those are the thumbs?’ Is that all he had to say? So, I said, “What is that supposed to mean?” After all the years of his looking and looking, he still had some reservations and the thumbs sealed the deal for him. I was the daughter that he had never stopped looking for.