What My Daughter Doesn't Know About Friction

At three years old, she slides down the playground chute again and again— screaming joy like a law of nature, not knowing her thrill relies on two surfaces refusing to agree. I don't tell her that without friction she'd fall through her chair, pass through the carpet, drop through the crust, until even the Earth's center ran out of grip. I just watch her walk— tiny soles pressing the ground, each step a quiet argument between rubber and concrete: stay. then go. Last night she asked why ice is slippery. I wanted to say something about water letting go of its own shape— but she was already gone, hunting for socks, her question dissolving faster than I could catch it. At the store, she pushes the cart (I guide it, barely) and gasps at how a week's worth of groceries glides like nothing. "It's magic," she says. And maybe it is— all those invisible wheels and tiny metal balls conspiring to make heavy things light. Tonight, she kicks off her blanket. "Too scratchy," she complains, and I smooth it down, thinking how that roughness against her skin whispers: you are here. you are real. you exist. But what I don't say is this: someday friction will burn her. Rope through palms, knees on asphalt, the slow wear of things that stay too close too long. What I don't say is that the same force keeping her safe in bed is teaching her that everything she'll ever love will eventually wear away. Instead, I watch her sleep, my hand resting in her hair, both of us held by invisible forces neither of us fully understands.