Grandmother Hypothesis

I was reminded today of the "grandmother hypothesis."  I was listening to a conference session on aging and lifespan...why do we age, or, conversely, why do we live so long? Speakers went through lots of biology, a little evolution, some religion and philosophy, and touched on the grandmother hypothesis.

Advanced by anthropologist Kristen Hawkes, the hypothesis is that women live to be grandmothers so that they can support their daughters and grandchildren.  It is an evolutionary advantage. One of the speakers pointed out that having big brains makes human births dangerous.  So, maternal mortality is relatively high. In addition, since kids have to be born with their brains only about half the size of a mature brain, kids need to be protected and nurtured for a long period of time. Rather than relying on their male partners, women rely on their mothers (or other female relatives) for support.  End result: longer longevity for women.

Not sure if I agree with the whole packeage, but I like the idea of grandmas being important.

A Good Strong Story

Well, I'm in a talkative mood, aren't I?  Guess it is all the thinking about stories...makes me want to tell one.  Today I ran across a term that is tugging at me...A Good Strong Story (AGSS).  I take no credit for this, a scholar named William Randall used it in a presentation on Irony and Resilience in later life.

So, what are the qualities of AGSS?  He likened it to a spreading oak, with branches, roots, and the ability to bend in the wind (although perhaps not too strong of a wind.)  AGSS is broad not narrow, thick not thin, open not closed.  AGSS extends both within us and beyond us. He talked about the need to have a story that was not limiting, but was open to multiple readings of our life events.

One idea I particularly liked, though, was that AGSS is characteized by both irony and wonder. Narrative reflection can foster a sense of ironic awareness.  Irony is edgy. Dramatic irony functions because there is a disparity between the viewpoints of the teller and the audience.  As we tell our life story we are both author and audience, we are characters and narrators, we are teller and audience.

A good life story also shows openness to change and to a tolerance for ambiguity, it is an open story, one that while reflecting on the past propels us into the future.  Most importantly, we shouldn't wait until we are old to tell a Good Strong Story.

Grand narratives

This morning I attended a session on Narrative Gerontology (passing by my usual menu choice of "trends in active life expectancy"). Dominated by English and psychology professors, the presentations were much more philosophical than my usual conference fare.

I was particularly entranced by one speaker, Mark Freeman, who described his mother's decline in dementia and his struggle to write about it. As a narrative psychologist, his academic interest is in how we talk about our lives and now he finds himself unable to construct a narrative for his mother's decline. Lately he has been involved, it seems, in a controversy over the relevance of "big stories" versus "small stories." The main problem, as I understand it, is that some argue that small stories, the everyday narrative interactions in which we engage, are better indicators of reality than the grand narratives, the life stories, we construct over time. The small story camp argues that the life story process, with its attempt to construct and create coherence, produces not true identity, but some manufactured sense of what a self-identity should be. Freeman says that it is precisely the distance from events that allows a person to truly understand the meaning of an event. Big stories aren't better or truer, they are different. He uses the term "life on holiday" to talk about the value of time for reflection and reconsideration. We do things differently on a holiday, and that difference is good.

I'm thinking about this...

Remembering

I'm in Boston, at the meetings of the Gerontological Society of America...haven't been to these meetings for exactly 6 years.  About this time six years ago I was hearing the news that my mother was dying. Being here brings back many memories. 

I have a friend who is losing his memories, slowly and inexorably. The objective part of me is fascinated by the way in which his memory and our conversations have changed, and how his functioning varies from week to week. He is clearly increasingly confused about place and time. Within the course of a conversation his wife may be his mother, his sister becomes his daughter. His parents might be alive or not. He may be 69 or 79. We might be friends, or colleagues or strangers.

I suppose because we started together recording his life stories, and also because the way in which dementia works "backwards" on memories, his conversations with me are dominated by events from his childhood. I have heard the same stories virtually every week for well over a year. What seems interesting though, is how some of the detail has been lost over time, the stories are shorter, less coherent, more jumbled in time and place. Some stories seem to have disappeared. I'm fascinated, too, by the stories that were never there--never anything about meeting his wife, about their early life, their kids as children. But, also, there is less reflection in the stories now, less thought attached to them. Still, they seem to represent good things in his life, happy memories, warm feelings. Telling most of them makes him happy. It makes me think that with the passage of time all of these events are being boiled down to their bare essence, to the emotions linked to them. They aren't about events or people anymore, they are about recapturing a feeling, a state of being.

Can we boil our life down to a few simple memories, a few feelings?

Protective

Was bowling with the boys over the weekend. After putting on his shoes and choosing a ball, my 20 year old bent down to roll up the bottom of his jeans which were dragging a bit on the floor.  "Good,"  I commented, "that was making me a little nervous."  He smiled, shook his head, and said, "Protective Mom."  I was slightly offended and remarked, a bit defensively, "I don't think I'm over protective."  Laughingly he corrected me, "I didn't say OVER protective, Mom, just 'protective'."

