Studying Physics with My Daughter Poem by Jeanne Murray Walker

For years now I have heard the cracking of my memory,
reluctantly falling apart like an ancient building.
At first a little cement dust,
then portions of the wall—The Natural Resources
Of Brazil, the Shape Of Utah—nothing,
in the beginning, that left me structurally unsound,

but it grew to a steady pouring—Co-efficients,
Participles, and Tammany Hall—lying in
the chilly basement of my mind mixed up together.

This went on for years, no matter how much
I paid bricklayers an hour, the slow habits of love
like shadows sliding across the yard each day,
and putting children to bed every night
like the relentless caress of wind on the foundation.
They wore me down to vague certainties.

That's why, when Molly came in her blue flannel shirt and baggy jeans,
holding her physics book, I was surprised.
I hardly recognized my child
rolling up her sleeves in the sharp daylight,
hauling enormous words into the sun
slapping them together with new mortar
so fast I could barely get the idea. Do you know,
she asks, why water climbs a paper napkin?

She says water and the napkin both have Partial Charges.
She says the word Cohesion and the word Adhesion.
Her words fall into the rubble in my poor memory.
I tell her I used to believe in physics.

But experience has taught me what makes water climb the paper napkin.
The water loves the napkin and longs for it.

She turns her brilliant eyes on me.
She is the only person who can save me.
She goes to work, digging in the rubble.