The perfect mom

...A dispatch from bewilderness

Imagine, if you will, a bustling cosmic city within your skull. Neurons have traditionally been seen as the VIPs, the movers and shakers of the mental metropolis. They’re not.

Astrocytes are the unsung heroes, the support staff that keeps everything running smoothly behind the scenes, like stage managers. First discovered in the mid-19th century, astrocytes were initially dismissed as mere “brain glue,” a kind of biological cement holding the more important neurons in place.

In fact, these little stars coordinate everything from set design to lighting and even prompt the actors (neurons) when they forget their lines. Unless your brain breaks, like mine.

Earthquakes cause the ground to move in unpredictable ways, sometimes sharply jerking, other times swaying like a ship in rough seas. The higher the magnitude of the earthquake, the longer it will last. Say, six minutes or more. Or if you had a brain-quake, for the rest of your life.

I’m not just a fish out of water, but a fish out of water in my own mind on my own stack. Plus an odd bird and outside observer committing quirky non-sequiturs. And I’m getting old. Or, depending on whom you ask, I am old.

When I began at Time Magazine in 1972, nets didn’t flick, pods didn’t cast and no one drank oat milk latte. Writers were writers, not content providers, and readers were readers, not content consumers. Seasons lasted 3 months, not three hours. There were no “elder accountants,” “senior moving specialists,” or pros to help you “age in place.”

I thought my brain would fix itself. It both has and hasn’t. I have been getting better, getting worse and staying the same for nineteen years. All the above. As in getting worse as I get older and getting better as some things improve.

For example, I thought I was somewhere Saturday but it turned out I was actually there Sunday. That means today is Monday not Sunday and I am here, not there. Which — like everything else — brings us to moms.

They’re never there when you need them. Or the reverse, they’re always there when you don’t. We lean on them. We blame them. We stop talking to them. We talk to shrinks about them instead. Blame it on mom. Until you’re a mom — when you will, of course, be the mom your mom was not.