Today, I bring you Emily Willingham, writing about and posting an excerpt from her essay, “String Theory.”
When I wrote my entry for Gravity Pulls You In, I was teaching college physics to a hundred students. I did not realize at the time how much things would change in the coming year. Now, I teach one person only, and that person is TH. And even though we spend almost every waking hour together in homeschool, on walks, at play, he still must bracket each day with visits to or from me at the dimming of the evening and the dawning of the morning. In the evenings, at lights out, he invariably comes to me, grabs my arm, purrs. That means, “Can you come see me again just before I go to sleep?” And I can. And I do.
As you will see after reading the following excerpt, our days also still begin much the same as they always have. Yet there is that string, endlessly tugging tight.
I begin every day with a suddenness that is more alarming than an alarm clock. Each morning, TH breaks through my deep sleep with a thud, entering my room, pausing at the doorway, and then, as though overwhelmed by some forceful impulse, he rushes to my bed and leaps on me, placing his favorite fuzzy blanket on my head. This is our ritual in the morning. I overcome this unnerving awakening almost instantly and welcome him, listening to him get out his morning purring and vocalizations, letting him get some sensory input from me as we snuggle. Our connection is so strong that even with this zero distance between us, as I lie there at dawn with my firstborn baby now grown so big in my arms, that little tether under my left ribs still feels stretched tight, straining with the power of the love I feel for this child.
If I feel such a tug on that cord even without distance between us, I don’t want to imagine what it will feel like when the distance becomes real, maybe due to a first field trip out of town, or a high-school trip, or college. Or marriage. Or a job in another part of the world. I know that string will pull tighter than I’ve yet experienced. But just as Newton predicts, no matter how great the distance grows between us, there is a force that will still hold us together. And it’s not just the universal G.
When I think of that kind of future, I like to imagine that the flexibility of that string is itself infinite. Distance has limitations. It is not infinite, certainly not here on planet Earth. TH may go far from me, geographically or mentally or just because his days become too busy. If he proves to be as successful as his godfather, not in spite of but because of his diagnosis, I will rejoice, even as that string draws taut. If he becomes another Darwin’s bulldog, or even another Darwin, I will rejoice, even if it means he’s away from me. There will be times, I know, that the cord may pull and tug and hurt like hell. And there will be, God willing, times that it will relax and loosen and hearts will be merry.
But one thing I know about that string: As long as I live, it will never break. No matter what distance comes between us, that force will be there, tying us together. It is my love for him, ready to take a beating or be requited, to be stretched and strained and soothed and repaired, but never to be broken or destroyed. My love for my son, like the number 8, has no beginning and no end. It just is.
Today, age almost 9, TH comes to me every morning, sometimes even in the middle of the night, lying next to me, snuggling. But he’s bigger now, only a few inches shorter than I. Long arms, long legs, skinny. That big head. Yet when I look at him in profile in the quiet glow of daybreak, I still see that baby there, that small boy, the round nose, the freckles, the soft dimples even in sleep. And the string tugs. Because someday, I know those still babyish features will be older, more angled, rougher. And that string under my left rib will be tighter than ever when he no longer comes to me with the dawning of each new day.
Emily Willingham lives in Austin, Texas, with her soul mate and spouse, the Viking, and their three sons, TH, Dubya, and Little Da. Her published work includes the upcoming Complete Idiot’s Guide to College Biology and pieces in Backpacker and other national, regional, and local publications.
