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“But she has power, right? She can tell your whole class to be quiet, or to sit down, or that it’s time for recess, right? That’s power.”
“Well, yeah, but that doesn’t mean she’s agod.”
“And just because I can hold lightning, and you can hold fire, doesn’t mean we’re gods.” Even if that was what they’d called us once. “It means we’re people with power. But when we give a title to that, a title that… That makes it seem like we matter more than someone else, that we’re moreimportant, that’s dangerous, kid. When you have power, you have to use it right. Your teacher, she uses that power over your class to make sure you guys learn as much as you can. She gets everyone to quiet down so you can focus, and she makes you stay on the playground at recess because if you don’t, you could run out into the road and get hit by a car, right?”
“Right…” He was still squinting at me. “But then, wouldn’t that mean that everyone’s a god over something?”
“It means the opposite.No oneis a god,” I said. His face told me he was still having a hard time understanding. “Alright. Let’s try this again.” I tucked one leg under me, facing him. “Ya know how your friends go to church, and we don’t?” He nodded. “Well, when I was a kid, I did go to church. I believed in God the way that your friend Eli does. But then, when I got older, I started learning more about him. And when I was a kid, they only told me the good things. That he was loving, and kind, and he cared about me. But when I got older, I learned about some of the really bad things he did.”
“Like what?”
The list was too long, and too brutal, to share with my almost-seven-year-old. “Reallybad things. Things I’ll tell you when you’re older. But that’s not the point. The point is, I was told God was perfect. That he was infinitely good. And when I got older, and I heard about all these really bad things, I realized that wasn’t true. He was powerful, but he wasn’t perfect.”
“What’s that mean? Ifinite?”
“Infinite is something that goes on forever. Something that never ends.”
“Oh.” Micah’s face was still riddled with confusion. “So he’s real, he’s just not good?”
It was more complicated than that, but… “Yeah. He’s real. But he’s good and bad, just like we’re all good and bad. He’s a man who has power. Just like I’m a man who has power, and one day, you’ll be a man who has power.”
“So…” Micah’s brows crunched down into his eyes, thinking hard. “No one’s a god. That’s what you mean.”
“That is what I mean, yeah.”
“Hmm.” He thought for a moment. “So he didn’t create matter and energy.”
“No, buddy. He didn’t create matter and energy.”
“That makes sense, because if he’s real, he has tobematter and energy. So he couldn’t have created it because he is it, too.” I had no idea how he wrapped his head around all these big concepts at such a young age. “But because he’s matter and energy, just like we’re all matter and energy, heisifinite, right? Maybe not ifinite good, but he’s ifinite, just like we are.”
“Infinite, you mean?” I smiled.
“Yeah,infinite.”
No matter how much it pained me… “Yeah. I guess he is.”
“And so am I, and so is Tink, and so is… everyone, right?”
As my slogan had been once upon a time, it still rang true now. Nothing ever dies. “Yeah, buddy. Everyone is infinite.”
Smiling up at the glow in the dark stars, he nodded. “I like that. I still wanna know where everything started, but I guess… I guess, if everything is infinite, if matter turns into energy, and energy turns to matter, then… Then maybe you’re right. Some things justare.”
I roughed up his hair. “Now that you got your head sorted out, you ready to get some sleep?”
Laughing, he rolled onto his side and bunched up the blankets beneath his face. “Yeah, I guess. Sweet dreams.”
“Sweet dreams, kid.” I leaned in and kissed his forehead. “Love you.”
“Love you too.”
As I flicked out his lamp and walked from the room to the nursery, I smiled. I couldn’t wait until he was grown. He was gonna be the most interesting person to have a conversation with.
But fucking stars, how I’d missed him.
A few thousand years ago, he didn’t ask questions about matter, and energy, and gods, but he asked about the stars, and how we made egresses, and why spells worked, and how he wanted to figure it all out. I’d told him that maybe one day, he could find outwhyeverything was what it was, but I was happy knowing what I needed to and not worrying about things I didn’t have to.
That’d always been my way. I didn’t need a reason for everything.
