Mom, Hard Wired

I was reading a book today about Leadership and the brain that, interestingly, taught me about being a mother. The author talks about his learning about neuroscience and how those insights made him think about fatherhood in a whole new way.

Our brains are complex, dynamic, diverse, and ever changing. Every time we come up against a new experience, our brains draw a map of that experience, using neurons and atoms within the brain to reconstruct the new into the customary. Our brains are like a GPS system, guiding us through the various twists and turns and entrances and exits of each new experience. Once we travel the same distance over and over again, we no longer need to consciously think about how to do something, our brains automatically download a map that instinctively tells us how to react each time the situation is the same or similar to ones we’ve experienced in the past. If the “new” experience is not an exact replicate, our brains compensate by adding new branches for future journeys.

The author talks about how his one year old daughter was learning how to take the stairs. If he didn’t hold her hand, she would tumble down the stairs, and her cries were life knife edges penetrating his heart. So, his brain “learned” him to hold on to her hand as she conquered the stairs, and never again did she fall. His brain gave him a new map to understanding how to be a father with a faltering baby, a neural pattern.

Trinity is his daughter’s name. In a particular poignant conclusion, he states ”When I saw Trinity fall down the stairs, the impact of this experience was strong enough to create what is termed hard wiring in my brain. A specific thought pops up each time I take the stairs with her, and that thought is now a part of my life, a new habit that I live by. This thought is now an automatic function, and in several years’ time, when Trinity is quite adept at taking the stairs, I will probably still feel the urge to take her hand”.

That paragraph brought home a conversation that I had with Kelly this week. I am trying in our conversation to make certain that she is doing okay in California. I keep asking questions about the various areas of her life – apartment, friends, school, Todd, health, money, papers due, teaching, and on and on. She keeps repeating “all’s fine”. I keep asking, probing, penetrating. All’s fine.

Tonight I realized that what I was doing was making sure the baby was going to make it down the stairs okay. Obviously, the stairs she is travelling today are wider, deeper, bumpier, more consequential, and five thousand more miles scarier. And so my brain is ever watchful.

I am happy that my brain is permanently wired so that I will always, always be there for my children. A GPS guiding them home. Whatever staircases life brings them – both on the ups and the downs -- my hand, my heart, and a wired mommy-brain will be at the ready. You may not need that today, baby girl, but if the staircase is ever too daunting, know I will be there with my hand outstretched.