My mom-my source of knowledge
With dark matter having more mass than the visible aspect of the universe (only 4% of the total density able to be viewed directly) and so little being known of it, I am still a die-hard fan of Stephen Hawking and his many views—regardless how many are ever so desperately trying to prove his theories correct or incorrect. A lot may have to do with the fact I am not a scientist, nor ever will be. At my age, I read. I read a lot, in fact—books, articles, television shows on science and space, magazines, and the Internet. I got them from my mom who pushed learning at a very young age.
I have all kinds of teachers of choice, depending on the day and the article I am working on. I do not have to sign up for an entire semester or a full year to obtain any knowledge–I just go get it. And today I am researching dark matter as it has been said that dark matter and dark energy serve as expressions of man’s ignorance. To make it short, I want to find out how ignorant I am. One of the magazines I enjoy reading is the New Scientist, both online and offline, as I have an excellent article called “Some solar flares may be caused by dark matter”.
My mom was a fan of National Geographic. When she died two years ago today, I was the child who went in and carried out every one of those magazines–going clear back to 1952. By myself. When my mom was a young girl she desperately wanted to go to school but in those days her brother had top pick. Women did not do such a thing. So her teacher was the National Geographic as she raised my three brothers and myself. Over the years she would sit at her kitchen table with the latest magazine out, attempting to beat some sense into me about what the world was….where it was going…and where it came from. Oh, I visited with her and pretended I know she was talking about.
My mind never began working until about two years before she died. Before we found out she had cancer. All of a sudden she just quit reading. The book was laid out in front of her as usual, but she would be staring out the kitchen window. I never fully realized how smart she was until after she died. I knew she was smart, I just didn’t know how smart. As the only daughter of a family of three brothers and now three grown sons, I now realize how frustrated she was in her quest of knowledge–at not wanted to be treated “ignorant” so she went out and received her teaching the best way she could. A magazine that I have rows of in my house now. My family wanted me to thrown them out, but it seemed rather sacrilegious to me at the thought.
There has not been a day gone by since she has died that I would do anything to be sitting across the table from that wise old woman, for just one more of our talks and discussions of the world. I wish desperately I had appreciated her so much more than I did. But like gets in the way, and we think someone will always be there. Now here it is, two years after she has died. And I am reading one of my new National Geograhic magazines at my kitchen table so I will not be ignorant either. Thanks, mom.
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