Chemistry

by Weike Wang

At coffee shops when asked for a name to write on the cup, I accidentally give them his. You’re Eric? says one dubious barista, and I say, Yes, I mean no, then I give her the math student’s name, then I give her the name Joy.

You know, she adds quietly, he was also completely devoted to you. That should count for something. The way she said that just now makes me think that she has been keeping it from me for a while.

In Chinese, there is another phrase about love. It is not used for passionate love but the love between family members. In translation, it means I hurt for you.

Your father, as a boy, carried his youngest sister on his back to see the doctor. The doctor was many miles away. The sister was dying of consumption. He ran on dirt roads, as fast as he could. But before they could get to the doctor, the sister died. Still he carried her to the doctor’s. When I hear this story, I am stunned. But why had he never mentioned the sister before? Why am I learning about her just now? If I knew about her earlier, maybe I would have understood him more. The need to succeed, to be fearless. But it is the Chinese way to not explain any of that, to keep your deepest feelings inside and then build a wall that can be seen from the moon.

When he first meets the dog, I cannot read his face. It is a blank face. But everywhere he goes, the dog follows. He allows him on the hardwood but not on the carpet. He allows him on the carpet but not on the couch. When the dog cries at night from fear of being alone, he sleeps next to him on the floor.

Aluminum used to be more expensive than gold. Napoleon had an aluminum cutlery set that he used only for visiting royalty. The gold set he used every day.

The shrink unearths a true statement: Without your parents, you lose contact with everyone else in your family.

Jia is the Chinese word for home. So wrapped up am I in the notion of being gone that I don’t notice what they are trying to do. My mother says: It is important to your father that you have a jia. My father says: It is important to your mother that you have a jia.

To cut costs, he does all the renovations himself. He rewires everything. He puts in a new heater, new floors, crown molding, light fixtures that my mother picks out. He builds an entirely new deck. She wallpapers each room, lining up the end of one scroll with the beginning of another. They work late into the night. She hands him tools and helps him lift the ladder. She puts down the tarp on which the ladder will go.

You cannot live your life for them. Eventually they will die. I hope they never die because once they do, I will be alone.

Biologically, physical strength comes from mitochondria, which are organelles that generate all of our body’s energy. A unique feature of mitochondria is that they have their own DNA. Whereas the rest of the body is built on code that is half paternal and half maternal, mitochondrial DNA is entirely maternal and passed down from the mother.

When I ask Eric if he thinks a child can ever feel entirely independent of her parents, he says, What kind of question is that? But now I don’t really know. There is too much already shared. Mother, Father, I think I know what it means to hurt for you.

In a letter to his daughter, Einstein wrote that love is the only energy in the universe that man has not learned to drive at will. He posited it to be the universal force scientists have overlooked.

To progress in life, you must always compare yourself with someone better. Maybe not better in all aspects but better in some. I watch him wade into the river first and he could keep going. But he stops in the middle of the current and waits for me to catch up.

But you are three months ahead of schedule. He says, had he given it to me on my actual birthday, it would not have been a surprise.

I am a child who is prone to motion sickness and never likes riding in cars.

My father’s remedy for motion sickness is to look at green things in the distance. Look at that hill, he says, or that batch of trees. To this day, I have not heard anyone else say that. I have heard of looking at stationary objects in the distance, but never the green. Then I visit the place where he grew up. I do not realize it then—I am too young—but I realize it now. In the distance, on all sides, was green.

I notice tiny dots in places where nothing is written. I wonder if these are where he put down his pen and then lifted it back up, thinking of something else to say.

It might be that all marriages lie between these two extremes. When the wave-particle duality is first proposed, there is a shift in scientific thinking. Before then, everything is thought to be known. Afterward, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle develops. Schrödinger and his cat.

Pure crystals are those that have perfectly repeating units. You told me this after I asked you what you found beautiful about chemistry. But what of the repeating units in life? Most often imperfect.