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7. General relativity

Soleia 0.61

It's this idea of supermassiveness.  You may not be very big in physical terms but in psychological and spirtual terms, you are the biggest thing in the universe.  Your life is this supermassive event, this supermassive object around which our lives now revolve.  With that supermassiveness comes the way that you warp the world around you, the dramatic pull that you have on those you meet.  You could call it your 'gravitational pull' - the way people are drawn to your sounds, your smiles, your little face.

But as Einstein revealed, this gravitational pull and the way that you change our reality has tangible effects on both space and time.   Just taking a look around our little region of the house and your effects on our space is apparent: the room that we've made for you both in our hearts and in our environment.  A cradle, a crib.  Swings, playmats.  Bumble chairs, carseats, strollers, carriers, baby bathtubs, bottles.  Sound machines, monitors.  All this stuff that wasn't here before you existed, here to make your stay comfortable and possible.  This space - the room that we've made for you in our lives.

And time...well that is much easier to describe, your effect on time.  The first thirty-seven years of my life seem so distant and unremarkable.  Time is totally in flux now that you are here: it dilates to fill endless nights of crying and soothing you, it compresses so that an hour of kisses and playing passes by in a matter of minutes.  Three minutes of you screaming is an eternity...the smallest smile of recognition on your face at my presence is the gift of a lifetime.  Two months have you existed now, warping our reality and I honestly can't say if it was the longest or shortest two months of my life.

All things are always relative, but our lives have become a little more sensitive to relativity now that you're here.  How long will it be, I wonder, before your supermassiveness seems normal?

- Papa

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