Now, I am a university lecturer, with a small family. Jack no longer builds skyscrapers—he tends a garden, raises chickens, reads the newspaper, and rides his bike around town. Sometimes, he calls to show off the vegetable beds, insisting I take fresh eggs for my children.
I ask:
— “Do you regret all those years of hard work?”
He laughs:
— “No. I didn’t build houses, I built a son.”
I don’t reply. I just watch his hands on the screen—the hands that built my future.
I am a PhD. Jack Callahan is a construction worker. He didn’t build a house for me—he built me.
