As Miles was falling asleep last night, we engaged in some of our usual, light bedtime banter.
“I don’t want to die,” he said without pretext. “And I don’t want you to die and I don’t want Mommy to die. Just stay every day forever.”
“Well,” I started, wanting to make things a bit less morbid without actually lying to him, “once we die, the matter that composes our bodies turns into something else. So we’re never really gone.”
“What something else?” Miles asked. “A leprechaun?”
“Uh, no, that’s not what I meant. I mean, we might turn into a tree…”
“I don’t want to turn into a tree.”
“…or a flower? That would be nice, wouldn’t it?”
“I don’t want to be a flower. When I die I don’t want to turn into anything. I don’t want anyone touching me. How can we do that?”
“Well, I don’t really know. You see, it’s all part of the great mystery –“
“We need to go into a spaceship,” he quickly concluded. “And get away from Earth and go into space before we die.”
“So…we won’t turn into anything after we die? I guess that would work…”
“No I just want to go to space,” he said. “Is it noisy in the rocket?”
“Yeah it can be,” I said. “But it’s pretty quiet in space.”
“And do we have food?”
“I mean, we could bring food with us.”
“Good because I want food.”
“So what you really want is not to visit space, but to eat?”
“Yeah,” he admitted.
The Perils (& Pride) of Paternity 