Relapse

Yes, it’s happening again.

I’ve relapsed.  I am now reading physics books.

It started innocently enough over the weekend.  During our errands, Little One casually informed me that she was studying the Periodic Table in Science at school.

The Periodic Table?

The Periodic Table!

Images and emotions flooded my very being at that moment as I drove us from the dry cleaners to the recycling center.  The hours I spent on the floor of my childhood living room, on my belly, chin on hands, feet flipping and flopping, as I memorized every box on that wonderful chart.  Atomic Numbers, Weights, the abbreviations of the elements (and the intriguing journey of discovery figuring out what the Latin / Ancient names of some of them were), the families, the series, gases, metals, the elements theorized but generated neither in nature nor laboratory.  Yet.

Ah!  Life is Good!

So Monday I picked up John Gribben’s In Search of Superstrings, which happened to be the topmost book of a stack of nearly two-dozen pop-sci physics books in the basement, and haven’t been able to put it down since.

I’ve relapsed.