Bewilderment

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HE HUSTLED DOWN THE AISLE IN FRONT OF ME, beaming and greeting all the passengers. He chided me as I put his bag in the overhead bin. Careful, Dad! Don’t crush it! Robbie wanted the window. He watched the baggage loaders and ground crew as if they were building the pyramids. He gripped my hand during takeoff but was fine once we were airborne. During the flight, he charmed the attendants and told the businessman on my right about “a few good nonprofits” he might want to consider supporting.

We had to change in Chicago. Robin sketched people in the gate area and gave them their portraits as gifts. Three kids across the concourse whispered to each other and pointed, as if they’d never seen a living video meme before.

He was better with takeoff the second time. As we broke down through the clouds in our final approach, he shouted over the engines, Holy crap! Washington Monument! Just like in the book!

The rows near us laughed. I pointed over his shoulder. “There’s the White House.”

He answered in hushed tones. Wow. So beautiful!

“Three branches of government,” I quizzed.

He held out his finger, fencing with me. Executive, legislative, and… the one with the judges.

We saw the Capitol from the cab on our way to the hotel. He was awed. What will you tell them?

I showed him my prepared comments. “They’ll ask questions, too.”

What kind of questions?

“Oh, they might ask anything. Why the Seeker cost keeps going up. What we hope to discover. Why we can’t discover life some cheaper way. What difference it would make if it never got built.”

Robin gazed out the window of the cab, marveling at the monuments. The cab slowed as we entered Georgetown and neared the hotel. Robbie sat in a cloud of preoccupation, trying to solve my political crisis. I straightened his hair, like Aly used to do when the three of us were heading out into public. I felt us traveling on a small craft, piloting through the capital city of the reigning global superpower on the coast of the third largest continent of a smallish, rocky world near the inner rim of the habitable zone of a G-type dwarf star that lay a quarter of the way out to the edge of a dense, large, barred, spiral galaxy that drifted through a thinly spread local cluster in the dead center of the entire universe.

We pulled into the hotel’s circular drive and the cabbie said, “Here we are. Comfort Inn.”