While Joy is in our apartment with her new friend, Charlie, and with Suzy, Justin paces the deck of Bonny’s Revenge. He just walks back and forth, thinking.
He looks completely distraught.
“Son, can I help you?”
He looks up at me, surprised that I’m there.
“Oh, Dad! You know, how can I…” he trails off.
I give him time to finish his thought, but he doesn’t.
“How can you what?”
“Dad, how can I raise Joy in my dream? That’s crazy!”
“You’ve done it so far. Why is it crazy?”
“I didn’t know she was real! I didn’t know this was a dream! She could have died five thousand times in our adventures! She could have died five different times in whatever happened yesterday. Am I supposed to have adventures with her again? It’s dangerous! Am I supposed to make the dream boring? It would bore her to death! Am I supposed to let her out of the dream? Not that I can stop her! Just jumping from dream to dream is dangerous! She can be lost! She can go into another dangerous dream! She can go into the dark dream! And there could be people looking for her!”
“People looking for her?” Where did that come from?
“What?” he looks at me like I was the one who said it first. “Who would be looking for her? Don’t talk crazy. Dad, how can we live like this?”
“Do you want to hear my answer?” I say. He knows what I mean. I’ll give him full honesty, and he’s not going to like it.
He straightens and leans on the railing. “Go ahead.” Justin’s always been good at hearing my thoughts even when he knows he’s not going to like them.
“Obviously,” I say slowly. “Whatever you’ve been doing… Well, clearly, it’s worked very well.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look at her! Have you seen her?”
Justin smiles and looks down, his face going red. “She is fantastic.”
“So it worked! What you’ve been doing so far has worked! And she survived everything that happened in the last two days. What other kid would have survived that?”
He looks down, but there’s pride in his voice. “No one.”
“That’s right.”
“So what are you saying?”
“It’s worked. So one step at a time, keep doing what you’ve been doing. And add safety. It’s like you’ve been playing on a road all your life and suddenly there are cars. Everyone has to learn the safety rules now.”
He looks up suddenly, smiling. “Thanks, Dad.” He puts his hand on my shoulder. “I’m glad you’re here!”
And now it’s my turn to look down and go red in the face.
—Told by Grampa Walt