Quicksilver

My brother broke the thermometer. Or maybe my mother broke the thermometer. Memory is a funny thing - you think you remember something happening when it happened to somebody else. Or maybe you patched two things together, or maybe something completely different happened, but you don't realize it. I do remember that strange liquid pooling. My mother used the end of the glass tubing to scoop up little bits of glittery silver molten, and pushed them towards each other until they joined. She let me play with it for a few seconds after telling me not to lean over it. In my adulthood, I now have a frame of reference to describe this experience. The T1000 in "Terminator 2" is composed of metal that rejoins like the mercury. There was a scene where John Connor shoved a chunk of metal off the back of their vehicle, it bounced down the road to rejoin the body of the T1000. 

The mercury was viscuous but fluid, it shimmered and fascinated me. After she had put it up out of reach, my mother told me it was poisonous and even breathing in the air around it could harm me. Using the edge of the glass tubing, then a piece of paper, she scraped up all the mercury, gently shaking each bit into the shimmering pool collecting on the saucer. She told me to never use a vacuum or a broom while cleaning up mercury. At her request, I retrieved the powdered sulfur from the shed leftover from dehydrating apricots. Mom sprinkled the sulphur on the floor, then gave me a special job for the afternoon: keeping my brothers out of the kitchen.


I know now that the mercury and sulphur created mercuric sulfide, which Mom used a whisk broom to gather. I don't remember how she disposed of the mercury. I only remember the quicksilver or mercury, named after Mercury, god of speed and mobility. Chemical symbol is Hg, atomic number 80, short for hydr- (water) and argyros (silver). A coin floats in a puddle of mercury due to a combination of buoyant force and surface tension. Mercury's unique electronic configuration is that electrons fill up all the available subshells 1-6. Liquid silver.


Quicksilver is also something that moves or changes very quickly, that's impossible to define, to hold, to contain. What is this blog about? Music, languages, math, food and food science. Travel. Anxiety. Facing your fears. Grief. Friends, loyalty, passion. And an ode to my mother, the artist who became a chemist who became a minister.