▸ Column · Star Wars original-trilogy era, aboard a smuggler's freighter docked at a spaceport
HAN SOLO replies.
Replied to by Han Solo, with a rebuttal from Leia Organa.
The letter
My daughter Renata is 24 and bunking back aboard our freighter for half a year, saving credits before she ships out to a posting on Bespin. She kicks in a token fifty a month and she's a grown woman — and I still can't stop myself the second she comes in after late watch. Last cycle she rolled in at the second moon without pinging me once, and I taped a note to her bunk hatch reading "courtesy runs both directions," which she did not love and which, if I'm being straight, I scrawled at oh-one-forty while my head spun out every disaster in the galaxy. My husband says treat her like any crew member and stay out of her business. But she's not crew. She's the kid I once flew the long way around to a dead shuttle because she'd blown a power coupling and didn't know which end of a hydrospanner to hold. I know the fear is mine to wrangle, not hers to babysit. I just can't find the switch that shuts off the worst-case reel the moment her tracker beacon goes quiet.
Han Solo replies
Lady, you're talking to the galaxy's reigning champ at running worst-case scenarios. I get a bad feeling about every job before I take it. Chewie's watched me chew through a console wondering if a guy I owe is gonna turn up at the worst possible second — and half the time he does. So I'm not gonna tell you the fear's stupid. It's just yours. It's not a bulletin she has to file a flight plan against.
Here's the only test I trust. Forget what she says, watch what she does. She came back. She pays the rent. She knows the day she ships out and she's working toward it. That's a person who's got it handled — even the one who once couldn't find the hydrospanner. People grow up when you're not staring at the chrono.
That note at oh-one-forty? That wasn't about courtesy, sweetheart, and you already know it. That was fear with better PR. Your husband's half right — she's not crew. But that doesn't buy you a tracker on her, either. You get six months. Don't spend 'em fighting the clock and losing. Sit with the bad feeling, quiet, and let the kid fly.
— Han Solo
Leia Organa weighs in
Of course Solo tells you to "sit with it, quiet." He'd rather nurse a feeling in the dark than say one honest sentence out loud — I've watched him do it for years. Sitting with fear isn't a plan. It's a note at oh-one-forty waiting to happen again.
So decide. One conversation, eyes open, woman to woman: "Ping me when you're out past the watch — not because I'm policing you, because my head writes your obituary and I'd like it to stop." Ask once. Then hold the line — on yourself. Drop the notes. The man drives me out of my mind and I still trust him because he shows up. Give her room to show up. Then believe her.
— Leia Organa
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