On a stormy night, you get a sense of how precious family really is. The warm embrace of home is intoxicating when you imagine the terrors of the outside world. You feel for those souls without a home, out there in the open, shivering through the storm and lightning. You want to open a window so they can fly in, but the outside world is so frightening that you cannot let even the tiniest breath of cold air enter the warmth inside.

“Ah, life,” Dad said, and downed his beer. Then, staring intently at the cluster of candle flames, he said, “Life is so random, all probability and chance. Like a twig floating in a brook, caught on a stone or seized by an eddy—”

“He’s too young. He doesn’t understand this stuff,” Mom said.

“He’s not young!” said Dad. “He’s old enough to learn the truth about life!”

“And you know all about that,” Mom said, with a sarcastic laugh.

“I know. Of course I know!” Dad poured another beer and drank half a glass, then turned to me. “Actually, son, it’s not hard to live a wonderful life. Listen to me. Choose a tough, world-class problem, one that requires only a sheet of paper and a pencil, like Goldbach’s Conjecture or Fermat’s Last Theorem, or a question in pure natural philosophy that doesn’t need pencil and paper at all, like the origin of the universe, and then throw yourself entirely into research. Think only of planting, not reaping, and as you concentrate, an entire lifetime will pass before you know it. That’s what people mean by settling down. Or do the opposite, and make earning money your only goal. Spend all of your time thinking about how to make money, not about what you’ll do with it when you make it, until you’re on your deathbed clutching a pile of gold coins like Monsieur Grandet, saying: ‘It warms me …’ The key to a wonderful life is a fascination with something. Me, for example—” Dad pointed to the watercolors lying all over the room. They were done in a very traditional style, properly composed, but lacking all vitality. The paintings reflected the lightning outside like a set of flickering screens. “I’m fascinated with painting even though I know I can’t be van Gogh.”

“That’s right. Idealists and cynics may pity each other, but they’re really both fortunate,” Mom mused.

Ordinarily all business, my mother and father had turned into philosophers, as if it were their own birthday we were celebrating.

“Mom, don’t move!” I plucked a white hair out of my mother’s thick, black mane. Only half of it was white. The other half was still black.

Dad held the hair up to the light and examined it. Against the lightning it shone like a lamp filament. “As far as I know, this is the first white hair your mother has had in her entire life. Or at least the first that’s been discovered.”