“Do you remember,” my child asks me, “when we were kids together? And we used to play trains, and hug each other, and never fight.”
“Were we kids together?” I ask.
“Yes. We were both small, and we were friends.”
“Hmm,” I say, at a loss. This is a story he tells frequently. When we were children together. I wonder how much has to do with an expansive notion of time that children seem to have. A month ago, he was a baby. Next weekend, he’ll be a big guy. That sort of thing. But also, the dreamlike sensation that the people we love are somehow the same as ourselves: that those around us, feel what we feel. He has known me all of his life, so, of course, we grew up together.