The Scientist

This early morning, he sits in his favorite blue high-backed chair in his study reading The Astronomy and Astrophysics Review, Physics Today, and because he likes it, Nature. This, he does over decaf coffee, because the doctor told him he can't have caffeine anymore. He resigned himself to this fact just recently on his sixty-third birthday. He thinks of many things, but what he wanted to know this morning was if there was a connection to his slowed paced thoughts, a sort of pattern to his life. Life had been so long.
He ascends the stairs. He thinks of all the things that must be asked, that must be answered. What of the cosmos that create life? What of this evolution from the Big Bang? Does it lead him to this morning, where his bones pop, crack, and loosen as he climbs the stair? What of the meanings of his life: Nebula, Quasar, Red shift, Umbra. No, it was none of these; rather, just an Inferior planet, such as he feels now. Yes, how many times had he felt as if a shadow, voided, withheld from that great source of light.
He is halfway up the long flight when he stops by a window which reflects his white and black peppered hair, his bright eyes and reserved face. How many years had he built this austere face for scientific reviews, peer debates, and lectures. As he thinks this, stars are pointing their numbered wonderment behind his magnificent brain.
"Do I believe in God?" He likes to question himself on this. He secretly believes that it is his scientific duty to do so. He must ask it out loud in order to complete the debate that lay on the stairs ahead. He hopes it will light the fire of a star that is the size of a mustard seed deep down in his humanity. He waits, as many times before, with an awkward silence that has not faded in all his years. This always gives him confidence in the suggestion that God might not exist; however, like other times before, he is prepared to meet the issue ahead.
He begins the climb once more, the one that he has made for the last 25 years, in which there is a long contemplation, in which there begins an argument over general creation, and ends with an argument over the significance of his singular life. There is always one victor, where, when he is at the top of the stair, there is an agreement. He frowns from years of skepticism and thinks there will always be an agreement, that there has to be an agreement, for he is a conciliatory man.
At the top, he pauses again, and puts a hand in his pajama pockets and touches the small glassy rock that his wife had given them when they were young. She had carved the word Tenderness on one side and harmony on the other. She told him that it signified their unity, and went on to explain how it had probably come from a Binary star. This, in turn, solidified her theory their love was like two stars in one. He remembers, at the time, that he did not have the heart to tell her that it was impossible that the rock came from a Binary star, instead, that it was simply a terrestrial bound one. He didn't understand the words, but the gesture spoke to him and he asked her to marry him a year later. She said yes, and he felt for the first time the unique pleasure of having a definite answer to a question. Without calculation no less!
This morning though, he still struggled with the words on the rock; yet, he speculated he felt more close to the proposition of them twenty five years later, still holding out hope that he could impress on her that he was deeply, madly in love with her.
Once, after their first child was born, he came close to expressing his absolute adoration to her, but his excitement at the possibility of doing so turned his hard sought words into boring constellations that were nothing near what the worst poet could've done. She smiled as she had always, with a sort of delight that offered him sincere acknowledgement of his brilliance. That smile never ceased to melt him into her--much like a binary star, he thought. He held and kissed his first child and felt a great stirring of all the massive stars. Years later, after the second child was born, he stood before his wife in the delivery room with a poster picture of a Globular Cluster, which he hoped would convey their consecrated eternity together. She smiled her smile. There was another fantastic shift in the universe, he was sure.
He stands before the bedroom door and thinks all the beautiful things he would like to express to her today. Like always, he knows that it will be impossible. How does one express an unwavering awe of his wife, the most illuminating star? He walks through to witness, what has never tired or bored him in all his life, the stunning site of his wife's small body in serene sleep. He goes through his scientific method, as always. He situates himself there and conjectures the Axial Inclination of her heavenly body to her own location on the bed. He calculates the Density of her ring finger, with and without the band of gold around it, and feels more comfortable with a scientific number with the band on. He speculates her Apparent Magnitude and determines that her magnitude is very low, for she is the brightest that he has ever witnessed. Then, he goes a step further in order to define his love of her with a precise number, an absolute love. He can't be certain of the number, but it helps him to express as he only knows how. He will tell her later this morning. She will smile and he will feel right with the cosmos.
Quietly, as she sleeps, he promises as he has for all their marriage, a good life. And yet, in their remaining years he finds himself promising more and more extraordinary things still.
The lamp he has switched on has caused her to move from its source. He smiles a faint smile of approval, for it is in his training to do so when things turn out the same results, especially after twenty five years. He gently lies on the bed, and eases onto his side. He props his head on his pillow looking at her at eye level. If he could have done this when studying Cepheid stars! He looks at her with renewed wonderment and remembers once viewing the Earthshine, the faint glow of the moon when the side facing Earth is dark, and he feels a hushed theory beginning to form complex formulas in his head. He stops it in order to assess her majesty.
She has pulled the sheets closer to her chin, and mumbles about him coming to bed. Her snore lowers sweeter to a different frequency of vibration, much like the pulsating stars that he had calculated for so long.
"It is morning. It is time to wake, love."
"Yes." He had heard this same answer all his bright, celestial life with her.
She opens her eyes and looks at him. He looks into her eyes for a long time--still intense, but soft with age. They remind him of the Milky Way, no an Elliptical galaxy, no better still, a Flare star.
--No, he thinks. Her eyes remind him of a nothing else. There is no calculation, nor could ever be. She is of the breadth that only one possible thing in all its grandeur could ever compare: Herself.
How the cosmos in all its radiance and complexity had come so far, from the quiet negated time that had been created by God, and kept fully embraced in a protective manner; and how abiding by its occasion, traveled perpetually through space to the further expansion of this woman. This puzzlement of a star that lay before him, that wanted to burst with super-nova joy at being combined with him, had finally come to rest in this moment, in this very minute complex of a moment in his wife's face. He thought, how beautiful all this is which could be answered with a simple yes.