I am walking with my nephew through a shaded lane in a beach town. It's stifling hot and I've just bought him a can of orange soda from a drink machine outside the local convenience store. (Like many soda machines, this one featured a full-size portrait of a NASCAR hero in his tight ad-adorned jumpsuit. Someone had scrawled a pirate eye patch on his face and eliminated a few teeth with black crayon. The effect was very nautical.)

My nephew has been slurping on the can for what seems an eternity. I can't believe he's making the drink last this long, but then I consider that at 5 years old, a can is like a keg. I ask him if it's good, mostly because I don't remember being thanked for it and I'm doing my best to instill good social skills. Someday I'll be the bad uncle, the one who lets him get away with shit when mom and dad are being hard-asses, but not yet.

"It's better than working," he says. I am scarcely surprised; he's often piping up with strangely adult phrases like this.

"I don't know," I say (wanting to reinforce the message that work need not be comprised of drudgery), "I kind of like what I do."

We stroll along a little while. Slurp. "I don't want to die," my nephew says.

This one momentarily catches me off balance. Like many kids, he's trying to come to terms with the reality of death.

"Well, I can understand that," I begin lamely. I'd rather not parrot all the usual platitudes on how death gives life meaning and all that. I'm really the wrong person for him to be talking to, because unlike many adults I know, I still fear and hate death. I've somehow failed to make peace with it as a grown-up.

"I'm afraid you'll die doing what you do," my nephew tells me.

For a moment, I'm at a loss for breath, much less words. He knows I'm a firefighter/EMT and, I admit, it's always been part of that Uncle Adam mystique. My nephew visited me at the rescue squad once when they were in town, and I sat him up in the heavy rescue truck and put an SCBA mask on his face. It stank of smoke. My sister reported that he was in a haze of rapture, like someone who's had a religious experience, the rest of the day. But I had never really considered that he would worry about my safety.

I'm uncertain about the right thing to say. Should I promise him that I won't die in a fire? If I did get snuffed, I figure a broken promise would be only one of his sorrows, and he might just be asking me for reassurance that I'll always be here. Maybe he's too young for anything more subtle than that, and an equivocal statement will only make him worry more. On the other hand, maybe he's trying work this stuff out and the best thing I can do is help him with the task. Deep breath.

"I love being on the rescue squad," I say, "and I'm always very, very careful when I am." I sense this is being received well. "It's important to me to stay safe," I say again, hammering on that message. "You know how you hold someone's hand when you cross the road?" He nods. "You do that to be safe, because the road can be dangerous. But if you never went across a road because it was dangerous, you'd never see anything interesting. The rescue squad is like that. I do it because I love it, and because sometimes it can be a little more dangerous I have to be even more careful."

We walk on a bit under the low canopy of evergreens. Another noisy sip of orange soda. I'm not sure if I lost him on that last metaphor. "Does that all make sense?" I ask.

He nods. "Yes." Just like that, the moment's gone. Whether I said the right thing or not, it can't be redone. He's moved on to other things, like an old comb he's found in the sand by the side of the road. Maybe those words will come back to him sometime, and I can only hope that they offer more solace than uncertainty.