FAMILY – CHAPTER THREE – SIBLINGS
CHAPTER THREE
Brick and Mitzie
I never really knew my brother and sister in the way most people know their siblings. By the time I came along, the house had already carried their laughter, their arguments, and their growing up. What remained were traces of them, like the lingering scent of a familiar perfume long after the person has gone. I knew them first through stories. Brick was always somewhere else, away at college or work, living a life that seemed larger than ours, while Mitzie was still half at home, half reaching toward the world beyond it.
Brick came first, the one whose absence filled the house, at least in my life more completely as his presence ever had.
BRICK
John Allen “Brick” Mason
Born: December 28, 1939
The first real image I have of Brick is of his car pulling into the driveway, music and laughter spilling out as though the world itself followed him home. He was already away at Florida State University in Tallahassee when my first memories of him were formed. He was the college man with friends, girls, and stories of campus life that made him seem larger than anyone I knew. He carried the confidence of someone who belonged somewhere important, and when he came home on weekends or holidays, the house came alive. Even Clarke would loosen his tone, and Helen’s eyes would brighten with quiet pride.
Brick stood about five feet ten inches tall, his jet black hair cut in a flat top, the style of the day. Muscular but not bulky, he moved with the ease of someone who knew his own strength. Handsome and affable, Brick seemed to get along with everyone.
He had a way of commanding attention without asking for it. Everyone seemed to stand in awe of him. He was not a large man but was strong and quick with a joke or a prank. He was a member of the Florida State circus, performing as a gymnast and clown. I remember thinking how extraordinary that was, that someone I knew could tumble and fly before a cheering crowd. In my mind he was a kind of hero, someone who had escaped the smallness of ordinary life.
When he returned home, he rarely came alone. There were always fraternity brothers with him, young men full of laughter and confidence, and often a girl or two in the mix of friends who showed up to water ski and swim. They would ski on the lake, play music in the yard, and fill the evenings with motion and noise. Sometimes, when several of his fraternity brothers visited, they would stand in a circle and toss me from one to another. One would grab my feet and swing me toward the next, who would catch me by the arms and send me on. It was tremendous fun and something I never forgot.
Brick would let me ride in the back seat of his 1956 Chevy Bel Air on Saturday nights while he took his date to a movie or out for ice cream. I remember the hum of the car, the faint scent of cologne and gasoline, and the sound of his voice teasing whoever sat beside him. I was a novelty, the little brother who amused the girls. I did not need to say much. Just being there felt like being part of something larger than myself.
When the weekend ended, Brick would load his car again, the laughter fading as he drove away. The house would grow still, as if it sighed in his absence. Clarke would retreat to his chair, Helen to her quiet tasks. For days afterward, I would replay the sounds of Brick’s visits in my mind, the splash of skis, the bursts of laughter, the low rumble of the car heading back toward Tallahassee. I wanted to be like him someday, to have that same freedom, that same spark that drew people to him.
Brick was an accomplished water skier. He could slalom like a professional and jump the ramp without falling. He was good enough to ski professionally for a couple of summers at Cypress Gardens in Florida and Callaway Gardens in Georgia.
I never really knew what he thought of me then. To him I was probably just the kid brother tagging along, but to me, he was larger than life. Even years later, when I was grown, that image never left me, Brick the college man, the performer, the center of every room he entered.
He was, quite obviously, Clarke’s favorite. I could never live up to what Brick had been to him. My every action, my every mistake was measured against Brick’s example.
After college, Brick married and joined the United States Navy. He trained as a Naval Flight Officer at Whiting Field near Milton, Florida, and later served at Patuxent River, Maryland and other locations around the world. His career lasted twenty six years, ending in retirement as a Navy Captain. Along the way he married three times, raised four children, and maintained a strong bond with Clarke throughout his life.
In anticipation of his retirement, Clarke oversaw the construction of a house for Brick at Santa Rosa Beach, Florida. Brick had saved well from his Navy salary and his share of Clarke’s business, building the house without a mortgage and securing a comfortable retirement.
