Lungs and Coffee Cups

E=mc2

When I was 6 years old at 12:30 at night, eons past my bedtime,

Sitting on my kitchen counter,

Hair in a cotton candy mess framing my tired eyes and brain trying to grab words and hold onto them as they floated themselves off my father's lips,

My dad explained to me what atoms were.

Baby, he would say, we are all made of the same three pieces, protons neutrons and electrons, you and the stars and the air and the sea, are all just a rearrangement of the same building blocks. Everything you know and will ever know.

My father had a fire in his soul for science, and his passion was infectious, giving me the same fervor, the same fire that he had. He used to spend hours teaching me decades before I would ever learn it in school about cells, and black holes, the fibonacci sequence, and what we think is in the ocean, and why ice floats, why time slows the faster you are moving,

When I was eight years old, in a quiet hush after my baby sister was fast asleep, my dad taught me about evolution. How after a billion years of random chance and trial and error, it was just pure luck and the right kind of mistakes to happen at the right time, to make me and every other person I know. That the fact that anything is alive at all is a miracle.

He taught me about Einstein, about E=mc2, and how much that simple equation means.

My dad also taught me the problem with trying to figure out where God fits into science, how a man who steadfastly holds to facts and figures like a child grasping for a life vest when they're unexpectedly thrown under a wave can accept that there is a being controlling every aspect of our lives, and we have no evidence of them existing.

My dad has answered every question I have ever asked him. Dad, why is the sky blue, why do birds fly but penguins can't, why do cars move, why does the moon wax and wane etc etc etc. But he's never been able to answer if god exists or not. He used to tell me that he thinks that if god does exists, we won't be privy to the information. He used to say that us trying to understand god would be like an ant trying to understand astroscience. But he would always end the talks with the same sentence:

"I don't know baby. But when you figure it out, be sure to tell your dad, okay?"

I'm still trying to figure out if God is real. If the fact that E=mc2 means that we are just being of chaotic energy, and when we die that energy simply goes somewhere else. If there was something that made life have the same 4 pieces of DNA, something that made evolution favor our branch of the tree of life.

I'm figuring it out. And when I do, I'll be sure to tell you, dad.