▸ Column · Imperial-era Outer Rim — the age of galactic campaigns, bounty hunters, and Tatooine's underworld, circa the years following the Clone Wars' collapse
BOBA FETT replies.
Replied to by Boba Fett, with a rebuttal from Jabba the Hutt.
The letter
I finished two postings in the Outer Rim conflicts and came home fourteen months ago. My daughter Kessa was nine when I shipped out and is twelve now — she answers my questions in single words and comms her mother from the next room instead of just talking to me. The harder thing is my son Davan, who used to fall asleep against my shoulder. Last week a cargo crate fell off a loader in the market. I hit the ground on instinct. He ran back to our berth and wouldn't come out, and later I heard him tell my wife that his father is "frightening now." I don't know how to tell an eight-year-old that the man who flinches at loud noises is still the man who taught him to ride a speeder bike — because some days I'm not sure that's true. My wife says give it time, but time feels like it's widening the gap between us, not closing it. How do I become someone my children recognize when I barely recognize myself?
— Ghost in My Own Home
Boba Fett replies
My father didn't come home from Geonosis. I was ten. I stood in that arena and watched him go down — no more lessons, no more man.
Your son Davan still has a father. He just doesn't know yet what kind.
The mistake you're making is trying to prove you're the same man who shipped out. You're not, and they can feel you working to pretend otherwise. That's the distance — not the flinch. A child can't name it, but they know the difference between a man who's present and a man performing presence. The performance is what makes your daughter answer in single words.
I came back from something that was supposed to kill me, and I wasn't the same man either. I didn't try to be. There's no contract for returning to who you were before — that job is closed. The job now: let them see the man who survived. No performance. Let Davan learn over time that the man who hits the ground when a crate drops is still the man who put him on a speeder bike. You can't argue him to that. You demonstrate it, slowly, with patience.
"Give it time" isn't wrong. It's just missing what the time is actually for. Not healing back into someone they recognize from before — becoming someone they learn to recognize now.
The old contract is done. Sign the new one.
— Boba Fett
Jabba the Hutt weighs in
Hoo hoo hoo. Fett tells you: present yourself honestly and wait, patient as a creature in a Sarlacc pit. I would know that patience well — I arranged that particular accommodation myself.
What Fett missed: you have been coming to your children as a debtor approaches his creditors. Hat in hand, apologetic, willing to accept whatever terms they offer. Everyone in this galaxy smells that posture, and it makes them comfortable in their distance — why move when you have already conceded the deal?
You have something they want: a father who came home. Stop discounting it before they sit at the table. Do not trail after the twelve-year-old's monosyllables. Position yourself somewhere they must come to you. The ledger has a balance in your favor. "Give it time" is your wife surrendering the initiative for nothing.
— Jabba the Hutt
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