Tuesday Morning
Tuesday morning. Driving my daughter to school. Passing the house with the grim reaper mailbox. We stop at Dunkin Donuts. But she doesn’t like chocolate frosted doughnuts with sprinkles anymore. A plain glazed is fine, like she’s some anonymous middle management drone now. She stares at her phone. Hasn’t even taken a bite yet of her donut. What about the math test, I ask, do you want to review a few things before we arrive? No dad, I’m good. But you said you were worried about it, honey. Our eyes catch in the rear view mirror. Dad!
Rather than turning up the music to its previous volume I try again to tell her about the algebra of all bodies, how each of us has some corresponding variable expression that can be plotted on a multidimensional coordinate plane along with dozens of partial differential equations that account for the change that accrues over time. That this equation cannot be solved is beside the point. It is enough to know that very smart people have been working on it for many years and will not stop because it will prove that we are, if not here, then at least somewhere, at one time, for a very short while, in a definite position within an open-ended universe drifting in infinity. To be able to prove this mathematically would actually be very nice. Because math is true. The Hodge Conjecture and Riemann Hypothesis ought to be immediately deprioritized, or at least I would hope so. I see in the rearview mirror that her AirPods are back in her ears and her finger is jack-hammering the volume button like she’s caught in some sort of cruel rat experiment. In any event, it’s only Tuesday. The weekend is a long way off but everything that follows can be graphed. High school graduation. Then college in another state. First apartment. First promotion. Her inevitable marriage to a man who connects with me more than his own father. I only say that because that’s what he tells me. The birth of her first child. Her second. The driftless time after her mother dies. The growing older and lesser. The disillusionment. A half assed acceptance. Even my own death can be plotted with respect to x.