Tag: brain power

Jews

Jews

Jesus, my lifelong friend, accompanied me through chicken pox, mumps, and measles when quarantine isolated me from my sisters, parents, and friends. No, I didn’t have Mother Theresa-like visions. He was more of an imaginary friend for my waxing brain, like an animated Pooh Bear.  Clergy at St. Mary’s school in Terre Haute, Indiana, taught that Jesus was born in Bethlehem and died in Jerusalem. Due to those back-to-back pre-vaccine childhood illnesses, I heard these Jesus facts my second time around in the first grade. The teaching doubled down in my malleable brain, which had grown to ninety-five percent of its total capacity, normal for a six-year-old.

There was never any question that Jesus was born of Jewish parents. Israel, presented as a holy place, not a political state, was sacred ground because that’s where Jesus lived. There was always the implication that we, as Catholics, were in Jesus’s family, that somehow we had Jewish roots. If Jews believed in Jesus, they got to go to heaven, like us Catholics. But no other religion. Such was my Roman Catholic schooling.

Our single black-and-white family television transmitted few programs into our living room in the 1950s. Roy Rogers and I Love Lucy were allowed, but my parents insisted we watch the nightly news. My sisters and I didn’t dare whine for fear of verbal reprisals like, “Shut up and listen—maybe you’ll learn something.” 

They’d let us watch “This is Your Life,” a forerunner to PBS’ “Finding Your Roots’. In 1953, This is Your Life broadcasted the story of 32-year-old Hanna Bloch-Kohner, a Holocaust survivor. I wasn’t much interested in the not-so-famous Hanna, but I did wonder about the Holocaust.

When I was ten years old, as my brain power peaked, local TV stations advertised the opening of Old Orchard Shopping Center in Skokie, Illinois. We lived in Wilmette, on the border of Skokie.

“Where’s Skokie?” I asked my mother.

“That’s where all the Jews live.” She answered.

All my thoughts screeched to a halt. I’d never seen a Jew. I assumed that whatever Jews were leftover from the time of Jesus surely had died in that mysterious “Holocaust,” a word adults uttered in a hush. Of course, I couldn’t ask my mother what Jews were doing in Skokie. She expected me to know what she knew, no matter the subject. She would have ridiculed me with a sarcastic, “You’re kidding me. Don’t you watch the news?”

From that moment on, I looked for Jews in supermarkets, at the beach, in the record store, and even at school. It’s possible I looked for men who resembled Jesus. In high school, I met a Jewish brother and sister. I stared them into my spiritual family. I wondered how they got to New Jersey from Bethlehem or Jerusalem or Israel, those holy places whose ancient remnants had settled in my bones, with Jesus. 

My brain, now waning, has reformed itself through evidence, facts, and logic into knowing and loving the Jewish story. There may be evidence, and there may be facts, but there’s no logic to knowing Jesus. 

That’s still a belief. 

Collective Salvation

Collective Salvation

My friends and I laugh when we can’t remember the names of a TV series or old movie stars. We keep the conversation going anyway, knowing sooner or later someone will blurt out,”Paul Newman!” who starred in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with um, what’s her name? Oh yeah, Elizabeth Taylor.

Memory isn’t the only part of the brain clogged up. It takes longer for us to get the punchline of a joke. And we worry about the one who stops getting the punchline altogether. Processing information requires sifting through a lifetime of brain clutter. It simply takes more time these days. 

When I first became aware of the rummage sale in my head, I consulted Dr. Google for tips on decluttering. Dr. Google assured me that indiscriminate shopping, getting lost, difficulty with numbers, language, dates, names and places are all part of the normal aging process called cognitive decline. Researchers say eat right, exercise, socialize and learn something new.

And consult a neurologist.

I called the Mesulum Center for Cognitive Neurology at Northwestern University. “Someone will call you back,” the receptionist said.

“Can’t I just make an appointment?”

“No. Someone needs to talk to you first.”

“I’ll wait.”

“No. Someone will call you.”

I missed the callback. Called again. Missed again. And again.

Processing TV news had become difficult. I couldn’t connect information from one sentence to the next. To understand morning radio, I had to stop getting dressed, sit down with a cup of coffee and listen. Reading was clunky. Some words on the page faded. Some didn’t. I went to the eye doctor three times within six months. She insisted my vision was fine.

A friend told me about a new choir for people with early-stage memory loss. The organizers sought volunteers to help people with the music and to round out the choir. No audition or experience required. I’d never read sheet music or sung in a choir but I love to sing. So I signed up.

The first day I hesitated to accept my songbook. Would I remember to bring it to rehearsals? Would I even remember the day and time of rehearsals? People asked me what “part” I sang. I had no idea.

“I have to sing the melody,” I said.

After a few warm-up exercises we started learning an Oklahoma medley. Alice, sitting next to me, noticed I was having trouble. The music was running ahead of me—I couldn’t catch the words. She pointed to the soprano lines and pulled out a yellow marker to highlight them.

“Sing the notes with the stems pointing up,” She whispered.

That was 2018. I mark my own music now, never forget a rehearsal and can find my place on the sheet. Months of practice pulls the music closer, though I never feel concert-ready.

In December 2022 our repertoire included songs in five languages. Each deja-vu rehearsal seemed like a new beginning. I rarely got my voice to attach the foreign words to the notes. But on concert day, my brain latched onto another dimension. I sang perfectly.

I’d say I really cleaned up.