Comfort & Joy

“You can keep it in your pocket always, and when you get scared or feel lost or confused, you can hold it and remember how much she loved you. ”

I open my arms.

He launches himself at me. I catch him easily, but lose my balance. My cane drops to the side, and we fall to the mossy ground in a tangled heap. For the first time, I’m really holding him.

His kiss on my cheek is slobbery and wet . . . and real.

“Hey,” he says, drawing back, “you’re warm. ”

“I wasn’t before?”

He shakes his head solemnly. “When you touched me, it was like . . . the wind. ”

We sit up, look at each other. “Hey, Bobby O’Shea. It’s nice to really meet you. ”

“I thought you were like . . . Mommy. Gone. ”

I touch his cheek; it is softer than I ever imagined. “No. It just took me a long time to find my way back. ”

“How were you here?”

I wonder if there will ever be an answer to that. If I will someday know why my dream was a flawed and tattered version of reality or how I ended up here when I was hooked up to machines in a white bed in Bakersfield. For now, all I can do is shrug and say the thing I do know. “Magic. ”

He thinks about that. “Okay. ”

The resilience of children. If only we could hold onto that. I smile. “So, what have you been doing since I left?”

He grabs my hand and gets to his feet. “Come on. ” Tugging hard, he leads me out of the clearing and toward the house. I can tell he’s impatient with my speed, but the cane and my limp will only allow me to move so fast. I laugh and beg him to slow down.

As we move through the yard, I notice how shadowy everything is here on the edge of the deep woods; night falls quickly here, unlike in my dream world where everything seemed to go slowly.

Bobby tightens his grip on my hand and veers left. We go around the house and up a small rise. There, behind the house are five small cabins. Two are obviously old, and three are of brand new construction.

He goes to the closest one—a new one—and opens the door. I follow him inside, stumbling over the threshold.

It’s dark in here. Behind me, he flicks a switch and light comes on.

We are in a small, beautifully constructed cabin with wide plank pine flooring, unfinished walls, and big mullioned windows that overlook the lake. To the left, a door is partway open; in the space, I can see a bathroom tiled in white with a claw-foot tub.

“He didn’t know what to do with the walls. It wasn’t on the list. ”

“Oh. ” I’m confused. Before I can question him, he re-takes my hand and leads me out of the cabin.

“He fixed ’em all up and built the new ones. ’Cause of you. ”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Bobby, I . . . ”

He stops and looks up at me. “You know. The list. ”

“What list?”

He reaches into his shirt pocket, pulls out a worn, yellow piece of paper. It appears well worn, as if refolded endlessly. He opens it, hands it to me. “We look at it every day. ”

I look down at the well-used piece of paper.

Ibeas.

chng nme/rmantic