“I don’t like to talk about my nightmares,” my granddaughter tells me, “because then I just have to live them again. But I will talk to you now because the day is better than the night. Also,” she explains, “in the day I can dream without being afraid. I can even dream about the night without having to be in it. My older sister says that’s what they call a daydream, which she insists is really the best kind to have.” She pauses, shakes her five-year-old head at me, and goes on. “I don’t think you could guess all the things I’m told I don’t know but seem to know anyway.” About to enter the park, she takes my hand and offers me a smile, as if I am the one who needs assurance. “I know, for instance,” she resumes, “that you’re a daddy and a grandpa too but,” she adds for good measure, “I don’t think you really understand children. No grown-up really does, ‘cause none of you have ever been young…even if you say you were. No,” she concludes, sizing me up with a sidelong look, “you’d never fit into our clothes.”

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