Some of my best conversations with Jacob take place in the car. When the radio is off, the DVD screen tucked away, in the silence the car transforms from a suburban vehicle into a sanctuary. The other day, we were driving home from school, and all of a sudden, Jacob piped up from the back seat: “How do we know we’re not dreaming right now?” The idea that we might be dreaming frightened him. He wanted to know what was real. I know he feels great comfort in anything quantifiable: maps, lists, facts, figures. He also thinks a lot about death. Maybe when we die it feels like dreaming. Despite evidence to the contrary, he thinks that only very old people die. That life has an expiration date, like his squeezable yogurts. Eighty, he thinks. Or better yet, ninety or one hundred. Comfortably far off for everyone he knows and loves. Jacob has been coming up with more of these questions lately—perhaps because he has some awareness that I’ve been thinking about them too. What he doesn’t know is that he’s the beating heart of my journey.
