I wonder what kind of a dad he’ll be.” There was a lot of laughter then as we imagined scenes: Willy playing baseball with his children—bonking them on the head with the bat, the way he hits Charlie now when the two of them play wiffle ball. Willy—the same size he is now, but sporting a moustache and wearing a miniature business suit—driving away in his car, standing up on the seat to reach the steering wheel. Willy reading his children a book—upside down. Serving them dinner by throwing the spaghetti noodles onto their plates from halfway across the room. It was a good game, this future projection. Imagining myself as a grandmother, Steve as a grandfather. The children our children might have. Our children as parents themselves—that most of all. The scenes Audrey hypothesized were comical, but I could almost weep at the thought of my beloved offspring suddenly transplanted from the comfortable shade of childhood to the hot, unprotected sun of parenthood. Thinking of all the things we try to spare them, and what sparing them costs us.