We stayed in touch over the years, mostly during his visits home for holidays or short vacations. Though we shared some work on his house and a few beers together, the truth is that we were never close. He was a deeply conservative man, and our conversations often turned to politics. He and my brother in law, along with Clarke, seemed to enjoy debating and outnumbering me with their arguments. Looking back, I realize how little respect they had for my views, or perhaps even for me as a person.
We have not spoken in many years. He and his third wife became fervent supporters of the MAGA movement, and I could not abide that. Some distances are better left untraveled.
If Brick’s visits were storms of laughter and motion, Mitzie’s presence was sunlight through open windows.
MITZIE
Mitzie Margaretta Mason
Born: August 16, 1944
Mitzie was different. She was eleven when I was born, and by the time my earliest memories took shape, she was already a young woman. She was part of the household but also part of another world, one that shimmered just beyond my understanding. She was the one who took me along on rides to the Tastee Freeze in the warm afternoons. I would sit beside her, the wind pushing through the open windows as we swerved and pushed along the dirt road from our house to the paved highway, the smell of salt and sugar filling the air. Sometimes she would take me with her to visit friends. I never knew exactly what they talked about, but I remember her laughter, the easy way she moved through those circles, confident and bright.
At home she was the liveliest part of our days. She filled the house with music, humming while she got ready to go out, dancing sometimes in front of the mirror. There was something in her that lifted the weight of the house, the arguments between Helen and Clarke, the heaviness of routine, and made everything seem lighter. I looked up to her the way little brothers do, watching every gesture, every turn of her head, trying to understand the world she was moving toward.
When she left for college, her absence was different from Brick’s. It was not loud and sudden, but slow and quiet, like a candle burning low. Her things disappeared one by one, a record, a favorite blouse, a photograph, until her room was neat and still. I would sometimes stand in the doorway, imagining she might return any moment. But she did not, not for a long time.
The house after she left felt bigger but emptier. Helen would talk about her often, how she was doing, what she was studying, how proud she was. Clarke would mention her less, though I knew he missed her in his own way. I think we all did. I had no one left to take me to the Tastee Freeze, no one to share those quiet rides through the late afternoon light. The laughter that had filled the rooms now lived only in memory.
As I grew older, I saw Mitzie only occasionally, brief visits, holidays, the rare family gathering. She was always kind, always smiling, but we were strangers in many ways. The years between us had built a distance that neither of us quite knew how to cross. Still, I felt close to her in a way I cannot quite explain. Perhaps because she was the one who had included me when I was small, who had made me feel seen.
Her college life was much like the stereotypical southern girl’s experience. She majored in Early Childhood Education so she could become a teacher, and in finding a husband. She accomplished both, teaching for many years and marrying Phil, a stoic man who always seemed to have a Winston cigarette in one hand and a Budweiser in the other.
They had two children, a son named for his father and a daughter Phil seemed to idolize while ignoring his boy. I understood, perhaps too well, how Flip must have felt, the child left out of his father’s affection.
I broke my relationship with Mitzie in 2019 over her support for the MAGA president. Looking back, it seems fitting that I went my own way, apart from them. Had we not shared a family name, we likely would never have met. We are people from different generations, shaped by different values and times. They grew up with young parents in a world of clear boundaries and defined roles for men and women, for white people and minorities. It was a world I never knew.
My own world came later, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassinations of President Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy, the Civil Rights Movement, Viet Nam, Kent State, and the long unrest that followed. The times changed me in ways they could never understand.
In the end, Brick and Mitzie became part of my past, not figures of nostalgia, but characters in the story of how a family divides and drifts. Brick was the absent brother who filled my father with pride, Mitzie the sister who left for her own life. They were always the older ones, the first to step into the world, leaving traces that shaped what I came to understand about distance, loyalty, and the limits of love.
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