Matters of Gravity

PART III, Episode 20

Happiness is not a thing... it is an adverb we try in vain to convert to a noun.  It may happily apply to certain intervals of our lives, but it does not adequately describe any of the events the events that occur during that interval.  Good writers avoid adverbs as superfluous.  But it does pertain at times and even though it may not be the secret to everything – or anything. It isn't, of course. It makes neither a meaningless nor meaningful life. It is just a temporary mode of being. It is certainly not something that can be found by seeking. Happiness  happens – or it doesn't. When it's gone it takes a long, long time to re-happen. But it can. Meanwhile, the earth continues in its orbit and whatever else happens, for which objective descriptions apply, just happens too.

The Giants lost the National League Championship series, but Tommy had excelled. Following their loss he and Margie came up to The Creek to spend a few days. There was a bit of adjustment for both Margie and Maria, but Maria got more comfortable with the banter between Margie and Roger before very long, realizing that it was a private fight that both of them had sort of come to enjoy. The two women became close friends with a lot of educational baggage in common. Tommy and Roger became closer than Roger thought they had ever been or could ever be, fishing, Kayaking, and hiking the cascades. On several occasions all four of them Kayaked the many miles to the far end of the reservoir where it once again became the cascading Canyon Creek.

Tommy and Margie had purchased a house in San Francisco and were already contracting the remodeling. So that when they finally departed as the cold weather approached, it was to a new home of their own. Margie had been looking into a teaching appointment, exchanging phone calls, emails, and text messages daily during their visit. In the end a position was secured at Sofia University near Stanford to teach in a new curriculum of an emerging Psychological Anthropology department.  The possibilities of this activity brought many laughs to the four of them.

Earlier Maria had, upon Lisa's encouragement, tentatively quit all her direct responsibilities at Stanford pending her welcome to Canyon Creek. With that welcome secured she had notified dean Bender to complete the severance. Despite his remonstrance with regard to her more wisely taking a sabbatical that he could arrange, she insisted on loosening all ties in favor of her new one. She had secured an agreement with Julie much earlier to be a third party to whatever on-going effort Julie and Roger still had in progress with regard to merging electrostatics and gravitation and "to spearhead efforts to realize Roger's intuitions with regard to the nature of quark reactions". In his absence they had accomplished a considerable amount with numerical integration of Poisson distribution interactions Roger found out. He had some catching up to do. Maria still had an association with the university that would allow her and Roger, to use the library and other facilities at any time and join in with Julie in on-going activities as they pleased.

So after Tommy and Margie had returned to California, Roger and Maria decided that they would start afresh, working side by side. That very next morning Roger was amazed at how different he felt upon awakening. It was different than any feeling he could remember ever having felt. He was a different person. He was who he would always have wanted to have been working side-by-side with someone who understood everything he knew and much more. The years of forced camaraderie with team mates could not compare, nor of course the tension following his retirement. He felt good about what he, Maria, and Julie were attempting and he was thrilled to be doing it all with Maria.