"I've been feeling like I'm becoming more of a person." & the Neurology of Hope, Creativity & Love
With an end-nod to a more fully human neurology, a neurology of hope, growth, love and creativity
Saturday Late Afternoon, October 20th
That's what Jane said, when we got up today. As always, I had to go to work. I got home early, which is especially nice time two, because I've had a rough, though good week, and because we're going to the symphony tonight. (Brahms Piano Concerto #2 and Schubert's Unfinished Symphony).
At lunch, which I prepared, Jane said, "This is good. How do you do this? I want to be able to do this for my own lunch." We talked about that, and agreed it would also work for breakfast. So in the next week or two, I'll be around while Jane fixes it for both of us.
Later, before we went out for our walk,
Jane: Last night, when I went to bed, I realized if we have the clothes where they are, in the closet downstairs, we'll never find things. So after you left this morning, I went downstairs. Les (who was still sleeping) came out and she was upset with me. She doesn't trust me. (Jane laughed.>
Dave: Well, you did wake her, and me, the night before last, asking us to take care of the crying baby. That doesn’t exactly inspire trust.
We both had a good laugh.
But more important than the middle-of-the-night baby-asking incident -- things like that don't happen more than monthly -- was that Jane is organizing her world, which is so Jane. She's also beginning to read some, though this is doubly difficult, because of her eyesight, with macular degeneration, and because reading words, for her, still is difficult, though improving steadily. She's initiating more things -- not only her own projects, but more helping out with the daily living, such as cleaning up the counter and some dishes I didn't get to at breakfast.
So I can definitely see why she feels like she's becoming more of a person. Though I think of it as her becoming more the person she was before and can be again.
Various Ramblings: Fall & Jane
We took a long walk -- Jane's longest around our house. Most aspen, by now, have dropped their leaves, though there are still splotches of color. And there were the rare, lingering wildflowers -- all the more precious for being more hidden & end-of-season. The Eurasians: mullein or velvet dock, yellow alfalfa clover, red clover, dandelions, a few shrunken salsifies or goatsbeards, yellow mustard, and even some tansies I hadn't noticed before. (They're rare here; our downroad neighbor plants them, and evidently a few have escaped. There were also some of our escaped Johnny jump-ups. And a few natives: some little daisies, purple, that look a lot like the New England asters around my Midwestern home. And some white yarrow, a pathetic yellow sneezeweed, and a hanger-on I can only call DYC -- damn yellow composites -- daisy-like flowers, always yellow, and in such variety it takes a professional to identify them. Sadly, the last of the purple harebells have just checked out. There are, of course, lots of seeds -- the goldenrods, asters, and curlicue floaters of the mountain mahogany, along with red rosehips and even redder kinnekinnick (sp?) berries, showy against their dark, lowgrowing evergreen leaves. So still a feast for the eyes on an Indian Summer-like walk up & down the gravel road by our cabin.
As we came back to the cabin -- we took a rest on a log for Jane to catch her breath and for us both to listen to the waterfalls and enjoy the warm outdoors -- Jane said,"I think, now, I'll get back on the machine (computer) and do some typing."
I've been trying to encourage her, but it was very hard when she last tried several months ago. She's getting more ready to take that on, and maybe the next notice will be hers. But we're not pushing; either way is fine.
We've had a great fall -- warm, sunny, less rain than we've had all summer. And the golden aspen has really lingered. In the fall, we see color come down the mountains -- the aspen up high turn before the aspen lower down. Some years, this color comes down in a rush -- one day we see it at 9,000 feet, the ridge above our cabin, and the next day or two, the gold is all around us at 8,000. That usually means that the leaves will fall quickly, and we may have only a week or so of color. But this year, we've had well over a month, and it looks as if we might get another week or so.
Another sign, for me, of a great fall is late-coming snow. Snow means winter, and we have a bit too much of that for my taste. My first year in the cabin, our first snow was September 1, and older residents can recall snow ending in June and starting again in August. We had a wee bit of snow two weeks ago, meaning that if you looked hard, you could see it wasn't just rain. Not that the snow stayed; it melted instantly when it hit ground. And at 9,000 feet, where Les & her friends had hiked to our pleasant, though over-named "Garden of Eden", they had definite snow.
A week ago, we had real snow. It lingered a bit on the ground, more on our steps. Les said that meant it's officially fall. Me, I grouse about winter.
That day, Jane & I went walking. We were careful coming down the stairs, which even with my snow sweeping, were a bit slippery. And I'll confess to some sick feeling, because after all, these were the steps, and somewhat the conditions, where Jane fell, just over eight months ago, bringing on all the struggles and changes. But we still went down the stairs & walking. (Stubbornness runs in the family. Actually, stubbornness runs the family.)
