Surface tension holds it together

It is finally raining. We have had the driest spring I can remember and even now the rain is light. But it is rain. The tulips, brave, bold tulips first from the frost, were beaded with drops yesterday morning. I grabbed my camera, thinking, “Surface tension!” I was teaching a small group of kids about surface tension later and it seemed so perfect that my heightened awareness of the concept should pick up on the rain drops.

Mother’s Day and homeschool science are all mashed together in my thoughts today. How many drops of water can you fit on a penny? How busy can a family be? What holds things together? Surface tension is an attractive force between molecules, a skin that does its best to hold things together.

Our family is busy these days, full of spring outdoor play and pre-sabbatical errands, yet something is holding us together. Love is like gravity in that it centers us. Love is like surface tension in that it tries to hold us all together against rather astonishing forces.

Surface tension can do all sorts of flashy things, like make ‘fireworks’ in milk and food colouring when you add a little dishsoap, or float a needle on the water, or let bugs walk along the pond with dry feet. Love can’t make you apparently defy the laws of physics, but it certainly can be wonderous.  For Mother’s Day I received a running jacket (so I no longer have to borrow one of Rainer’s) and a gift of adventure: a family trip to my parents, a 9 km (5.5 mile) trip, with the kids on their bikes as Rainer and I ran behind them. It was magnificent.  We were together and active and making the story of our own lives. I also received a 2×4, carved with hearts and swirls and doodles and a reversed ‘love’ so that I can make my own woodblock prints.  The kids spent the last few days banging at it with hammers and screwdrivers, earnestly concocting a secret in the backyard.