It was the April of 1998 when Mother asked me for a favor. She asked me, quite petulantly to write a letter. But, she stressed that it wasnt just any letter. She wanted me to write a letter to Albert Einstein. Precisely, my reaction was a rather rude scoff in her face and a rather intrigued subconscious, for Mr. Einstein was long gone and any such letter I would send would merely be a thin paper in his box of grievances. But, mother felt differently. She argued that heaven was for real and that somehow, somewhere, he would read it. And I couldnt argue with that logic especially with Mothers rosary in her hand. So, I complied and brought out a fresh piece of paper to talk to Sir Einstein about the latest troubles at St. Marys High School. What an odd and unimpressive topic for someone as impressive as him. For what else could I talk about? I didnt have a proclivity for physics. Instead, I stayed in the comfort zone I was brought up in, where the only physics I ever understood was Newtons first law for it explained my civil war in getting up early for school and my reluctance to stop completing an editorial at night. But still, being the obedient daughter that I was, I followed Mothers requests, with very little thought onto why she asked me. Dear Albert Einstein, I am sorry if I am troubling you at this peculiar hour. I thought it was most appropriate to write to you on your 119 th birthday. I know, that it is oddly impossible for one to live that long. But, sir, with all due respect, everyone in this world has lived this long, at minimum because as long as one is alive to mourn for them or love them, they are still alive in every thought, moment, and instantaneous second of life. So, with that being said, Alles Gute zum Geburtstag. I do hope that Mother was right when she told me that the angels would somehow send this to you. But, I am not a big fan of middlemen. And, I hope that you are reading this right now as I am writing it, because that makes it all the more raw. So, before I begin telling you of my life, I would like to at least tell you about me. I feel that I do not need your introduction because I know who you are. Every man alive knows who you are. Ive heard stories about you from my teachers and the boys in the courtyard talk about you, while I stealthily eavesdrop, divulging my discoveries in my latest Agatha Christie novel. But, I highly doubt that you know who I am. I doubt you overheard any angel ruminating over me. I am not your definition of a scientist, but I am in the most crude form, an observer of the world in its purest element. And in that reasoning, I am a mathematician, intuitive in the nature, in that I believe every problem has a solution, imaginary or not. But theoretically, I am neither. And if this letter is solely by me, I do not believe in the power of the Almighty, but in the power of words. If writing can link the past, the present and the future and prove that what humans feared or loved yesterday, is what humans will fear or love today or tomorrow, then life itself is simply a repeating decimal and that all events are just isotopes of an element, the difference being the people. I know that you are probably wishing that this is some brilliant assemblage of works crediting your theory of relativity or the theory of everything and to be honest, I do too. But, Im not a genius in that aspect of life. I understand people and so far, I understand you very well. You were stamped as someone who couldnt do so, but little by little you tore away the label until you were nothing that package told us you were. My point of this long soliloquy is that you exceeded all expectations, and now maybe its my time to do the same. Sincerely, Joanne Rand And so that day, I sent the letter and I didnt show it to Mother or Father because of my Satan-like remark on God. And I waited for a week hoping for a reply from the dead genius himself until I got one. A very intangible, abstract answer of the single word And? Of course, I was confused, and brain dead expecting a much better answer than the one I got, but to the likes of his response, I kept writing. For months, I sent letters until one blessed day where And turned to:
Hello Jo, I know you might be very inclined towards dropping our conversations, but I am here to write under my own name and not under the name of my father, who was a great man, who unlike many others, indulged in the happiness of life. He would like your letters. He would like the satire and the honesty and the rawness that you portray. I knew I wasnt talking to Einstein and that I was talking to an accompaniment of sorts, but I never guessed that an heir to the scientific empire was writing to me, but I continued because the ominous voice told me to.
You see, I am here to tell you something my father told me. He told me to never question the ability of an artist, because intelligence was in every one, but very few people had creativity, which is merely intelligence at its best. He told me to never scoff at them, for they are the brilliant ones. He would love your writing and your analogies because you would be the artist he would talk to me about. I hope you know that just because I am not answering doesnt mean I am not listening, for sometimes silence speaks louder than words. It is the comfortable silence of a listening friend that saves a man from ending his life and it is the comfortable silence of a friend that encourages a man to let go of his emotions. From your last letter, I understood that you were worried about your book manuscript not getting accepted for publication. And I cannot console you if you do not for I am merely the heir to the throne, but the king would have said that if a man did not reach his goal once, he would never have found the drive to accomplish it. Sincerely, The heir to the throne
And in my last letter to Einstein, I took out a fresh piece of paper, and wrote my final entry, for my childhood had departed and I was changing and the world that I knew was gone.
Dear Mr. Einstein, This is but my last letter of the collection of hundreds of letters I have sent to you in the few past years. I have learnt quite a bit from you and I will continue to learn quite a bit from you. I wanted my last letter to you to be memorable, a single account of the world as I know it and how it will continue to be. Once upon a time, there was a big world. And the main character was a little girl, the youngest of a strict Christian family, who was told that anything was possible. Anything at all as long as you believed. But, that was just a fragment of the idea. Anything is possible if you believed in God was what her mother told her. And so she did, while reading stories of science fiction by H.G. Wells and Ray Bradbury. And she learnt much more than she ever thought. She turned to books for help to overcoming this difficult enigma of the world. And throughout the wave of life, she coursed the seas with prowess and independence. And when the waves crashed on her parade, she turned to books to help her stand on her feet again. Whilst in second grade, when she learnt of the resurrection of Jesus in full detail and precision, she kept that information in the back of her head stored in a tiny crevice, so when she entered seventh grade, she read The Insanity of God in the corner of Walsh Brook Library on rainy April Sundays. And when she was twelve and taught the profound weight of being a woman in society, she read Little Women and admired Jo, who had a hot-head like her and a deep hatred for being a girl. She learnt so much from the thick bounded pages in books and she learnt so little from the text books and pamphlets she read for school. And then, when she was fifteen and asked on her first date by a Jewish boy, she read Romeo and Juliet in vain hope that she would survive the night. The bottom line is that this girl found refuge and safe haven and the truth in the world of fiction, and found lies in the real world. It was then that this girl determined that she would read every book written to satisfy her hunger for the unknown. She was parented by the books to stand on her two feet and achieve the unknown. And finally, when Harry Potter, was published last year, she found a new Bible. One where the good men defeated the bad men, and that magic was real. She learnt that the magic Harry had was inside of her instead of inside a wand. She learnt the ways of the world in the way Pocahontas read the colors of the wind or in the way Harry followed his prophecy, and made the world hers. So naturally, I am sure, you guessed that this girl is me. And naturally, I know who you are and completely disagree, you are not the heir to Einsteins throne, but the king to your own. So, I hope one day, you are crowned king and I need only thank you for listening to the stories that have always only lived in my head, so that one day, they may live again and again and again.
Sincerely, Joanne Rand
And I sent my letter and waited for days until I got a reply, one so familiar yet so full of meaning. And I laughed, and smiled, and cried at my new found friend, a page of blotchy handwriting which held more truth then I ever anticipated. It said in thick, inky scrawl:
The world we read about is so much better and different than the ones we have seen, but who is to say that that world is not real?