1983, not long before I escaped. We finished school that afternoon in the usual way: I sat patiently and quietly on the steps outside the staff room for her to finish her day and then we both headed for the car in silence. She had a little burgundy coloured Charade, and I always sat in the back behind the passenger seat. Today there was something different, although it seemed somewhat trivial to begin with. She was carrying a small cardboard box of eggs, and I figured that they were from the agriculture plot, her domain, and that they were intended for our fridge. During the journey, though, She kept reaching across and fiddling in the box next to her on the passenger seat. I had no real idea of what was going on, and slowly my curiosity grew. After a little while I heard a cheeping noise, and She lifted one of the eggs carefully into her lap. Now I could see a little of what She was doing. The egg had a small hole in it where the chick's beak had broken through. Continuing to steer the car with one hand, She used her other to slowly and deliberately remove pieces of shell and place them back in the box next her. The little yellow chick was soon free. She dabbed at the chick gently with a small towel, and then surprised me when She passed it back to me to hold. She said something about needing to keep it warm, told me sternly to be careful and continued to help the other chicks escape their shells. I knew She was only trusting me with this responsibility because She had no other choice, so I decided to use it as an opportunity to prove that I could get something right. With that little piece of life perched in my hand, it was all I could do to stop myself from smiling. I knew that smiling was not a good idea, because if She saw me smile She would have taken the chick away, even at the risk of killing it. So I suppressed the desire to grin from ear to ear. Quietly, ever so gently, I stroked the little chick. It was wonderful, feeling its delicate scrappy little feathers, the fragile warmth of it against my skin. For a moment, all of my worries disappeared and I felt proud that I had been trusted to hold something so precious. The drive home always took about an hour, so each and every one of those chicks was born in the car, and all of them ended up in my lap at some point. She and I worked as a silent team, her hatching them and passing them back, me holding them and keeping them warm. When we got home, the chicks were all put back inside their box and placed under a warm light. I was sent briskly to my room and told as usual not to come out, and although I knew that nothing had changed, that now everything would be back to its usual terrible routine, I also knew that I had this good memory to hang onto. I knew I could hold onto the fact that there actually was one moment in my life where She and I somehow seemed to be okay sharing space together, momentarily functional in our mutual silence as we shared something special in the new life presented to us.