The Measure Of What's Missing
By Jennifer Batchelor
@jennbatchelor
It doesn’t feel like a normal August day. On normal August days in Tennessee, the air is thick and heavy. Imagine taking a hot, steamy shower and then immediately putting your clothes on without drying off: this is August in Tennessee. The sky should be an opaque white—hazy and disorienting, promising an afternoon thunderstorm that will either last long enough to provide a brief respite from the heat and humidity or short enough to somehow, defying all logic, manage to increase it. On normal August days in Tennessee though, we barely acknowledge the oppressiveness of the weather because we feel lighter and freer in the only way that matters—our kids are back in school. The days have a rhythm and routine again, and—from the comfort of our central air conditioning—we slide effortlessly into it.
We are far removed from normal.
Instead, today the sky is the soft blue of springtime. It’s in the low 80s and there’s a delightfully cool breeze. The weather matters deeply, because if it’s too hot then the kids won’t want to play outside, and I need them to play outside because it’s the 21st week of spring break. The last of the homeschool materials I ordered finally arrived, and I’m working on lesson plans for our first week of school and find it impossible to concentrate when I’m interrupted every 90 seconds with a request for a cup of ice, a snack, help getting something off the top shelf, to build a fort, to set up the Play Doh or the paints or the pastels.
But since it isn’t a normal August day, my children have happily gone outside to play. I sit on the floor of my living room, surrounded by early readers and math flash cards and spiralbound ELA workbooks and my first ever paper planner. On my laptop: state standards, beginning of the year assessments, a list of local field trip sites that align with the fourth grade U.S. history unit, an email confirmation that our notice to homeschool has been received by the county board of education.
Not for the first time in the past 147 days, I mutter to myself how the hell did we get here?
I pick up a blue ink pen and begin to carefully chart the week’s schedule in the pages of my planner. Almost instantly, the ink smears. Of course it does. If I’ve learned nothing by now, it should be this: when it comes to plans for 2020, it’s best to use a pencil.
***
Entropy. We most commonly define it in terms of decay; a slow, steady withering away. In physics though, entropy is a measurement—specifically, a measurement of the energy not available for doing work. It is synonymous with disorder, with chaos.
There are physicists who spend their entire careers trying to understand entropy and the role it plays in the universe. Does it explain how we came to be? Does it explain how we will end?
The second law of thermodynamics says that, in every closed system, entropy is always increasing. It explains why your cup of coffee begins to cool the second you pour it, or, conversely, why the ice in your glass melts and waters down your drink. The order—in this case, the temperature—can’t hold. Chaos will, slowly but inevitably, root it out.
If, like me, you struggled to make a C in physics, let me state it more simply for you: The second law of thermodynamics says that everything is going to shit, all the time.
***
It’s early October now. We’re eight months into a pandemic we thought would end by May (remember when we thought it would end in May?), and our little household is two months into homeschooling. I haven’t made an actual lesson plan in weeks, which is something I feel a surprising amount of guilt about, and the only thing I dread more in my day than fourth grade math is my daughter’s new routine of getting out of her bed at least three times a night.
We are healthy and employed and safe and fine by all the measurements that matter in 2020, but I’d be lying if I didn’t confess this is the most ragged version of “fine” I can recall living through. My life feels like nothing but a measurement of the energy I don’t have; I am a walking personification of entropy.
The second law of thermodynamics? I believe, to put it in the kindest of terms, we are living through Exhibit A.
***
It seems impossibly bleak to study entropy, of all things, for a living. What’s the office Christmas party like for the physicists who write papers about the inevitable slide of the entire universe toward chaos? And, given the state of, well, all of this, are we two months from finding out in real-time?
If it feels like it’s all unraveling—and it’s felt that way for awhile—don’t we eventually … run out of ravel?
***
“I’ve actually been in a real spiral about how much I suck at all of this,” I confess to a friend via text.
“I feel like I’m failing at everything, all the time,” she offers back.
It’s not possible to overstate my relief. I’m not the only one. Everything is disordered and I’m floundering … but so is she.
Maybe it’s supposed to feel this way.
Maybe instead of trying to make it easier, I need to just let it be hard.
***
Adjacent to the party crowd of physicists studying entropy, there’s a little pocket of optimists: the proponents of chaos theory. Chaos theory says that within the apparent randomness of, you know, the complete disintegration of everything, there are patterns. There’s an innate pull in the universe toward organization and predictability and, if you look closely enough and long enough, you’ll find these patterns everywhere.
So things fall apart, sure, but they only fall so far until they resolve into something new.
Maybe it’s an overreach by this writer/decidedly not a physicist, but that sounds an awful lot like hope to me.
***
It’s mid-October now, and it’s taken us two weeks to get through Nathan’s multiplication unit. There are partial products and area models and a whole host of methods that were definitely not a part of my fourth grade math classes in 1992. We’ve watched videos and tapped outside assistance and have each cried at least three times in the past five days, but we made it to the end of the unit. Almost. Just the test remains.
While he sits at the kitchen table on the computer, Ellie and I are on the living room couch. I hand her the small book that is that day’s assigned reading.
“But what if I get stuck and need your help, Mom?” Nathan asks.
“Then come ask me for help, and we’ll figure it out together, okay?” Maybe. Hopefully. With the assistance of YouTube and by channeling the patience of Job.
I turn back to Ellie, and open the book to the first page. Without hesitation, she starts reading, moving smoothly over the words using the silent E rule we’ve been working on. She finishes it without a single stumble—the first time she’s ever read one of the books all the way through with no mistakes.
“Els!” I say. “That was awesome! You read that whole book all by yourself. I’m so proud of you!”
She grins, pleased with my praise, then wriggles off the couch to write her spelling words on the window with the dry erase marker.
“Mom, I finished the test!” Nathan calls from the kitchen.
“How did it go?” I ask, holding my breath a little.
“Great; I missed two questions but I got all the partial products ones right,” he answers triumphantly.
I punch the air in response. Partial products have been our absolute nemesis for days.
“Dude! That’s fantastic! Way to go; I’m so proud of your hard work!”
Nathan beams in response, and I declare us done with school for the day even though it’s only 10:30.
The kids race out the back door to play in the bright morning sunshine, while I pause to make myself a celebratory third cup of coffee. I wrap my hands around my mug while I sort through the strange and unexpected emotion settling around my shoulders that feels like a long-lost friend. A peal of laughter drifts through the screen door from the backyard as realization hits: I feel peace.
It’s a chaotic year. Nothing will ever be the way it used to be and our lives will always be a little more disordered because of it. We’re all walking around a little less raveled.
Then also, this: my daughter is learning to read, and I’m the one teaching her. My son and I are figuring out new math one ridiculous method at a time. It’s harder than it once was, to keep moving forward. Sometimes it’s impossible not to give in a bit to the grief over what’s been lost.
But we’re more than the measure of what’s missing. We’re resolving into something new.
Photo by Lottie Caiella.