She did pretty well, and she would have gone farther if I hadn't been worried that her legs needed to be unstressed when she went back up the stairs. I'm sure I was more nervous that she was. I'll have to get used to that. I fuss too much, I really do.
How Jane's Memory Improves & the Neurology of Hope & Creativity
Jane's recall on her worst area -- remembering names of things & people -- continues to improve. It's curious to see the structure of what's harder, what's coming back. Today, as we phutzed around after breakfast, I pointed to a few pieces of furniture in the front room, with a basic, "What's that?" Jane got "desk", which I haven't asked her about much. But she still couldn't get "lamp" without a lot of help & cuing, and we've worked a lot with that. She couldn't get CD at all, even though that's one she is SO determined -- this for months -- to re-learn.
Why?
I think it has a lot to do with one way how brains work.
We remember things not because we have images or sounds stored in our brain. We have images and sounds and meanings stored in our mind. Our brain stores neurological patterns, which means that when the brain interacts something it recognizes or just wants to think about, it fires, simultaneously, all at once, a pattern of brain cells. And the more a brain pattern fires, the more likely it'll fire again.
More: whatever we learn early, we learn deeply, brain-wise: those earliest patterns get fired again and again. To give an example, when I think of kitchen, I start with my grandmother's kitchen, where I spent a lot of time growing up. (I remember that better than any other "first" kitchen.) So whenever I think "kitchen" or "something in a kitchen", part of that earliest "Grandma's kitchen" brain pattern fires. And over the years, that's a lot brain firing.
Jane grew up without electricity or running water. She remembers, on Saturday night, her mother cleaning seven kerosene lamps, one for each day of the week, as her last duty before starting her Sunday break, the prescribed day of rest. So when I say, "What's that?", pointing to a standing electric lamp -- hey, not so many of those early brain cells get fired. I could get her to say lamp, but only after I related it back to her mother cleaning kerosene lamps, and even then, when Jane said, "Lamp" for our electric lamp, she had a slightly puzzled look on her face.
(I add that Jane knows and can say what lamps are for -- she knows the meaning of the word, "lamp", when someone else says it, and on her own, she knows how to turn one on and off, and she can tell me why we have lamps, how we use them.)
On the other hand, her father's desk was in the kitchen, so she grew up with a desk she saw year-round, very much used and valued by a man she bonded to. (In the winter, to save fuel, they basically lived out of the kitchen except for sleeping, and Jane remembers her father sitting at that desk and reading a lot.) Therefore, even though I haven't asked her often to name the desk in our living room, when she thinks about it, and without any prompting from me, she got the word, "desk".
The word, "CD", however, remains stubbornly outside her recall, this in spite of repeated attempts and lots of motivation. Even with cuing, extensive cuing, it just hasn't come back.
Yet.
We keep working on it. And as with "lamp", she knows what a CD is, when someone uses the word, and she knows what a CD is for.
Who would have thought that, growing up during the Great Depression on a dairy farm, without running water or electricity (They did have a phone.) would have made recovering from a fall more challenging.
But Jane's had the word, "horses", since shortly after she got out of the hospital, maybe six months ago. We haven't worked on TV, because we don't get TV, though we use a 30 year old set for the occasional watching of videos and DVD's.
Then again, maybe what she's remembering is more important.
There's more, though. The brain isn't just a mechanism, a repeating machine that fires only what it's been taught to fire before. The brain is also the mind, and in those neurological get-togethers, however that's done, there's inherent desire to learn and creativity. That's something psychologists have, indeed, demonstrated clearly. The mind, and how it uses language, is essentially learning and creative -- creating a feel for what needs to be said and a constantly on-going ability to be creative about expressing itself. And our mind, even our brain, again, as has been demonstrated over & over, isn't just "ours". It's always ours interacting with our world, especially ours & others. The brain and the mind aren't just for perceiving & reporting. They're also for loving and relating and thinking what we might want, and learning and being spiritual and connecting with all the wonders around and within us.
Think about it: how could it be anything different? Where would all that, all those crucial and God-given ways of being -- What we value most about being human & humane -- come from? Yeah, I'll listen to the mechanics of neurology, but only if I can stick in, over and above all that, the neurology of hope and creativity and love.
And THAT is the "function", the essence of Jane who's coming back. That's what Jane, Les & I are experiencing more of in these later times, even though no doctor or speech therapist has the words to talk about it. But Jane is living it, and we're living it with her, and that's what's most important to us.
As she said, she's re-becoming the person -- creative and loving and learning and hoping and growing and changing and getting older and staying interested and wanting more out of life and all that good stuff.
