The Theory of Relativity

Five years is the time it takes/will take/ took for your infant to morph into a kindergartener. It is the time I worked at my last job, and then some. It is the time between my children’s births, roughly. It is the time it took to move me through space from North Carolina to New Jersey. It is also the time since my dad passed on/away/over, depending on your perspective.

Einstein, who lived here, where I live, maybe walked over the same path I walk to work at approximately the same time of day a hundred years ago and so, saw the light at a similar angle, said on a basic level, that spacetime is relative. Minutes stretch or collapse, depending on speed and light and the pull of the universe. So I wonder now, has it been five years like the five years the calendar marks? Or today, when the calendar is on the exact same spot, though there is no snow, only fog, is it the same day?

Here’s what I found about Einstein’s theory from Wikipedia, for what it’s worth: “The universe is expanding, and the far parts of it are moving away from us faster than the speed of light.” And so, I wonder if I am in the near or far, and where my dad is relative to me. All I know for sure is that on days like today, when time touches time, I think of him every minute of the day.

My sister Leigh Ann and I talk about the possibility of portals opening up—those times, like the holidays, when people seem to check out in droves—as if there is some shortcut path to some brighter part of the universe, or some black hole.

I’ve also heard that radio waves travel through time, get trapped in space, and can be heard, theoretically, on a wave that takes years to travel through the universe. I’m no scientist, but I love the idea. So, I am sending this song to my dad, his favorite—Maria Callas singing Ave Maria–which took me years to appreciate, and which now, takes me back to that snowy day, when time collapsed on itself. I hope he is listening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8KL63r9Zcw