Snow Day

Today is the kind of day to stay inside, curled up on the sofa with a mug of hot chocolate and a blanket. It's December 9, the day after my 34^th birthday, and snow is falling in the Tri-Cities. It's wet, sticking snow – the kind that's good for making snowmen, snow forts or snow angels. I looked outside a few minutes ago and there was a boy, probably about 10, with a snowball in his fist, arm wound back like a pitcher, and a look of delightful expectation on his face. I imagine it was his first snowball fight of the year.

Rather than stay inside, I felt inspired to drive to Columbia Park and take a walk along the river. The park was deserted, and the snowfall so thick I could barely see the water. But it felt good to walk, to be alone, to be cold, to have snow on my face and in my hair. It was a time of simple, natural bliss – the kind that's been missing from my life for the last several months – a time of communing with the sublime, of reawakening the Romantic in my soul.

There was a time in college when I was captivated by the Romantic poets, Wordsworth chief among them. Their words inspired in me something buoyant and alive. I could walk across campus and not just see, but feel the beauty in every leaf, every flower, every stone. I could feel it on every breath of wind. I would walk with my face to the sun, soaking in the expanse of the world and feeling confident about my place in it.

As I grew older, my enjoyment for simple beauties was displaced by the stress of living an adult life – work, balancing my checkbook, paying the car insurance, grocery shopping, vacuuming, working out, trying to get enough sleep, heartbreak. These things have filled every crack and cranny of my life, demanding attention and importance, until there was no room left for anything else.

I'm trying to do a better job of finding the hidden spaces in my life where things like a love of Wordsworth still lurk, and the hidden hours that I can spend walking in the snow.

What's in a moment?

I've spent the last few weeks immersed in the world of Mileva Einstein Maric, the first wife of Albert Einstein. To be more specific, I've been reading Einstein's Daughter: The Search for Lieserl by Michele Zackheim. The book chronicles the author's efforts to solve the mystery of Mileva and Albert Einstein's daughter, born before their marriage and so considered illegitimate. The little girl disappears from the record when only a year old, and no one knows whether she died, was adopted, or merely hidden because of the shame her existence brought upon her family.

The book is largely speculative and one-sided. I'll have to pick up a more objective biography of Albert Einstein at some point to get a better picture of him, I think. But I'm haunted nonetheless by the crushing sadness of Mileva's life as portrayed by Zackheim.

Mileva starts with such promise -- likely could have been a great mathematician or scientist in her own right -- until she succumbs to love for her genius, and Albert becomes her world to the extent she fails her university exams and ultimately gives up her first-born child as a condition of her marriage to the man she adores. Even though their marriage may have legitimized little Lieserl, Albert apparently feared the child's existence would jeopardize his chances at gainful employment as a patent clerk in Switzerland. Mileva finds happiness with Albert for a time, but he eventually grows weary of her obsessive love and dissatisfied with her age and leaves her for another woman.

Mileva looks deeply sad in nearly all of the photographs reprinted in the book. In addition to the loss of her great love, Albert, and the loss of her daughter, Lieserl, she had to contend with another child, Eduard, who descended into severe mental illness and had to be institutionalized. The expense of Eduard's care drove Mileva into poverty. Albert shared with her his Nobel Prize money and some real estate holdings, but it wasn't enough.

I keep thinking about why Mileva's story resonates so strongly with me. I know the feeling of obsessive love for someone else, of becoming subservient to that love to the exclusion of self. I wonder what Mileva could have been if she'd been less desperate for Albert's affection and had more equality in their relationship. I wonder what Lieserl could have been if she'd been raised by her parents. Would she have grown to greatness? Would her parents have been more willing to claim her as their own if she'd been a son instead of a daughter?

Mileva had moments of happiness with her Albert. Perhaps that's all happiness is. Moments. Flashes. Impressions. A glance across a cafe. The intimacy of sharing a bite of cake from the same fork. Those instances when it seems finally that everything is aligned in your favor, when a touch is warm and conversation flows like wine. But the question, the unanswerable question, remains. Are those bright, fleeting moments enough to fill a life? If not, how do we survive in the void that remains?