And we won't let anybody tell us anything different. Nor will Jane.
Lots of love,
avus & family
Saturday Late Afternoon, October 20th
That's what Jane said, when we got up today. As always, I had to go to work. I got home early, which is especially nice time two, because I've had a rough, though good week, and because we're going to the symphony tonight. (Brahms Piano Concerto #2 and Schubert's Unfinished Symphony).
At lunch, which I prepared, Jane said, "This is good. How do you do this? I want to be able to do this for my own lunch." We talked about that, and agreed it would also work for breakfast. So in the next week or two, I'll be around while Jane fixes it for both of us.
Later, before we went out for our walk,
Jane: Last night, when I went to bed, I realized if we have the clothes where they are, in the closet downstairs, we'll never find things. So after you left this morning, I went downstairs. Les (who was still sleeping) came out and she was upset with me. She doesn't trust me. (Jane laughed.>
Dave: Well, you did wake her, and me, the night before last, asking us to take care of the crying baby. That doesn’t exactly inspire trust.
We both had a good laugh.
But more important than the middle-of-the-night baby-asking incident -- things like that don't happen more than monthly -- was that Jane is organizing her world, which is so Jane. She's also beginning to read some, though this is doubly difficult, because of her eyesight, with macular degeneration, and because reading words, for her, still is difficult, though improving steadily. She's initiating more things -- not only her own projects, but more helping out with the daily living, such as cleaning up the counter and some dishes I didn't get to at breakfast.
So I can definitely see why she feels like she's becoming more of a person. Though I think of it as her becoming more the person she was before and can be again.
Various Ramblings: Fall & Jane
We took a long walk -- Jane's longest around our house. Most aspen, by now, have dropped their leaves, though there are still splotches of color. And there were the rare, lingering wildflowers -- all the more precious for being more hidden & end-of-season. The Eurasians: mullein or velvet dock, yellow alfalfa clover, red clover, dandelions, a few shrunken salsifies or goatsbeards, yellow mustard, and even some tansies I hadn't noticed before. (They're rare here; our downroad neighbor plants them, and evidently a few have escaped. There were also some of our escaped Johnny jump-ups. And a few natives: some little daisies, purple, that look a lot like the New England asters around my Midwestern home. And some white yarrow, a pathetic yellow sneezeweed, and a hanger-on I can only call DYC -- damn yellow composites -- daisy-like flowers, always yellow, and in such variety it takes a professional to identify them. Sadly, the last of the purple harebells have just checked out. There are, of course, lots of seeds -- the goldenrods, asters, and curlicue floaters of the mountain mahogany, along with red rosehips and even redder kinnekinnick (sp?) berries, showy against their dark, lowgrowing evergreen leaves. So still a feast for the eyes on an Indian Summer-like walk up & down the gravel road by our cabin.
As we came back to the cabin -- we took a rest on a log for Jane to catch her breath and for us both to listen to the waterfalls and enjoy the warm outdoors -- Jane said,"I think, now, I'll get back on the machine (computer) and do some typing."
I've been trying to encourage her, but it was very hard when she last tried several months ago. She's getting more ready to take that on, and maybe the next notice will be hers. But we're not pushing; either way is fine.
We've had a great fall -- warm, sunny, less rain than we've had all summer. And the golden aspen has really lingered. In the fall, we see color come down the mountains -- the aspen up high turn before the aspen lower down. Some years, this color comes down in a rush -- one day we see it at 9,000 feet, the ridge above our cabin, and the next day or two, the gold is all around us at 8,000. That usually means that the leaves will fall quickly, and we may have only a week or so of color. But this year, we've had well over a month, and it looks as if we might get another week or so.
Another sign, for me, of a great fall is late-coming snow. Snow means winter, and we have a bit too much of that for my taste. My first year in the cabin, our first snow was September 1, and older residents can recall snow ending in June and starting again in August. We had a wee bit of snow two weeks ago, meaning that if you looked hard, you could see it wasn't just rain. Not that the snow stayed; it melted instantly when it hit ground. And at 9,000 feet, where Les & her friends had hiked to our pleasant, though over-named "Garden of Eden", they had definite snow.
A week ago, we had real snow. It lingered a bit on the ground, more on our steps. Les said that meant it's officially fall. Me, I grouse about winter.
That day, Jane & I went walking. We were careful coming down the stairs, which even with my snow sweeping, were a bit slippery. And I'll confess to some sick feeling, because after all, these were the steps, and somewhat the conditions, where Jane fell, just over eight months ago, bringing on all the struggles and changes. But we still went down the stairs & walking. (Stubbornness runs in the family. Actually, stubbornness runs the family.)
