In the well-discussed theoretical physics thought experiment by Erwin Schrödinger, if you are handed a box that has a cat in it, you may have a box that has a live cat, or a box that has a dead cat. Until you open the lid, you don’t whether the cat is alive or dead. The paradox of “Schrödinger’s Cat” theorem is that, until you take off the lid, the cat cannot be either alive or dead; he argues that the cat is both alive and dead, and that the fate of the cat can’t be known until it is seen. His physics point is that the result of a phenomenon depends more on the viewer than on the phenomenon.
I’m not arguing subatomic physics here, but I do believe that in many respects, I am "Schrödinger’s Son.” Let me explain.
To do so, I need to start here with my opinion on a controversial topic, abortion, for reasons that will become clear later. One of the arguments that the pro-life movement uses in its attacks on abortion rights is some variation of this: ‘you can’t abort a fetus because that zygote might become the next Beethoven.” This argument is ridiculous, and one need only look at “Schrödinger’s Cat” to see why. Of course, Beethoven became Beethoven. But we can say that because we’ve long ago opened the lid on the box that contained Beethoven. If we were alive in 1770 and were debating whether a fetus would become Beethoven, that’s a fallacy; that’s “Schrödinger’s Beethoven.” The lid is still closed. That may become Beethoven, but it just as possibly could become Napoleon, a pauper, a seamstress, or Hitler’s grandfather. We can only know these things in hindsight, after the lid has been lifted.
So I look back on all that I have been through the last 12 years, and I have to say I have sizable gratitude that Ellen decided not to abort me in a back alley. (This was before Roe vs. Wade.) However, the only reason I can have gratitude that she did is because the lid is off of the box. If I had been adopted into a family that beat me, and I became a hardened criminal, would that make my gratitude less meaningful? What if I had died of an infant’s disease at 1 month before being adopted? Would I still be grateful?
No. Gratitude in this case is a “Schrödinger” moment, it only exists because the lid is off the box. In the case of women understanding their options, I firmly stand behind their right to choose while the lid is still closed.
Looking at this from another angle, I think Tom can clearly think of this as a “Schrödinger’s Son” moment, but only now that the lid has been taken off. The connection we have is obvious, and it feels like it is 57 years of father/son bonding crammed into a couple of days, without all of the father/son fighting crap that so many go through. It’s been great. But the lid is off now, for both of us. We know who we are. We’re not suffering a father’s early adult fathering insecurities, or a teenage son’s indignant, stupid rebellion. We’ve been thrust into this, lid off, as an 85 year old man who has finally experienced one of life’s greatest joys, and as a 57 year old man, well past the worst cramps of his insecurities who is finally discovering what it feels like to have a real father, even if it’s condensed into just a few days, weeks or years.
Frankly, our whole relationship is kind of a reverse-Schrödinger’s thought experiment: If I had been born to Ellen and Tom and stayed in a family relationship with them, what would that have looked like?
In an alternate universe, I can picture that as being total chaos. Ellen probably wouldn’t have stopped drinking, Tom probably wouldn’t have had the life-saving help that he got in this dimension. And God knows what hell I would have experienced or put them through. In that alternate universe, I can clearly see that I am a complete disaster.
In this universe, there was only one outcome that makes sense, where I have the people I need to make my life work and create a meaningful existence where I try to change the world through music, where Ellen gets sober and finds her lifelong love, where Tom pulls his life together and meets Nancy, and they both eventually meet the son that they likely unwittingly procreated in a brief tryst in a Colorado snowbank and introduce him to the rest of his huge family. I am “Schrödinger’s Son,” lid off the box, living my best life.
