Clocks close by each other keep time "at nearly the same rate." But the further apart they are, the most disparate the time is. If a traveler goes to a nearby town, he can return to his own city with some degree of success, as his body adjusts to the local time, unaware of the discrepancies. But if he travels to a distant location, he may return to find children grown, his family scattered, a different era than when he left. The time in the towns is different, but so too is the "rate of heartbeats, the pace of inhales and exhales," as Lightman writes in his book, Einstein's Dreams. In this world, "time flows at different speeds in different locations."
The day my first son was married, I watched him and his bride kneel together, but it was if I had traveled and returned to a place where time had sped by me. I saw him, the man, but also the boy leaping off the yellow school bus, lunchbox in hand, with a huge toothy grin. I noticed how handsome he looked in his wedding clothes, his wife luminescent at his side, but wondered how time had seemed to move past me and had deposited me there. It was bittersweet, only made better by the advent of his son.
I can find again my boy in this young child's face.
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