bubbles

Yanking the under-sink cabinet against its childproof catch he asks, “Bubbles?” The bottles are in there. Straining the door, shoving his face into the dim crack, he can see them.

Bubbles was one of his first words, and for good reason: they are unlike anything else on earth. Glistening, transparent, nearly invisible – there, but almost not. Floating, nearly weightless. Spherical, purely mathematical, like a Platonic form. Swirling in light-caught color, and fleeting: their brief, magical existence commands attention until they vanish into nothingness.

I couldn’t tell you whose eyes they transfix more, his or mine. Bubbles are a phenomenon unto themselves, an element like fire, only touchable. Sometimes my son lets them fall onto his upturned face. I tried this myself, and yes, I could feel them, just barely, like a butterfly kiss of eyelashes against the cheek.

My adult mind yearns to know more. How thin are they, really? It would depend on the viscosity of the solution, of course – but just how thin is your average household variety? Has anyone measured or calculated? Have they been filmed in time lapse, to see precisely what transpires as they pop? How much do they weigh? Just how perfect is their shape? Gravity and fluctuations in air pressure make them oblong, I’m sure, but I’m more curious about the microscopic: are their surfaces absolutely smooth, or do they churn in miniature waves? I see colors shifting in channels, eddies – has anyone calculated the velocities of these currents?

Obviously my son’s not the only one bubbles mystify.

Several months ago he puzzled my wife by saying “Bubbles” when she changed our bedsheets. “There’s no bubbles here,” she responded, but he repeated the word. He said it again when she pulled out a Kleenex – looked straight into empty space and said, “Bubbles.” Was he seeing things? Imagining them?

Then as she strapped him into his carseat he did it again. She followed his gaze to the sunbeam leaning through the windshield, where dust particles drifted lazily.

“No, silly, that’s dust,” she corrected.

“Bubbles,” he insisted. And he was right – they floated, caught the light, were nearly invisible. Given a vocabulary of two dozen words he’d employed this one expertly, classifying a similarity neither my wife nor I had ever considered.

A few days ago he did it again: “Bubbles.” We looked over to see him standing beside a counter, arm upraised, eyes scrutinizing a two-liter bottle of Sprite. How had he noticed those little signs of carbonation from such a distance? – and below the label, and through green plastic, and in liquid? Evidently there’s no fooling his fine eye.

We blow bubbles together, each with his own no-spill bottle. His wand-to-mouth aim still needs work so mainly I produce and he assesses, popping with fingers and wand. When I catch a specimen on my wand and offer it to him he leans in for a taste test. At times I use a wand-caught bubble to bounce up the others, keeping them airborne. I hadn’t known this trick when I was a kid – it took turning 35 and becoming a father to learn.

Every once in a while, perhaps once a month, when my son lifts a dripping wand and blows at it, the probabilities of random variations intersect, an unintentional alignment occurs, and a few bubbles actually emerge.

Then my wife and I explode with affirmation, clapping, shouting, “Hooray! You did it!” Such a reaction surprises him and he looks at us funny, as if we’re soft in the head, because in his mind nothing unusual or even different has happened – he’s been blowing bubbles all along.