heretic at the eschaton
I was eight years old, crying on the bathroom floor. Next to me, a 2005 copy of Scientific American, address to Mr H. - Room 112 Anacortes High School. My dad was a physics teacher.
He often hid the latest issue from me. Didn't want peanut butter and jelly on it. But if I asked, he'd pull an old copy from his green work bag.
This issue was different, I had overhead my parents discussing the cover story. They disagreed on the science, but agreed that I should not abe allowed to read it.
That evening, they went to the church - they were spending a lot of time there. My older sister made me a Hot Pocket, and went upstairs to watch tv. I ate half of the dinner and then walked to my parent's door. Quietly, I turned the handle and walked into the room. I found the magazine under the window, lit up by the dim street light.
The front was orange. An illustration of trees engulfed in wildfire. I tucked it under my shirt, and walked to the bathroom.
The climate, I came to realize, was changing. People had broken the earth, and now almost everything would die. Already, 72 species were going extinct everyday.
THe author forecasted a series of extreme weather events to take place in the 2060s. Famine, drought, fire, hurricanes. I was already so sad about the mass extinctions. The 2060s. When is that? I remembered a teacher telling me once that I would graduate high school in 2060. The class of 2060.
I imagined my family's house burning up, along with the rest of the island we lived on. It made me very afraid. I thought about everyone I knew, trapped in the orange fire. Panicked on the cover of Scientific American. Everything would die, and I would be a senior in high school - the class of 2060. I started sobbing, and my sister knocked on the the door.
She told me none of that would happen. That I would graduate in the 2016, and that God was holding the world. We took deep breaths together, and she told me to go finish my Hot Pocket. She could microwave it if I needed.
My nephew Frank will turn 5 this June. His little sister will graduate in 2042.
Last summer, as we shut the windows during a nearby wildfire, I asked Frank about climate change. He said the earth is very sick, but it will never die. I told him, "God is holding the world." He said, "I don't worship God. I say alien prayers. I pray for the aliens who have died on the moon."
We are scared - so we will mourn the future and pray for the past. We will devote ourselves to the certainties of fiction, and carefully avoid our uncertain reality. But sometimes, when we are very lucky, we will be uncertain together. Taking deep breaths with our older sister on the bathroom floor.