Uncle Robert lived in a quiet courtyard of a small town on the first floor of a very old house. He seemed to have lived here forever, but neighbours knew almost nothing about him. He rarely went out and was a silent, gloomy old man who always kept himself alone. Generations of neighbours have changed, and no one could tell for sure if Uncle Robert was always like this.
To tell you the truth, even neighbourhood boys were afraid of him. When a daredevil decided to look into the Uncle's window, he was usually met by a terrible and loud indignation of the nasty grandfather. But there was one more thing that made local children not to like Uncle Robert even more: he was throwing away sweets. No, no, it’s not that these sweets were old or bad! Excellent, good, brand new sweets and chocolates, which grandfather seemed to throw into the deepest trash can intentionally, just for teasing.
At the beginning of each month, Uncle went to the store and returned from there with a full package of all kinds of sweets – Kinder chocolates, Haribo chewing teddy bears and a variety of cookies. Children eagerly looked at the bag full of sweets and each of them secretly dreamed of getting at least a part of this treasure, but they were afraid of Unkle, and no one dared to even get close to the sullen buyer of chocolates – so they just stared at the wandering man and his purchases from a distance. But the most annoying and unforgivable thing was that a month later he would take the whole untouched bag out of the house and put it in a dirty trash can. Can you imagine this?
Rumor had it that one brisk boy even tried to get candies from a deep trash can, but was immediately caught by his parents and punished.
Winter came. Soft white snow fell and all the windows of the courtyard lit up with festive christmas lights. Every window except Uncle Robert's one. The lonely old man was still rarely leaving the house, and buying and throwing away the candies. The closer the main winter holiday approached, the brighter and warmer the lights in the houses were shining, and only Uncle's window was recognized by the dim, barely breathing beacon of an old floor lamp.
In the evening, when all the Christmas trees were already dressed up, and the gifts were packed, when the good bearded old men in red suits hurried to amuse the kids, and the families covered generous festive tables, a bright light came on in Uncle’s window. It seemed that for the first time joyful voices came from this house with the sounds of laughter. The neighbors, rushing home, stopped in front of the windows of Unkle and could not believe that there, on the other side of the window was … joy.
In the morning, the unusual news about the mysterious guests of Uncle Robert overflew the entire courtyard, overshadowing even the past celebrations. Everyone was curious about the mysterious guests, who seemed to enter the house imperceptibly. And only after a while neighbors found out ...
Once upon a time in this yard there was a big fight - a son and a father have quarreled. No one knows the real reason why, but since then son has left and never came back. Time passed and in many years he grew up, got married and had his own children, and his father became a grandfather. Grandpa Robert.
Not a formidable and angry old man, but rather sad and lonely Uncle Robert, who had been waiting for years for time to heal the past. With all his heart he hoped that one day the insult would dissolve like a fog under the sun, and his son would knock again at his own door.
Every month Uncle Robert walked into the store and bought the most loved children's sweets like Kinder and Haribo, for his grandchildren, whom he was so afraid not to see. And each time he threw away old bag of sweets, so that, out of habit and by long-held beliefs, he could buy new sweets – even fresher and tastier.
Nobody knows that every year Uncle Robert wished only about one thing, and that on that evening it came true – his family was together again.
