I bought a children’s book about constellations, the kind with glow-in-the-dark pages. Nolan had been obsessed with the night sky ever since his school took a field trip to the planetarium.
And on a clearance rack at a department store, I found a soft navy shirt with a tiny silver moon embroidered above the pocket.
It was the first new shirt I’d been able to buy Nolan in over a year. Everything else came from the church donation closet or the thrift store.
I imagined his face when he opened it. A brand-new shirt. With a moon. Picked out just for him.
When he opened it on his birthday morning, he gasped.
“A moon!” he said. “Mom! It’s a real moon!”
He put it on over his pajamas and wouldn’t take it off. He wore it to school the next day. And the day after. He wore it until I had to wash it while he was sleeping so he’d have it clean for the morning.
My mother noticed how much he loved it. One evening, she took it into the living room with her sewing kit.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Adding something,” she said, and winked.
Behind the embroidered moon, on the inside of the shirt, she sewed a tiny secret pocket. Just big enough to hold a small coin or a folded piece of paper. You couldn’t see it from the outside. You’d only know it was there if someone showed you.
“Every brave boy needs a secret pocket,” she told Nolan, showing him how it worked. “For important things.”
Nolan’s eyes went wide.
“What kind of important things?”
“Whatever you decide is important,” she said. “That’s the rule. Nobody else gets to decide.”
