Nik asked me how old I would be when he and Anjali went to college. I told him that I would be in my fifties.
He looked up at me and said softly, “The future is telling me that you will die when you are 64.”
I felt a chill go through me and asked carefully, “How does the future tell you things?”
Nik: “Let’s not talk about it. It’s too sad.”
And then he gave me a long hug, patted me on the back for several minutes, and then walked away.
Nik started writing a book today, called Nikhil’s Diary.
“Because I want to make money so we can buy a computer. How much should I make it? Cheap because I don’t think anyone will buy it.”
Halfway through the first page, he changed the title to Jake’s Diary. “Because authors don’t use their real names in the title, mom!”
Then a little later, he said, “I am writing mostly about my life. But putting a different name.”
He painstakingly wrote out two pages, with a couple of drawings related to the story. He only stopped because I made him go to bed (after letting him stay up almost two hours past his bedtime, because he was so into writing.)
He is so earnest, I could just cry.
