by Ellen Deitz Tucker
That we do not fall between the wide-spaced atoms plotting edge and surface in our world— that the world itself does not
fall through us, that our bodies can move solidly in this space, not merely sieves—is owing to a furious and fantastic energy
that keeps each lone electron circling round its center, continually configuring the area it would hold. Think of the carousel you set to spinning
in the park. You must take care to jump aboard before it spins too fast. It’s mostly space between the handle bars, but every bar
could break your arm unless you find the blurring space between. Think of the window fan switched on. You see a silvery disk, not separate blades.
Then what is water? I put my hand into the pond—it slides apart. It must be made of different stuff. Oh, but it’s structured just the same—
and yet not either! The water that you drink is slippery, though every molecule less breakable than the glass containing it. Their dancing makes the flexibility.
Two hydrogens, one oxygen— they hold each other by the ends where two electrons do a double duty, but another four
stay independent, pushing far apart as possible without straying from the nucleus, like a pack of willful children circling their mother.
But on the hydrogen side they bond, and also act as diplomats, continually meeting other molecules but never staying long, clasping
and unclasping hands like partners in a contradance. While other elements bond more rigidly, so if you push, you can’t push through.
Yet some things float—and not just flower cups from the laurels round the pond, but giant logs! Even water can support
a thing less dense, with wider space between the molecules. Those logs are built from tiny cubicles. Like emptied honey combs, their sap
is gone—replaced with air. You mean, they’re hollow, ’cause they’re dead? Then I don’t see how Molly floats— how she can lie there, on her back,
her arms flung out. She says it’s just a trick of resting careful-calm. I tried it—but I sank. She’s filled her lungs with air. Air’s not an emptiness.
It’s atoms, orbital systems, as I’ve said, but loosely packed, swerving round the chambers of her lungs like balls flung in a room. Not dense.
And yet they occupy the space. Molly’s lungs are two balloons that buoy her like the jacket strapped around your chest as we canoe,
to keep you floating if the boat should tip you out. And all these things— the boat itself, the log, Molly, you—are made of layered rooms,
each harboring different molecules, each made of different atoms, spinning each its centered dance, unceasing, even in the fallen log,
itself a shadowed resting place for that great snapping turtle with its pulsing throat. In all this whirling motion, where am I?
What makes me think—what part of me’s —alive? The part of you that feels the bigger dance, imagines all the smaller ones. That can’t compel
or halt one spin. But asks the questions, knows it floats. And that, my dear, I can’t explain. But Molly’s right— stay calm, and breathe. Fill up your lungs.
You’re riding on atomic energy.
Ellen Deitz Tucker works for an educational nonprofit that supports the study of American history and government. When not writing about great teachers who inspire civil conversations about our past and present, she’s often tending her native plant garden on California’s central coast.
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