Science Fair

I move through my day, like I move through water. Floating on the surface, not really aware of how and when I hit the wall and turned around, and hit the wall again. But I move, albeit slowly, almost methodically, except for the fact that what needs to get done doesn't, through the hours made of molasses, and the time comes, to retrieve the other half of my team.

There is always a smile and a hug on the other side of the long tunnel. She chatters to Amelia and me about the ice cream, which is more like a milk shake, that she made in her class on bones and human health. I love her chatter outside of the car, but she knows me well enough to limit it to a minimum inside the car. I don't like to have a front seat-back seat conversation, I prefer to just drive. Driving, unlike wading through my day, is somehow soothing. I almost drove north today, just to do it, just to keep listening to the cd that was playing, just to avoid going back to my house, alone.

Instead I stayed at the café of choice and ran into a friend. We went out for Japanese food and Hallelujah! I almost ate an entire meal. She listened, genuinely concerned for me. And then she told me that her crisis trumped mine. And she was right. The depth of her tragedy is so much greater than mine because it involves losing not one, but both parents, in different ways, and an entire lifetime of scaffolding that buckles under the weight of a man that refuses to seek help, refuses to address his emotional pain. I think about that for a while. I take mental note.

My day ends when real life begins. We step out of the car, and despite her protests about the wonderful day, I remind her that the science fair project that we have worked on for the last several weeks is due tomorrow, and that we (ie. me, but she needs to be at least participative) need to write up the experiment and the conclusions. It was a successful project, for the most part, testing to see where mold naturally grows best. We took pictures to document the progress, had a refrigerated control group for our room-temperature group of foods, high, low and medium sugar content. I managed even to get the photos emailed to the drug store this weekend and printed. We had enough poster board so that we did not have to run out to buy more. And then, we wrote.

I printed our "findings" at Amelia and Travis' house, borrowed some cayenne pepper, and went home to cook for the first time in over a week. I. wanted chili. I have never in my life made such an American feast, but I was given, on good faith, instructions that you can't get chili wrong. And it was good. I made a quick salad, with avocado and spring mix from the local farmers market that Nate and Ryan had swapped out for some of their almonds, and a cornbread from scratch. While we four ate, life was, miraculously, not that different from what it was before. I smile to myself and think, "You can't always get what you want..."

After dinner, I sit while they talk to I. and cut out pieces of paper to adhere to the poster board. We have "fun mold facts" (words heretofore unuttered in all likelihood) and a clear, concise description of the hypothesis, the methodology, the observations, and conclusions. The photos, I decide, will stay better with scotch tape. After our guests leave, I continue with this immediate task, it is 9:45, and I. looks at me from over her book. "A little to the left." she says to me. I laugh inwardly about how these things, these tasks that we take on as parents, show who we really are, inside, separate from our own terror of work, or completion, or change. This will remain the same, her deadlines and urgencies will always take precedence over mine. And that, I suppose, is exactly what I signed up for. "Do you feel like you learned about how to structure a scientific experiment?" I ask, hopeful that this will actually have resulted in an educative moment of sorts. She does. She ventured some really interesting ideas in her conclusions (I tried hard not to give too much input) and her understanding of other biological processes and the vocabulary with respect to them did not surprise me, but pleased me in that satisfying way, inexplicable, that only ones progeny can provoke.

Today we will bring her poster in, a day early, as asked in the Tuesday folder, which I finally read on Tuesday, and signed necessary papers on time. Maybe this is the lesson. Maybe the only thing I can do is be a better mother, and a better me. Outsiders be damned!