One Billion Seconds

Dearest Rachel –

I mentioned the other day in passing about large numbers like millions and billions, and told you I’d go into more details soon enough. Well, soon enough has arrived – well, in fairness, it’s already come and gone, and I didn’t notice it at the time, but that’s neither here nor there. In any event…

Consider the second; a small, barely noticeable length of time (unless you have your hand on a hot stove, at which point, a second is an interminable period. By contrast, those Saturday mornings we would spend together felt like seconds despite being hours. Einstein would probably point out that this is exactly what he meant by the concept of relativity). But when a large enough number of them are taken together, they begin to grow significant. A million seconds adds up to just under eleven and a half days; a billion seconds is approximately thirty-two years; and if you wanted to go back a trillion seconds, well, that would bring you all the way back to approximately 30,000 B.C. You keep multiplying everything by a thousand, and it starts to stack up in a hurry.

This means that, if I understand these calculations correctly, Daniel is within striking distance of a billion seconds on this earth, and you’re missing the moment (unless, of course, you’re keeping an eye on us like I keep asking you to). To be sure, he was there for both of us when we reached our billionth second, as well as our billion-and-a-half second marks (and yes, you managed that shortly before Thanksgiving in 2017). Not that any of us realized it at the time; I mean, who keeps track of such details?

Certainly not me; when I finally got around to looking it up, I discovered that his billionth second had rather long since come and gone, completely without notice, way back on February 27th. Since it was just before noon on a Monday – meaning I was at the ‘office’ (probably putting something together to write to you about) – he was most likely by himself in the house at the time (Logan doesn’t count, since he would have been up in his room at the time, on the job). But hey… better late than never, in terms of acknowledgment.

In any event, I thought I’d mention all this to coincide with his birthday, the solstice (which happened yesterday – another thing I mistimed; we’re so used to Midsommar being on his birthday that we’re caught off guard when it isn’t) and everything else that goes along with this moment… or is supposed to. It’s a chance to step back and realize how much time has passed.

A billion seconds…

Sure, it’s a big number, but those are small increments of time. We think of them as infinitesimal as we experience them one after another. But once they pile up in sufficient numbers, well… here we are.

Happy Birthday, Daniel. You’ve survived over one billion seconds on this planet.

I’d ask where we go from here, honey, but you have the answer, and you’re not telling us – as if you were able to. Still, if you could keep an eye on us, and wish us luck, it would be appreciated. After all, we’re still going to need it.