POP 89: Word Search
By Madonna Hamel
My brother is back on the prairie. Living alone in an isolated community is tough when you're in the best of health. While great poets and authors, from Henry David Thoreau to Annie Dillard, have found solace and inspiration living alone in the woods, neither remained in permanent seclusion. Dillard knew you needed human exchange to prevent the brain from spinning. And once a week, Thoreau took his laundry to his mom's on the other side of Walden Pond. And stayed for supper. And neither of them were struggling to find their words, or shoes, or place on the planet, after a stroke.
Last week, my younger sister and I drove to pick up Doug at the Calgary airport. We left Medicine Hat at 7 am, just as it began to rain. Great. Over the years, I've driven my share of hairy road trips - Quebec in an ice storm, Nebraska at 3 am after a blues gig, and a muddy detour through Harrison Hot Springs a week before Christmas. Canadians know the risks of winter driving, but still we remain at the mercy of the elements. There are no atheists on an icy highway - we let loose with the Hail Marys.
An hour out of Medicine Hat, driving 10 km below the speed limit, I pulled out to pass a truck. That's when the fishtailing began. Anyone who's hit black ice knows how things can go very bad, very fast. At first, I thought we were caught in a gust of wind, but soon, the front of the car was sliding one way and the back the other. A calm voice in my head said: Stay out of the ditch. And ride it out. Riding it out meant teeny micro-adjustments on the wheel and foot off brake and gas. Swish - one way, swish another, back and forth, like a drunk on skates, five or six times.
Everything happened in both a slo-mo and a fast, multi-layered sort of way. And somewhere inside the experience came the words: "precious cargo," a phrase connected to a memory from university days when I drove my younger siblings through the Cascade Mountains to spend Christmas break with family in Kelowna. I felt the responsibility of getting us all home safely.
When the car finally settled down and stayed the course, the residue adrenaline kicked in, and so did the jokes. "I shoulda told you to put away those knitting needles," I laughed to my sister. I was suitably humbled and hyper-alert for the remainder of the journey, which at 90km/hr, took a while, but eventually gave way to a sunny day and bare roads and a happy family, together again. My brother was waiting by the arrivals curb, and my sister jumped out and held up her silly sign; we hugged and wept and went to Tim's for coffees and crullers.
For a week we hung out The Hat waiting for the weather to make up its mind, content to go nowhere just yet. I managed to read two books on my favourite couch while my brother-in-law cooked a belated Christmas feast of roast ham and tourtiere, and my sister mulled wine in a crock pot, following Old Time Hawkey's recipe. And, best of all, my brother slept. For three days, he slept - getting up for meals and to pee and be reminded where and when he was. And we all agreed, and he concurred; just hearing familiar voices in the other room allowed him to rest without worrying over the daily chores of living alone on an island. And knowing, also, that when he does get up, we'll be here to talk to him. And reassure him, if need be.
The day was brilliant with sunshine when we left The Hat for Val Marie. In Swift Current, we stopped for coffee for me and a fresh stack of word-search exercise books for my brother's eyes. The sun shone down on us, and apart from a long stretch of sudden snowdrifts between Swift and Cadillac (made worse by the dumbfounding decision by the new owners of long stretches of farmland along the highway to pull out all the shelter belts), the roads were navigable. It was a happy moment when we pulled into Val Marie at dusk, the sky turning pink, the hills gold and the snow blue. My brother relished the thought of falling asleep to the sound of the owl outside his window and rising to fresh coffee and conversation. Just a few days earlier, anticipating our mini-family reunion, he texted me: "Other humans are balm to us extroverts."
This morning, I retrieved "7 1/2 Lessons About the Brain" from my "brain book" shelf and flipped to Lesson #5: "Your Brain Secretly Works With Other Brains." The author, Dr. Lisa Barrett, reaffirms the theory that we need others to help us feel whole. She writes that humans are unique in the animal kingdom because we "regulate each other by the words we speak." Words have an enormous effect on your health, she explains, because "many brain regions that process language also control the insides of your body, including major organs….These brain regions are part of a language network that can do things like change the flow of chemicals that support your immune system," etc. "The power of words," she stresses, "is not a metaphor. It's in your brain wiring. Words are tools for regulating human bodies."
Our brains work with others' brains. "The best thing for your nervous system is another human." But, also, the worst thing too. So be very careful with whom you choose to hang. And then, don't try and do it all alone. We can do together what we could never do alone. And remember, the words we search for - coming from love or trepidation, tears or laughter, or the conversations of loved ones drifting from other rooms, lulling us safely to sleep - matter greatly. They keep us alive.