The Quiet Resolve of Thomas
The Quiet Resolve of Thomas
Inthe gentle hush of forgotten mornings, before the village stirred and the crows began their quarrels on the rooftops, my father, Thomas, would already be awake. His feet would find the cold floor without hesitation, the way a tree knows its roots. He was never one to complain. It wasn’t in his nature, and the world he was born into did not offer the luxury.
His father died when he was fifteen. A leg wound, a minor illness, no warning. He had made tea in the back kitchen that morning, and by nightfall, he was gone. Sometimes, childhood ends not with a birthday or a graduation, but with the silence that follows an empty chair.
After that, Thomas began living between the moments. He woke early to sweep the porch, arrange tins of lentils and soap cakes, and help his mother lift crates meant for stronger arms. Then he’d dash off to school, carrying his weariness like a second satchel.
He lived behind the village shop, a modest little structure that smelt of dried chillies, kerosene, and betel leaves. My grandmother, his mother, kept the accounts and measured out rice with the accuracy of a jeweller. Life was exacting but predictable.
The schoolhouse was nothing grand — peeling paint, dusty desks, and a bell that sounded like an old spoon hitting a saucepan. But there was a stage, wooden and wobbly, and on it, my father briefly became someone else. A prince in velvet, a poet with wings, a wandering fool. Acting in school plays gave him a taste of a life less burdened.
He passed his exams without fanfare — no fireworks or garlands, just a modest pride and the satisfaction of having crossed yet another river. He found a job in town, carrying papers and tea. It was there he met his great rival: the English language.
For a village boy, English was a gatekeeper, standing between him and advancement. So he did what he had always done — he rose early, tended the shop, caught the dawn bus, worked all day, and attended night school. There he sat, older than the rest, repeating strange new sounds that felt foreign in his mouth. But he endured. Always, he endured.
He passed the government exam in English — one of only two in the village to do so. The parish priest read his name aloud that Sunday, not in condolence but in celebration. For the first time, my father’s name rose like incense through the rafters.
He joined the government service, ironed his shirts, polished his shoes, and left the village each day with quiet purpose, walking the two kilometres to the rail station every day.. My grandmother no longer worked the shop — he wouldn’t allow it. “She’s earned her rest,” he would say.
Then came Susan.
My mother came from a family with finer sensibilities. They wrinkled their noses at the idea of their daughter marrying a village clerk. But my father met each frown with quiet grace. When her father asked for land in writing, he gave it. When tradition asked for name and caste, he simplified himself — Don Thomas Jayasinghe, not to hide who he was, but to step forward without the weight of expectation.
They were married, without spectacle, but with something far more substantial than gold — a shared belief in building a life that mattered.
He brought new ways into an old house. When I was born, he took my mother to the best hospital in Colombo, the best he could find. No one in our family had done such a thing before. It was a quiet revolution. When we returned, my grandmother’s eyes glistened — not from surprise, but pride.
We moved when I was four, to a bigger house in a quieter village. There was no electricity, but there was land, wind, and trees that whispered through the day. He built rooms. When my grandfather on my mother’s side passed away, my father invited her unmarried siblings to live with us. There were no lengthy discussions or family meetings — just a space made larger by love.
He gave us freedom before we knew we needed it. When I wanted to join the Christian Brothers as a young boy, he let me go. When I returned, uncertain and embarrassed, he said nothing — only held the door open, like the warmest kind of welcome.
He encouraged us to accompany him on government tours, where we mingled with ministers and officials. Not to impress, but to show us that everyone, no matter how high or low, could be spoken to with equal ease.
Later, when I wanted to skip the final years of school and study accounting, he agreed, though we didn’t have much money. He let me find an apprenticeship, and in doing so, helped me find a path. Not once did he tell me what to become. He only gave me space to become.
When I brought friends home — city boy with louder accents and modern shoes or village boys with practically nothing, he welcomed them like they were his own. There was never a gate between his heart and ours.
When I left for foreign shores, he paid the government bond himself. There were no tears, only a quiet handshake and a “write when you can.” That was his way.
Even when my sister eloped, and the neighbours wagged their tongues like metronomes of scandal, he did not crumble. He stood tall in the storm, shielding the rest of us from the shame society tried to thrust upon us. He never raised his voice about it. He carried on.
There was a time politics turned against him — men with power and petty grudges tried to destroy his career. But he fought with facts, not fists. He won, eventually, with his dignity intact.
Through it all — loss, love, struggle, triumph — he never called himself brave. But I saw it in the way he lived. In the way he let go. In the way he stayed.
Now, years later, when the house is quiet and his shoes are no longer by the door, I remember his strength not in grand gestures, but in morning routines, in the way he folded my school uniform, in how he always left the gate open for those who might need to return.
Some men fight dragons. Others wake each day and do what needs to be done, asking for no reward.
My father was such a man.
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