Fortunately there are some good days when I can almost forget that I have multiple myeloma.  Then it somehow sneaks back into the picture in most curious of ways.

“Is it going to be hot today, Daddy?” eight year old Lizzie asked me.

“Yep, it’s going to be in the upper 90s – the mercury is rising!”

She gave me her patented ‘hunh?’ look to which I have become accustomed.

“Mercury is what, Daddy?”

“Mercury is rising. You know what mercury is, right?”

“Mercury? Uh...oh, I know. It’s that crummy old car Mommy made you get rid of.”

“First of all, Mommy didn’t make me get rid of anything. She encouraged me.  And it wasn’t crummy; the Mercury just had a couple of dents, and a bad motor. Anyway, I’m not talking about the car or the planet Mercury or Mercury the messenger. I’m talking about the element.”

Again with the looks, except this time they came with a cute crinkled nose.

I fleetingly thought about trying to explain that elemental mercury is used inside a conventional thermometer and what an element is and how a change in temperature causes the mercury molecules to vibrate faster or slower which leads the mercury to expand or contract which changes the level of mercury in the thermometer’s glass tube which, in turn, allows us to measure the temperature.

I also fleetingly thought about chucking the whole thing and telling her to just go practice her violin before I got one of her oh-no-Daddy’s-trying-to-explain-science-again looks that she inherited from her older sister.

With resolve, I said: “Mercury is this really cool liquid metal that rises in a thermometer when it gets hotter. It’s going to be hot today, so the mercury is rising. Understand?”

She seemed satisfied with my lame answer, but then blurted out: “Mercury is liquid metal? Neat!”

Enthused by her obvious excitement, I went on to say that mercury, indeed, is wicked cool. It’s shiny and ‘liquidy’ at room temperature, and you can even play with it.

“You can play with it? Daddy, let’s play with some mercury!”

Oops!   Now I see why Karen gets nervous when she leaves me alone with the kids.

Thinking on my feet, I told her that we didn’t have any old-fashioned thermometers handy and that our digital thermometers didn’t have any mercury in them.

I knew that if I confessed that there was an old thermometer packed away somewhere, her curiosity would get the best of her, and the best of me, and we’d both somehow end up getting grounded by Mommy. So, I did the next best thing: YouTube!

We jumped on the Internet and found a fascinating array of videos showcasing people experimenting with mercury. Let’s face it, they were just playing with it.

Lizzie was captivated by the fact that mercury really is a liquid metal that is described as heavy and cool-to-the-touch because it’s a poor conductor of heat. It also looked a lot more fun than Silly Putty.

She was most intrigued by one video that showed mercury spilling onto a table top.  The shiny metal pool separated into a couple of dozen drops, each a perfect sample size of the mercury that poured out of the vial. The demonstrator then took an index card and pushed the drops back together into one big blob.

I’ll have to admit, I was jazzed watching the videos, too.

I shared that when I was her age, my buddies and I used to play with mercury in the school’s chemistry lab under the supervision of our science teacher.

I did not share with her that we also played with it at Chris G.’s house – without supervision.  We sat at the G.’s kitchen table as his mostly disinterested mom sipped tea, ate cookies, and gossiped, I mean visited, with her next-door neighbor.

To solidify my role as a responsible, interested parent, I told Lizzie that since mercury was a liquid, it was subject to evaporation and that while elemental mercury is relatively safe to handle, it’s the vapors or when the mercury is combined with other substances that it can be dangerous or even deadly.

Lizzie ‘oohed’ and ‘ahhed’ over the mercury videos.  Then her imagination kicked into high gear.

“Daddy, I wish mirrors were made up of mercury. Remember when I broke my princess mirror? If it was made of mercury, all I’d have to do is push the pieces back together and it would be like a shiny brand-new mirror.  Right now it has tape on it and I can’t see myself how everyone else sees me.”

Just as I was beginning to respond to her statement and tell her that mirrors in the 16th century actually had mercury backings, what she said next grabbed my attention:

“Daddy, I wish that your bones were like mercury. Not the liquid part, but the putting back together part.  We could put your bones back together and make it so you could walk better and stand taller and wouldn’t hurt anymore. And you could pick me up like you used to do before you were sick.”

Wow! Her wish hit me like a lightning bolt!  No matter how complicated, how hectic, how wonderful, how full my family’s lives become, our thoughts don’t wander far from myeloma.

As sad as that is, we have become like mercury. Myeloma scattered us in the beginning, but we have gradually pulled the pieces together.  And man do we shine!

Does mercury have anything to do with multiple myeloma? I doubt it. But to Lizzie and me, having mercury bones sounds pretty good.

“Daddy, if your Mercury was shiny like mercury, maybe Mommy woulda’ let you keep it!”

I love that kid!