Too independent to need me every minute.
Still mine in the way love meant responsibility, history, and choice.
Not ownership.
Never ownership.
He looked across the yard.
“Do you know what I was going to say in the original graduation speech?”
“The science one?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
He smiled.
“I was going to say that every complicated system depends on initial conditions.”
“That sounds like you.”
“I thought everything could be explained that way. Denise left. You stayed. Everything else followed.”
“And now?”
“Now I think people can introduce new conditions.”
I looked at him.
“That is a terrible metaphor.”
“It is mathematically sound.”
“It is emotionally terrible.”
“You understand it.”
“I do.”
He leaned against my shoulder.
For a while neither of us spoke.
Years ago, silence had frightened him.
Now he could sit inside it peacefully.
That was one of the quietest measures of how much he had grown.
