Questions of Science

I've been entertaining a visitor from another country all weekend. C, the wife of my first cousin, left her three kids and husband behind for a week to come, on her employers' bill, to a conference in Long Beach. She was going to be spending the weekend with us in Los Angeles, and though she emailed me to let me know months ago, somehow the date just crept up on me and I didn't feel totally prepared before she arrived. To start, I didn't know her all that well, and, as my brother is in Chicago at his ten-year high school reunion, I was going to be solely responsible for her having a good end to her trip. I was worried she'd be missing her family terribly, that we'd have nothing in common, that the days would seem long.

Why nothing in common? I'll explain. My brothers are certainly no slouches. But cousin S, the eldest grandchild on my father's side of the family, is legendary among us for being so brainy. Eight years ago, he met his match, married her, and rumor had it, C could give him a run for his money. She was on her way to becoming an ACTUAL rocket scientist. Her professors would borrow her notes.

Now a PhD in physics, she works in a government nuclear research lab, and is the first woman in her position in the history of the facility. As she repeatedly points out, she is a woman in a man's world. Before you get all excited, she claims to have only very low-level clearance because she was born in America, so she doesn't actually know what the lasers she creates are used for (suuuuuure, C. We won't tell.).

When she first arrived at my place, she told me about her work. I was so darned impressed that for the next two days I introduced her, without fail, to everyone we came across as "My cousin C, from XYZ, she's the first female physicist ever in her nuclear research lab where she makes lasers from scratch." I felt it reflected well on me to be related to someone so smart. Everyone was duly impressed, I could tell.
They asked lots of questions, most of them starting with: So, like, what kind of security clearance do you have? Americans.

At first, my kids were kind of freezing her out, which is how they treat everyone new, but she doesn't know that, and it's not very hospitable, so I was a bit annoyed. But we were sitting around, building things out of Legos, and Elan makes a formidable gun, points it at her, and goes "Now I'm going to shoot you with my LASER GUN." And C, without missing a beat, replies, "Oh yeah? Well I MAKE laser guns. As my JOB. I spent all week learning about laser guns." Elan looked doubtful, but like he wasn't sure enough to mess with her again. He showed a little respect after that. I thought it was awesome.

We spent a lot of time together in the last couple of days, and pretty much talked and talked right through it. Without the distraction of her kids around, it was much easier to get an understanding of who she is. And, as I suspected, we are VERY different people. She lives a life completely untainted by the influence or awareness of pop culture, whereas I could discuss, in depth, Chris Doughtry's performance with the band Live at the American Idol finale last week (did anyone not think Live was fan-freakin-tastic, even if it was a little creepy how they both had shaved heads?).

It's totally fitting that C is a scientist, is utterly defined by being a scientist. Because I think of science as creative at its very core, I wouldn't call her uncreative, exactly, but I have observed that she doesn't enjoy venturing outside the box very much.

For example, she watched me cooking on Friday, and like many Jewish mothers and grandmothers before me, I use recipes only for reference, never measure my ingredients, season by feel and taste, throwing in whatever appeals to me at the moment without much regard for possible consequence. I enjoy cooking, revel in taking the extra time to chop fresh herbs and garlic finely, to blanche the green beans and then throw them in an ice bath to lock in the beauty of their color.

C was nervous as hell, watching me fly around the kitchen. She didn't know how the food would turn out. I was doing too many things at once. Was I sure the meatballs would hold together without the breadcrumbs that I was inconveniently out of (she wanted me to use oatmeal-- on second thought, maybe she is kinda creative. There was no way I was putting oatmeal in my meatballs)? Did I really want to broil them before boiling them in the sauce? Would that be good? What was "an extra layer of flavor?" Why was I cooking the soup for so long? She only does it for one hour! I heard the panic rising in her throat, saw it on her face. HOW THE HELL COULD I BE SURE THE MEAL WOULD TASTE GOOD IF I HAD NEVER DONE IT EXACTLY THE SAME WAY BEFORE? Where was the guarantee without the test tube??!

We talked about our kids a lot. She was clearly missing hers, and filled me in on every detail of their little lives, which I welcomed. As she told over the woes of the poor appetite of one, the aggressivenesss of another, she was quick to then retract any overtones of complaint, to defend them by telling me of the simple, scientific explanations she had come up with, the ways she fixes their unpredictable behaviors. If I, as I tend to do, openly admitted I didn't know what to do about Elan's occassional bouts of defiance, or that I doubted I spent enough time playing games with my sons, she was quick to suggest the obvious answer, which put me on the defensive at first.

But she doesn't know. She doesn't know that I remember.

A year ago, her entire family came to America for my brother's wedding, and I witnessed her kids create sheer chaos at every outing, jetlagged and confused by their new environments, I watched S and C run about, as frazzeled as parents come, trying to create schedules, meal rotation, some semblance of normality, and to NO AVAIL. Her kid was beating up my kid, she was worried that they weren't eating healthy food, neither parent could relax for a moment's time, it was all extremely...normal. Not scientific, yet it made plenty of sense. A family vacation in a foreign country with three kids under seven. No easy answers there.

And listening to C this weekend, who is a great mom, an admirable member of the workforce, a pioneer in many of the things I believe in, yet someone to whom I was sure I couldn't relate- listening to her, after one week away, forget the bad and remember only her successes as a parent, relay only her childrens' strengths- I felt such a strong sense of common ground, such an understanding of what was making her tick, the very same things that define me in my better moments, too.

Because when you have kids, there are no true artists or logicians, though we may think so on the way in. There is only trial, error, and then the sheer chaos of throwing individuality, that wildest of variables, into the mix. In trying to cope, and come out on top, all the while looking like we know what we're doing, the very fibers of our beings are united.