there just past the edge

In the middle of the explanation I realized I was doing that parent thing, murmuring the encouraging hmmm my back to him and my hands chopping, stirring, my mind scanning the checkbook upstairs, sorting the laundry, adding a do to the list.  It began with a declaration Everything has its own length and I, my mind twittering on the (so-called) important details of the day (and the next, the next, the next after that) had really not heard. Correction: not listened. Let's be honest here, it's what we implore,  shake our finger at, insist upon, with our children, right, this idea called honesty. So I was not listening and had not been listening, not really, not in a conversationally engaged way, the way I most certainly would have been listening if the speaker was someone like another adult, Alice Munro maybe, or Anthony Doerr. Writers I will listen to, evidently; my own child, ashamedly in this case no. But then to my own credit I realized that I was not listening: outside the kitchen window a fat gray squirrel had his face to the ground licking up the birdseed, a towhee was skip-hopping back and forth, the sun slanted into the house and skimmed the floor illuminating soft whirls of dust. 


It was quiet and I turned to him. He was waiting patiently, licking the cheeto dust off his lips, just sitting there at the table in front of the window.  Mom he said, firmly, patiently, Everything has its own length. And then he waited, thinking I would of course get this. The look on my face was enough evidently to dispel that notion so he began to explain slowly, patiently at first then with a great deal of waving and scoonching of the chair legs across the floor. 


Drum roll please: the universe as explained to me by my third grader. Everything has its own length. There is no choosing, it is just so. The earth has its length (make a ball shape mid-air with your hands when you get to this part) but we know the earth is changing too. When islands come up from the ocean they are not a part of the earth's length (this is a key point so say it slowly) or the earth would shrink. (Pause for impact of idea). So that means the universe has its own length. 


Now, don't quote me here but I am pretty sure what he was talking about involved physics and the nature of matter, and probably energy and somebody else might get it, might be able to carry on a conversation with  him about this idea, this revelation he had while looking at his lego book and eating an after school snack. But that is not me, not because I did not try to make sense of it but because in about a nano-second I realized, fathomed, understood entirely, that I could not, the length of my brain being just a smidge shorter than it should be to encompass such a big thought. But then I asked if length was something measured like the length of a driveway or piece of yarn and he said what? and stopped. He shook his head slowly, sadly, the Boy With the Mom Who Does Not Get It. Length, mom. LENGTH. 


Time, you mean. A long pause, the rattling of the cheeto bag as he tipped it casually to empty every last flavored nugget into his mouth, then he wiped his hands carefully across his shirt, that boy-thing move, me thinking where do they learn that my mind already swaying in the breeze of unbeckoned thought. And then the brief explanation, again patiently, firmly, authoritatively, how time and stuff are the same, how to measure a piece of yarn is really also time. 


And so for three days I have been pondering this idea, the notion that a brain, a mind, could make the connections, dot the i's and cross the t's, plug the correct ends together and shine a light on a thought that might, quite possibly, have never been thought before. Amazing. Miraculous, beautiful, astounding and enlightening all in one orange cheeto-y package: just imagine.