Later tonight, when the moon peeks over the mountain, you'll begin to fuss in your port-a-crib, waking your mother and me. Can you get her this time? she'll whisper, having nursed you to sleep only an hour or so earlier. Without a word, I'll climb out of bed and carry you downstairs and warm a bottle for you in the microwave. While you take it, I'll rock you gently in the straight-back kitchen chair, sing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” in my softest daddy voice, and ask you to forgive me.
        But now, in the gray light of the laundrette, somewhere behind your fluttering eyelids the wide, white world of the future is slowly spinning itself into existence, becoming blood-warm, ready to engulf you like the pink jammies with feet your mother will slip on you later tonight. Meanwhile, as Margie the pregnant cop might say, it's a beautiful evening right here. If only we could all see it. As I write these words, you are barely three. How old you are as you read them now, I may never know. Your brothers will have read them before you, and they will have their own stories to tell of that summer.
        Believe whatever life teaches you is true.
        What I recall is this: the primordial cosmos of a rusty dryer spinning its damp payload in a dark orbit around an invisible star. As I watch this small universe slowly form, I settle myself on a mute washing machine and dream of the world that awaits us when we return to Kansas. Not the world I remember, the world as I would like it to be. Somewhere in the revolving drone I hear the closing lines from another Coen brothers' film: If not Arizona, then a land not too far away . . . where all parents are strong, wise, and capable, and all children are happy and beloved . . .
        I shift my weight on the cool metal and gaze back through the open doorway. A pension man and his wife stroll arm-in-arm on the edge of the park. David and Michael are still sprawled on the grass, lost in their own private dreams, but Daniel is up now, bounding along the sidewalk like a sprightly elf. Finally, I turn back to your mother, still working hard to make the best of it, the back of her blue T-shirt spotted with sweat as she bends over the foot of your stroller, once again rearranging the pink blanket that protects you from the brisk island night. The crystalline glow that seems to radiate from your small face might be the cosmic energy of your own personal universe forming behind lidded eyes. Or it may just be my imagination. The truth is this is not Arizona, nor Kansas, nor even Utah. This is Lana`i, where the nights are calm and cool, where children are safe, and families somehow endure.

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