Theories of Relativity

Miriam wakes Dylan on Christmas morning. She brings him breakfast and tells him he can wash up in his grandfather’s washroom. When Dylan finishes breakfast, he checks the card on a poinsettia plant sitting on the windowsill; it’s from Jack and his wife. Dylan pulls the curtains to look out the window; snow covers everything.

In the light, Dylan takes a better look at his grandfather and smooths down his hair. His grandfather stirs but does not wake. Miriam returns, and Dylan asks if she’s sure this is his grandfather. She tells him it is and that she’s known his grandfather all her life.

While she’s attending to the medical chart, she nonchalantly informs Dylan that his father, Phil, arrived at the farm the week before “out of the blue” (162). She compares Phil’s abrupt arrival to Dylan’s. Dylan is taken aback by this information. Miriam offers to give Dylan a ride to the farmhouse when she finishes her shift in an hour. Dylan doesn’t accept or reject.

Dylan asks if his grandfather can hear him, and Miriam says it wouldn’t hurt to talk to him. She leaves, but Dylan can’t find words, so he reads his Einstein book instead.