Letter to Myself, the Afternoon a Kid Called Me Uncle

Dear me at three in the afternoon, holding a hand pump and not yet knowing what you are about to be called,

I am writing this after pulling the shutter down, sitting on the low plastic stool I use for patching tyres, my fingers still smelling of rubber and soapy water. The street lamps are on. Motorbikes slide past outside, and somewhere in the alley a neighbour is cooking braised fish late. I want to tell you a few things you did not get round to telling yourself this afternoon.

Here is what happened. Around three, a girl wheeled a bicycle into the shop, nine years old perhaps, two plaits, schoolbag still on her back. She stood at the edge of the pavement, a little shy, and said, in the word Vietnamese children use for any man around their father's age, the one that means uncle:

— Uncle, my tyre is flat.

Do you remember, you turned and looked behind you. You really did. You checked which uncle was standing there. Nobody. Only the blue tarpaulin and a few spare tyres hanging on nails.

— Right... let uncle take a look.

The words "let uncle look" left your mouth before you had decided whether to accept the name or not. Then you bent down, found the leak was one tiny nail, and your hands did their work as on any other day while your head held a strange blank, as if you had just stepped onto a lower stair than you expected.

I know what you felt then, though you told nobody. It was not sadness. It was not quite embarrassment either. It was something very small shifting: the picture you carry of yourself, the twenty-five-year-old just opening the shop, thick hair, customers calling him older brother, that picture had just been set down on the table by someone without asking. You smiled at her, said "all done," and she thanked you and pedalled off. She had no idea what she had done. And truly, she had done nothing. She only called you what she saw.

Tonight I went to the small mirror at the back of the shop to wash my face, and I looked for a long time, the first time in many years. There are two grey hairs at the left temple, and they were probably there before this afternoon. I used to think grey hair belonged to my parents' graying hair, never to me. There are two creases at the corners of the eyes, showing when I tried a smile. Nothing new. Only that before this afternoon, nobody had asked me to look.

Something occurred to me, and I want you to hear it before you sleep. When I was nine, I wheeled a bicycle into exactly this kind of shop. I called the repairman Uncle Tư, without a flicker of hesitation. Now I would guess that Uncle Tư was about thirty-eight then. Exactly my age tonight. I called a thirty-eight-year-old uncle and never once thought of it as a remark about anyone, because to a nine-year-old that name says only one thing: this person stands a distance from me, and the distance is enough for me to trust.

So I think the name does not measure me. It measures the distance from where she stands to where I stand, and that distance grows each year, the way impermanence through the passing of time quietly goes about its work, whether I notice or not, whether anyone says it aloud or not. Today was the first time someone said it aloud.

I am not telling you to feel fine at once. Some evenings a person needs to be embarrassed for a while. Allow yourself to smile a little stiffly, a little wistfully, a little amused at yourself, without hurrying to find the lesson. Today was one of those evenings. Tomorrow you will patch tyres again, hear the hiss of another inner tube, be called by all sorts of names, and perhaps find today was just one small afternoon.

There is one small thing I did tonight, which you can try if you like:

The first time, I felt a bit foolish, like talking to a stranger. Some people will find those three differences painful, some will find them funny, some will feel nothing. A few days later, if you try it again, I would guess the mirror feels a little less far away, but maybe not, and that is fine. On a day that is too busy, one glance at the mirror and one sentence of description is enough, no grade, nothing asked.

I am not asking you to throw away the picture of the twenty-five-year-old. It still belongs to you, the way the picture of you at eight belongs to you. It is only that a picture can stay a picture, while the person holding the hand pump this afternoon is thirty-eight, and that person patches a tube much faster than the twenty-five-year-old ever did. That is real too, and it also comes from years going by.

I have two thank-yous, one for the girl, though I cannot tell her: thank you for speaking plainly in a voice with nothing to hide. And one for Uncle Tư, if somewhere he still remembers the small bicycle I wheeled in long ago. I am leaving both here, in this letter.

If this stays heavy for weeks, so heavy that eating and sleeping both get hard, then talking to someone with professional training is a reasonable step. I do not think tonight is that. I only want you to know I am here.

I wish you a gentle night's sleep. Tomorrow the shutter goes up again, and the basin of water will smell of soap and rubber, as it always does.

Me this evening, thirty-eight, two grey hairs at the left temple.