Summer term ends next Thursday, so I’m eagerly engaged in tying things together before the students leave for other pursuits. Last night, we started talking about chemical compatibility and the interaction of functional groups. I told them that this is why when you squash one ant the others all go berserk- they picked up on a chemical trail. Even among humans we make chemical connections which accounts sometimes for couples that don’t make much sense to you as well as holding people together in tough times. We are connected, and the connection is often chemical.
Unnurtured these connections fade. A few weeks ago I went through my cell phone contacts and removed everyone who ignores my calls or messages. No matter how much I may want to nurture something, if the other person isn’t interested, the connection will break and die. I have a few friends with whom I can pick up right where we left off as if it were yesterday, and even my late friend for all of the times she came to town and didn’t tell me or visit me had a relationship with me that she nurtured enough that we could pick up any time about anything and move it forward.
Often the connections fade because of things we actively do. I suspect most of the folks in my contact list who didn’t write back chose not to. I know many of them moved away, others got married to men who don’t like that we talk, and other things in life took on larger priorities than the one I hold. Other times, people burn the bridges, which I know well having burnt plenty of my own in my life. The one time I burned one hard, I still feel like it was the right thing to do. She doubled down and is living a mediocre life on the eastern seaboard.
Other times the connections fade owing to powers beyond our control. After almost seven years, my Motorola V3 RAZR finally quit working suddenly yesterday morning. Consequently, I lost at least for now all of the pictures I took with that phone and the contacts programmed into the phone’s memory. Among the pictures was a picture my late friend sent me only weeks before she died with the caption “This is my favorite picture of us”. Now I have no idea who is calling or how to get ahold of anyone. It’s not my fault the phone died. Sometimes things are beyond us.
Today is the anniversary of a connection I once made with someone special to me. I haven’t seen this person for over a year and only heard from them once since last summer when they decided it was time to part ways. As much as I thought this person really meant to reconnect, and as much as the connection still means to me, I don’t really know for sure what the point of it was. Where I cannot control who stays in my life, I can control what I do with those who do stay. So, I decided to visit both of my brothers and their families before the year ends because they’re not going to decide they don’t want to be my brothers anymore and disavow me. They say that blood is thicker than water, and at least in my case it certainly has proved to be the case.
As a chemistry professor, I still believe in chemical connections and chemical compatibility. I meet other people, and they have their strengths, but they’re just not the same. They don’t awaken the kind of responses in me like one person once did, and so there is only vapid response and fallow soil. The same principle that operates in the lymph nodes and activates memory cells to protect the organism from an infection still hasn’t excited my body to action. For my part, the connection was strong, and anything less just isn’t enough to get me to forget what once was mine.
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