I barely went anywhere in 2020 and most of 2021.
I used to be out and about all the time, driving here, there, meeting people, going to rehearsals and planning sessions and meeting with clients and being social with friends … it seemed like I was out in the world nearly every day. And then Corona hit, and suddenly I was homebound, and for months. It took me well over a year to put 1000 miles on my car, and nearly another year for the next 1000.
And somewhere in the last two years, I went from being a fantastic driver to being kind of a terrible one.
Use it or lose it, they say. Oh yes. It is so true. When I was a kid I played in a band with my parents, and it was nearly a fulltime job. When I was seventeen I decided I was done with that, and my parents for some reason didn’t make a single protest, and we just … quit. So after a couple years, someone put an upright bass in my mom’s hands and she literally could not remember anything about how to make it go. I mean, she couldn’t even remember which end of the thing you blow into. Seriously.
A few years after that, my dad decided he wanted to learn to play classical guitar, and literally had to start from scratch. Neither of them had picked up an instrument since we quit being in a band, and somehow, all of that knowledge, all of those skills, whoosh, gone. And I never really understood it – until recently.
Someone once told me I should read a book by Norman Doidge called The Brain That Changes Itself, and I stumbled across it surfing my local e-library, and immediately checked it out. Doidge explains, among many other things, that use it or lose it is more than a catchy rhyme. It’s a real thing, because our brains literally rewrite themselves constantly. If we stop doing something, the brain sees it at real estate up for grabs and uses that space for something else. Where bass once lived in my mother’s brain, some other hobby took over. Quilting, I think. Where driving once lived in my brain … I don’t know what’s there now, honestly. But I know I have nearly given both Michael and Byrn heart attacks more than once in the last few months.
I have also noticed myself struggling to come up with words, or confusing words. For example, I nearly always say “strawberries” when I mean “tomatoes.” And if I can’t think of a word, I can usually give Michael enough context with a quick reference to something we had talked about or done or read, that he knows what I’m talking about without either of us having to say the actual word or words.
“I need the … thing, to do the … argh, thing, with the … stuff …” “Oh, right, it’s over there.”
Yes, this is a typical conversation at our house these days. But other people don’t have the context I depend on to communicate with Michael. If I were to ask you for strawberries to put in the pasta sauce, you’d probably look at me a little funny. Michael just hands me some tomatoes. And neither of us even notices anymore. Well, he smirks a little bit, but he has given up correcting me.
I have no problem typing and remembering words, and I have no problem at all reading and comprehending words.
But, oops, I don’t talk to people anymore and suddenly – uh, hmm. You know, I can’t … remember the … um … things …
What else have we lost that we don’t even notice? Two years is apparently plenty of time for the brain to decide all that stuff was gone for good, so purges have happened. What are we missing that we don’t even know we’re missing? Will we even know until we need it and discover it’s no longer there?
I recently started doing some brain plasticity exercises on a website called BrainHQ.com, and I’m getting my ass kicked in a really good way, and hopefully it will help me recover some of the capacity I have … let’s say misplaced so I can get back to being the brilliant, quick-witted, devastatingly clever beastie I was until March of 2020. There are several free brain exercises available and a subscription is available if you want to really step up your game.
Dr. Michael Merzenich, one of the most influential scientists in the field of neuroplasticity, realized many years ago that as our life-expectancies go up, our brains start to atrophy, and what good is living to be 99 years old if you don’t know you’re living? 47% of the elderly suffer from Alzheimer’s or dementia.
I’m currently watching several friends my age go through the aging parent nightmare. My parents didn’t do that. They died too soon, sure, but watching the stress, anxiety, frustration, and daily worrying of these friends, I’m honestly kind of grateful. I get to remember them as themselves more than I remember them as broken. That’s a trade-off I can live with. But it made me very conscious of what my son may have to go through as his parents age. I can’t do anything about his father, but I can sure as hell do something about me.
Merzenich says learn a language, or a new musical instrument. Learn to move in different ways. Here’s a huge one: Don’t look at your feet when you go down stairs. Let your body learn to master those steps instead and you’ll be way less likely to fall. We look because we’re afraid of falling, of course, and looking actually makes falling way more likely as you pitch your head and body forward in order to see your feet. I didn’t realize how much I was doing that until I started paying attention. Welp. Something else to work on. Proprioception, awareness of our bodies in space, is one of the most important senses we can recover.
I’m going to keep walking, and I’ve always wanted to learn Latin, and Spanish would be really handy. I have that gorgeous harp that, yes, I have pretty much forgotten how to play, which is honestly good because I was doin’ it wrong, so now I can learn right. And having two left feet has always bothered me a little. I’d love to be able to dance without feeling like a giant dork, so … I think I have my homework. How about you?