“There you are, husband mine,” said Mamie, entering the living room while running one hand through her salt-and-pepper hair.  She had just picked up an apron from the kitchen and was spinning it in the air with her other hand like a majorette twirling her baton.  “What are you doing?”

         “Reading a physics article,” said Solly, his feet propped up on the coffee table, his graying hair a nice contrast to the chocolate-brown  couch.  “Trying to stay sharp.  Join me.  What’s for dinner?”

         “Don’t know yet.  Lots of choices.  I’ll sit a minute.  What’s the article about?”

         “Quantum theory.  I’ve never understood it.”

         “Maybe soup and salad for dinner.  Physics?  I had a physics course at community college, but it was decades ago.  Tell me about quantum theory.”

         “It relates to particles, but I suppose it could relate to events, too.  Quantum theory states that particles exist as possibilities in a bunch of different places simultaneously.*  A quantum wave form describes all the possibilities mathematically.*”

         “Like soup,” said Mamie, stretching.

         “What?” asked Solly, his eyebrows raised.

         “We’re having soup for dinner, but we don’t know what kind yet.”

         “I don’t think the author meant soup when he wrote the article.”

         “But you love my soup.”

         Solly put the article on his lap, folded his hands on top of it, and sighed.  “Yes, I do,” he said.

         “And I have recipes,” said Mamie.

         “You do,” said Solly.

         “We can pick one that uses up stuff in the refrigerator,” said Mamie.

         Solly frowned.  “That’s true,” he said, fingering the magazine.

         “What?” asked Mamie.

         “Well, it’s when the quantum wave form collapses* that the possibilities become a single definite particle or event or whatever that somebody detects.”

         “Right.  That’s when we choose the recipe.”

         “What?”

         “The recipe.  That tells us what specific stuff is going into the soup.  The recipe is a guide.  Like the quantum wave form is a guide.”

         “Something has to cause the possibilities to collapse into a definite state.”

         “Like what?”

         Solly paused, organizing his thoughts.  “Gravity. The wave form may collapse from the effects of gravity on the system*.”

         “That works for soup, too.”  Mamie waved her apron.

         “It does?”

         “Sure.  We pick a recipe like that yummy parsnip-and-apple soup recipe we got out of the newspaper.”

“We do?”

“I put on Ye Olde Apron.  We get out parsnips, onion, apple, potato, garlic, other stuff, and the four spices —  three C’s and a G.”

         “Three C’s and a G?  It sounds like a musical group.”

“Not the Spice Girls.  Anyway, then you and I peel, chop, measure,” said Mamie.  “That changes the form of things and partly commits us.”

         “To what?” Solly eyed her like she had turned into a harpsichord.  He could hear the melodramatic music in his head.

         “To that particular kind of soup.  Similar to quantum theory.”

         “Quantum theory?”

         “Sure.”

         “No, it isn’t.”

         “It’s not?”

         “Making soup is not quantum theory.”

         “It is like quantum theory,” said Mamie.  “We move from an indefinite, imaginative world with many possibilities to a definite world with a definite outcome we can see.  The parts become the soup.”

         Solly goggled at her.  “What about gravitational effects,” he said at last.

         “When you make soup, you have to drop vegetables into the boiling pot,” said Mamie.  “If not for gravity, the vegetables would just be drifting around in the air.  To avoid that, we’d have to eat everything like astronauts:  all mushed up out of a toothpaste tube.”

“I’d rather avoid the vegetables altogether,” said Solly.

“Gravity commits us, makes us pick a path,” Mamie continued.  “Plus, vegetables change when heat is applied.  They get softer, which is the beginning of collapse.  Doesn’t that article show that quantum wave form thingie collapsing to make a definite choice?”

         “You surprise me, Mamie.  There’s an unexpected logic here,” said Solly.  He took in a deep breath, then let it out slowly.

         “Physics seemed harder in community college,” said Mamie reflectively.  “Maybe I would do better now.”

         “Maybe you would,” said Solly, wondering what had just happened.

About the author:  Linda Lemery llemery@gmail.com wishes readers Happy Easter and welcomes reader comments. Reference* available on request.