Tom (9) learns that adults can be sad

    Tom was in the front seat of the car with his uncle. The black Morris Minor was already rusting when they bought it but what made it look really old was its quaint, flat windscreen. There were also little rust holes in the floor that let dots of light in, and a troubling mist when the roads were wet.

    That uncle was 29 years older than Tom.  They were brought up in the same home, by the same couple, as brothers separated slightly in time. The woman of the house, called grandma by Tom and mama by his uncle, did not easily give up the power she derived from being the matriarch. Nine years earlier, when it looked as if her mothering days were finally coming to an end, she naturally took newborn Tom, her first grandchild, into her charge, physically and emotionally. Tom’s birth mother, fallen and wounded at the time, wasn’t consulted. A few long years later she came to object, but it was then too late.

    For the rest of his life Tom wondered how he knew what to do that day, one that began with angry words at home and then turned into unaccustomed silence in the car. The uncle was considered wayward, living at home, working only occasionally, a shame on the family that had sacrificed so much for his education. His mother ensured that he fully felt that shame. 

    Tom had a ten-shilling note in his pocket. He was the only one in his school class to have paper money and he guarded it preciously. It was probably the same ten-shilling note, shining, red and folded into a little white prayer book, that he got on the day of his First Communion, little over a year earlier. He remembered always who gave it, the beautiful cousin of his grandmother, the one who died too young. 

     As they sat in heavy silence in the car Tom took the note from his pocket and put it gently into his uncle’s hand. There was a moment when nothing happened; then the uncle’s fingers closed slowly on the note and put it in his pocket. Tom looked up and saw tears running down the kind face of the 38 year old man. The two of them shared much of their lives for the 59 years that followed this day. In all those years that ten shilling note was never mentioned but was richly repaid.