Making Connections

Today, I finished, "Still Alice" ~ a novel by Lisa Genova. A 50 year old Harvard professor is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's. The author takes us on Alice's journey. Losing her yesterdays, her short-term memory hanging on by a couple of frayed threads, she is living in the moment, living for each day. But she is still Alice.

I literally finished the last sentence as I was playing with my infant. He was sitting upon my lap, taking my arm and waving it - mimicking actions that I had performed with him just moments before.

Only four weeks into gestation and Sidney's first brain cells, the neurons, were already forming at an astonishing rate: 250,000 every minute. Billions of neurons were forging links with billions of other neurons and eventually he had trillions and trillions of connections between cells. Every cell precisely in its place, every link between neurons carefully organized. Nothing was random, nothing arbitrary. eventually, his brain will begin weeding out connections. The developing brain is a little like a fertile garden. When we plant a garden, we want the crops that we planted to grow and thrive. But when weeds start to grow, there is less room for the plants we want to grow. Sidney's brain will act accordingly to this philosophy.

I turned the last page and my conscious half was playing with Sidney and my unconscious half was reeling within the text of Lisa's passages. Alice knew she would soon not recognize those closest to her. She understood that one day, she would not be able to dress herself - in fact; one scene posed her in her bedroom, trying to get her sports bra on and her husband walked in on her trying to wiggle through a pair of underwear on her head. She also began to stumble, hallucinate and tangle within the organization of her own brain.

The velocity of her disease continued to decline.

Sidney ~~~

Sidney's brain, as an infant is actively living within a velocity of his own. His brain is growing in connections minute by minute. His claps, his hard consonant sounds, his cries that all mean something within his infant lexicon. One day, he waves, the next day, he drops that ability and switches it up for a clap. One hour, he is on all four and crawling, the next, he is scooting around the floor solely on his belly. His brain is in constant sculpting mode; whereas Alice's brain was surviving a degeneration of connectivity. Parallel to Alice, Sidney often 'forgets' his talents. I observe him retraining and reteaching himself and it is beyond fascinating. His neural connections are transparent and alive. Alice's neural connections were slowly dying, but nonetheless, fascinating.

Sidney is making his way in this world and I can't help but to think of *Alice* and those like her. Her brain was in vicious retreat and my son's cerebral maturation is only beginning.

hmmm.