The Time Traveler's Mom

Tonight I fixed waffles for dinner. I really owed Sam since I have fixed soup a couple of times recently and since soup is not his favorite, I made him waffles, which are. I found this great recipe for Belgian waffles that you make with yeast and put in the refrigerator to rise during the day, so when you come home, all you have to do is pull them out, mix in some eggs and baking soda and hop to it. Love it. I even had time to make fresh whipped cream and slice up a whole bunch of strawberries. And it sure doesn't hurt that Matt was in the bacon frying mood.

(Yeah, I know, tomorrow is WW Wednesday. I was a good girl today--I kind of planned for this. And I only ate one tiny little piece of bacon. But that whipped cream....holy smokes. I just had to say a Hail Mary and dive in. There was really no other choice.)

ANYWAY, we're eating happily and all of a sudden Gabby starts talking about time travel. This segways into this very philosophical, ethereal discussion of different theories of time. I'm not sure how. I was just feeding Alice a strawberry and making yummy noises and all of a sudden I hear Matt say something like, "Well, Einstein would say it this way..." Nice. Gabby listens intently to what Matt has to say and then says something like, "So I believe that time is all running together and right now everything is happening...JFK is getting assassinated, Martin Luther King is eating a sandwich, I'm being born. That's what makes time travel possible, and that's how I think time works."

And my mouth drops, and I think, Who thinks up this stuff? My 11 year old daughter? Seriously? When I was in my first year of college, I sat through the mind rape that is Intro to Philosophy and heard people say things like this and I thought, "Why does their mind do this stuff?" I'm a very practical person in a lot of ways--I'm creative, but I never let my mind move to time travel or something so...out of the box. But here sits Gabby, just talking about this stuff with this air of confidence, this total surety of her knowledge. I love it. I love just being totally surprised by my children.

And then she just bursts into adolescent laughter. That full-on body racking laughter. Her face turns red and she almost pulls in on herself she's laughing so hard. And she goes, "So if everything is going on simultaneously, in some other time, RIGHT NOW, I'm POOPING!" Cackle cackle cackle.

Ah, yes. The 11 year old rears it's potty humored head. Philosophy can wait.