I was never a really anxious mother. I didn't hover.  I let the kids have a pretty free rein.  They ran, climbed, jumped, catapulted, and somersaulted. One spent about 6 months with a bruise in the middle of his forehead as a toddler because he fell so often. The other climbed into the kitchen sink before he could walk.  I didn't worry too much about grades or schoolwork, about the number of hours spent watching TV or playing video games. I didn't monitor their friends very closely or supervise their playdates.  Not to say I was uninvolved. I volunteered in their classrooms, went on field trips, helped with school and Scout activities. I tried taking them to church.

But, I find that as they have grown, I worry more and more about them. I'm more nervous now to see them walking along a cliff edge than I was when they were 5. Is that a function of realizing my own mortality? That I won't always be around to help them? The hurts seem so much bigger as they grow older. It seems one thing to fail a spelling test, quite another to flunk out of college. You can fall off the monkey bars and break an arm, but a car crash can kill you. Not having a friend to play with at recess hurts, but ending an intimate relationship hurts more. I feel like there are so many more things that will hurt them now. Maybe as they grow closer to adulthood I am better able to relate to the hurts they are bound to experience, I know the pains of adulthood, they are fresh in my mind.

I have strong, resilient, and capable sons. They show no indication that they will be overwhelmed by life, that they will falter under pressure, or crumple in defeat. In fact, quite the opposite. Still, I think I will worry about them until the day I die.

It's been a while...

We've just passed through that dreaded part of the semester, the place where everything needs to be done NOW. The students are sick and tired, the instructors, too.  We are overwhelmed by papers, lectures, committee work, research deadlines, and conference presentations. But, that shouldn't be an excuse for not writing here. In fact, it should be a reason for writing.

I've never thought of myself as a "writer" and was shocked with my short-lived success as a blogger on salon.com.  I don't think I have the wit or stamina to keep up a regular writing schedule.  I often joke that I could never write an academic book, I don't have that many words in my head or fingers. 

But, I am fascinated with words and over the past few years I've learned a few new ones that I enjoy.

Apodictic: "Whether or not that 'memory' is veridical is probably impossible to determine, but its role in giving coherence and continuity to existence does not depend on the memory being apodictic."

Gnomic: "Mysterious and often incomprehensible yet seemingly wise.  My son found this in a novel and asked me about the meaning. My first response was that it must be related to gnomes, but we looked it up and loved the definition. Who would ever have thought of such a word?

Bricolage: French origins. It might loosely be translated as “tinkering” or “do it yourself.”  In French a bricoleur is a tinkerer.  It has this sense of creativity attached to it, of being able to make do with the things at hand.  In art it can refer to a type of mosaic or sculpture that uses a variety of objects. The term seeped into cultural studies, and refers to the use of an object for an unintended purpose. 

The word seems like a perfect term to describe my dad. He is able to fix anything and to creatively solve any problem.  I've always thought of him as a great example of a Rennaissance man--well versed in literature, history, religion and philosophy; plays the piano; can describe the finer details of steelmaking; can rebuild a car engine; and built our house.  I remember him telling me that when our washing machine broke he studied the electrical schematics and figured out what was wrong, that it never occurred to him that he could hire someone to fix it.  So, finding a fancy French word to describe him was fun.

Sounds of Silence

Growing up I was enamored with the Simon and Garfinkel song, Sounds of Silence. More and more, I've been thinking about quiet and silence, language and sound, music and noise.  The other day I caught only about 10 minutes of an interview with the author Don Campbell about his new book, "Healing at the Speed of Sound."  Later, I read some less than flattering reviews of his work, but some of the central questions and ideas have intrigued me.  One of the things he talked about was developing sound tracks for hospitals. How a different type of music would be used in an emergency room waiting room versus a surgery waiting room.  How a different type of music would be used at 3 am versus 3 pm. He also talked about the use of music to make transitions in your day, music to go home with, music to start your work day with.

When I'm working I do like to have some music in the background.  I used to only be able to sleep with some noise in the background, best would be talk radio, but music would help, too.  I blame in on sharing my childhood bedroom with two sisters. We would talk at night and I would ask them to tell me stories before I fell asleep. I was so conditioned to that sound, that I found it difficult to sleep in a quiet room. About 3 years ago that changed. I now like having quiet at night, I like the silence.  Why is that?  Is that an age related change or something else?

Campbell also talked about how we react differently to the same piece of music depending on the setting. The same song in a car is different than hearing it performed live. I do enjoy live music and find it so much more enriching than recorded music. Is it the sound, the setting, the spontaneity of the performance? I'm not sure.

I've been interested in how music might be used with people who are sick or suffering anguish in some other way.  Music can be soothing in times of stress or grief. I'm sure it can also be soothing in times of physical illness.  I read an article about Alzheimers recently that talked about the use of music in caring for AD sufferers.  How hearing music from a happy time in life could calm and soothe someone with memory problems. I wonder what music I would want to hear if I was losing my mind?