“We Thomases do better when we have a mission”

The expression “We Thomases do better when we have a mission” is a family maxim that links purpose with the Thomas family’s ability to move forward. Bronwyn Thomas uses it to explain her return to study after her parents’ deaths; for Myfanwy Thomas, hearing it from her sister turns family history from information in a file into a shared inheritance.

The Saying in Context

Bronwyn offers the maxim while recounting the years after her parents died in a car accident caused by a drunk driver. Eight years later, after moving to London to live with their brother Jonathan Thomas, becoming his legal ward, and struggling through a new school, she finished her education only just. She then spent a couple of years drifting through unsatisfying jobs before Jonathan told her she had had enough time to recover and should begin studying. The saying sums up that transition: a mission gives direction after bereavement and aimlessness.

A Family Maxim Shared Between Sisters

The phrase does more than describe Bronwyn’s choice. She addresses Myfanwy as someone who might recognize the family pattern, suggesting that purpose is part of what it means to be a Thomas. Their mutual smile makes the maxim an instance of recognition between sisters who have been separated: Bronwyn offers a family account, and Myfanwy receives it despite lacking the memories that would ordinarily make it familiar.

Myfanwy’s Changed Understanding

Myfanwy has already told Bronwyn that she works for the government as a specialist in domestic affairs. As she describes the long hours and limited social life, she realizes that she genuinely likes the work—not only the administration, at which she is competent, but the whole undertaking. Bronwyn’s family maxim gives that discovery an unexpected echo: Myfanwy, too, has a demanding purpose, though she has not yet recovered the personal history that might explain her connection to it.

The exchange also alters how Myfanwy experiences her family’s past. She had known from files that her parents were dead, but hearing Bronwyn describe their deaths makes the loss newly personal; they are no longer merely the parents of the body she inherited, but her parents. Seeing her own features in her sister’s face brings comfort, while the shared maxim offers a less physical resemblance: a possible continuity of character and purpose. When Bronwyn adds that she and Jonathan had documents showing Myfanwy was still alive, that fragile reunion immediately acquires a further uncertainty about what those papers reveal.