On the way to school…
Me – “Look, honey. Look at the sun peeking through the clouds.”
Her – “Oh yeah.”
Thinking about light needing 100,000 years to cross the Milky Way galaxy from the project we did the night before…
Me – “It takes eight minutes for light from the sun to reach us.”
Her – “Has it been eight minutes?”
I asked some questions to figure out she meant how long we had been in the car
Me – “Oh yeah. It’s more like fifteen or twenty minutes that we’ve been driving.”
Then I sort of went off on a tangent about time…
Me – “The clock time says 7:40, but the real time is now.” And coming up with a little saying that I though she might like – “My favorite time of the day is right now… and to think that the sun is just one of 2 billion stars in our galaxy…”
Her – “Is that more than infinity?”
Me – “No infinity goes on forever.”
A pause
Her – “Do footprints go on forever?”
Me – “What do you mean?”
She giggled and went on…
Her – “You know how when you look right into the sun and then close your eyes you see a picture? I just did that, and I saw my footprints.”
Didn’t really know how to respond.
Me – “Well, in a way our footprints do last forever. Who we are and the way we live our lives is left behind and, in a way, goes on forever.”
Thinking I had said something profound for her to chew on, I settled into my chair, the conversation capped off. She quickly topped it, though, with an anti-climactic statement
Her – “Sometimes they fade, though.”
I chuckled. On we drove…