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Time had form. In Ted’s head.
In first grade, he learned about orbit. The Earth flew around the sun in a circle. The circle was a year. And that was time.
Growing older entailed gaining more information about the galaxy, the universe, having previous knowledge negated. Earth wasn’t a circle, and it didn’t move in a circle, and a planet couldn’t move in a circle—he’d asked, and his science teacher had said no. The planets weren’t all on one plane, and there was much more out there, so much more, things orbiting things orbiting things. Still, while sitting in the backseat, looking out at the night, he’d think up the image of a perfectly circular planet that had a perfectly circular orbit.
In a science class in college that he failed out of, he learned that a circular orbit was possible, though highly unlikely.
Michelle’s friend had a dogwood planted when her child was born, and Ted loved the idea. Bleary-eyed yet elated from his entry into fatherhood, he insisted they didn’t wait. The same week their son was born, they planted a tree outside their house. There was something so gosh darn amazing about it. He’d be able to watch both a little boy and a little sapling get bigger. Both had established their roots in the same place.
The tree grew taller than his son in an instant, and soon Ted could point up at it and tell little Henry that it used to be his height. And then Henry would giggle, thinking his dad was telling such a funny joke. Flush against this memory was the time Ted sat cross-legged in the front yard, as Henry scrambled around the grass with a green handball in hand. He aimed it at the trunk, ran after the ball when he missed, and gleefully apologized when it hit the bark. Sorry mr. tree, sorry mr. tree, sorry mr. tree.
There was a time a few years later when Ted and Michelle stepped outside to check on how Henry’s play date was going. The kids were playing tag, and the tree had a smiley face carved in its bark. A sharp knife was discarded at its base. They looked at each other, in a semi-amused guess this is what it looks like now way, before Ted got the kids to stop their horsing around to teach them all about a little something called staying away from knives.
He liked having it right out front. There through it all, growing, changing, and being its seasonal self while he carried the groceries in one arm and a sleeping baby in the other, while he stayed in the car and waited for Brown Sugar by The Rolling Stones to play to completion on the radio, while he and Michelle shared an ice cream cone on the steps on a day where Henry was at day camp.
He didn’t know how much he liked having it there until Kansas was a place he knew in Julys. Further out from UTC, Ted had to acclimate to a hefty temperature increase, and he blasted the AC so much that he wondered if just one guy could melt the ice caps.
It was different this time around, picking up Henry from a blue house with a driveway that could fit two cars side-by-side, and a cat inside that stuck its head between the blinds and peered out in a very catlike way. Now when Henry said he was going home, this was where he was referring to. Michelle picked a nice new place.
Towards the end of this year’s trip, he was on his way over to pick up Henry, but went the wrong way. Muscle memory caused him to take a left turn onto a street that ought to have been named Memory Lane.
He checked the time, and he was way early, so he continued to head west. There was an itchy feeling between his shoulder blades, and just seeing what he needed to see and getting it over with would be the remedy.
The Whitley’s cars were parked in the Whitley’s driveway, and the Petersons’ mailbox was still committing to its Tower of Pisa act.
He pulled up in front of their old place. Everything was the same, except the house was more visible from the street. A stump was all that broke the greenness of the grass. No leaves or branches obscured the house. Ted sat in the car looking out the driver’s window until there was no chance he’d be on time picking up Henry.
The dashboard beeped when he unbuckled his seatbelt. Ted walked over swiftly, and even though he knew exactly what he’d find, he counted the rings. For good measure, he counted them again.