She did pretty well, and she would have gone farther if I hadn't been worried that her legs needed to be unstressed when she went back up the stairs. I'm sure I was more nervous that she was. I'll have to get used to that. I fuss too much, I really do.
How Jane's Memory Improves & the Neurology of Hope & Creativity
Jane's recall on her worst area -- remembering names of things & people -- continues to improve. It's curious to see the structure of what's harder, what's coming back. Today, as we phutzed around after breakfast, I pointed to a few pieces of furniture in the front room, with a basic, "What's that?" Jane got "desk", which I haven't asked her about much. But she still couldn't get "lamp" without a lot of help & cuing, and we've worked a lot with that. She couldn't get CD at all, even though that's one she is SO determined -- this for months -- to re-learn.
Why?
I think it has a lot to do with one way how brains work.
We remember things not because we have images or sounds stored in our brain. We have images and sounds and meanings stored in our mind. Our brain stores neurological patterns, which means that when the brain interacts something it recognizes or just wants to think about, it fires, simultaneously, all at once, a pattern of brain cells. And the more a brain pattern fires, the more likely it'll fire again.
More: whatever we learn early, we learn deeply, brain-wise: those earliest patterns get fired again and again. To give an example, when I think of kitchen, I start with my grandmother's kitchen, where I spent a lot of time growing up. (I remember that better than any other "first" kitchen.) So whenever I think "kitchen" or "something in a kitchen", part of that earliest "Grandma's kitchen" brain pattern fires. And over the years, that's a lot brain firing.
Jane grew up without electricity or running water. She remembers, on Saturday night, her mother cleaning seven kerosene lamps, one for each day of the week, as her last duty before starting her Sunday break, the prescribed day of rest. So when I say, "What's that?", pointing to a standing electric lamp -- hey, not so many of those early brain cells get fired. I could get her to say lamp, but only after I related it back to her mother cleaning kerosene lamps, and even then, when Jane said, "Lamp" for our electric lamp, she had a slightly puzzled look on her face.
(I add that Jane knows and can say what lamps are for -- she knows the meaning of the word, "lamp", when someone else says it, and on her own, she knows how to turn one on and off, and she can tell me why we have lamps, how we use them.)
On the other hand, her father's desk was in the kitchen, so she grew up with a desk she saw year-round, very much used and valued by a man she bonded to. (In the winter, to save fuel, they basically lived out of the kitchen except for sleeping, and Jane remembers her father sitting at that desk and reading a lot.) Therefore, even though I haven't asked her often to name the desk in our living room, when she thinks about it, and without any prompting from me, she got the word, "desk".
The word, "CD", however, remains stubbornly outside her recall, this in spite of repeated attempts and lots of motivation. Even with cuing, extensive cuing, it just hasn't come back.
Yet.
We keep working on it. And as with "lamp", she knows what a CD is, when someone uses the word, and she knows what a CD is for.
Who would have thought that, growing up during the Great Depression on a dairy farm, without running water or electricity (They did have a phone.) would have made recovering from a fall more challenging.
But Jane's had the word, "horses", since shortly after she got out of the hospital, maybe six months ago. We haven't worked on TV, because we don't get TV, though we use a 30 year old set for the occasional watching of videos and DVD's.
Then again, maybe what she's remembering is more important.
There's more, though. The brain isn't just a mechanism, a repeating machine that fires only what it's been taught to fire before. The brain is also the mind, and in those neurological get-togethers, however that's done, there's inherent desire to learn and creativity. That's something psychologists have, indeed, demonstrated clearly. The mind, and how it uses language, is essentially learning and creative -- creating a feel for what needs to be said and a constantly on-going ability to be creative about expressing itself. And our mind, even our brain, again, as has been demonstrated over & over, isn't just "ours". It's always ours interacting with our world, especially ours & others. The brain and the mind aren't just for perceiving & reporting. They're also for loving and relating and thinking what we might want, and learning and being spiritual and connecting with all the wonders around and within us.
Think about it: how could it be anything different? Where would all that, all those crucial and God-given ways of being -- What we value most about being human & humane -- come from? Yeah, I'll listen to the mechanics of neurology, but only if I can stick in, over and above all that, the neurology of hope and creativity and love.
And THAT is the "function", the essence of Jane who's coming back. That's what Jane, Les & I are experiencing more of in these later times, even though no doctor or speech therapist has the words to talk about it. But Jane is living it, and we're living it with her, and that's what's most important to us.
As she said, she's re-becoming the person -- creative and loving and learning and hoping and growing and changing and getting older and staying interested and wanting more out of life and all that good stuff.
And we won't let anybody tell us anything different. Nor will Jane.
Lots of love,
avus & family