Study of the Brain-- Leonardo Da Vinci, 1490
I studied psychology at CSUSB when I was about 22. I haven’t
thought of the details of that life for years, I guess. It was such a painfully exciting time. After marrying, I moved to my husband's hometown; we rented a one-bedroom house from the 1920’s, with a sprawling lawn and haphazardly-planted
trees. A huge Live Oak tree spread over most of that quarter acre, and had been
dropping its leaves on that yard for at least 100 years. I have never since
lived in a house that had better sandy- loamy soil. With the mild southern California
climate, it was my garden of Eden. I fell in love with plants and planting. I wasn't alone in my passion. The elderly landlord also loved the yard. He didn’t live anywhere nearby, but in the
morning, I would unexpectedly find him, digging up the lawn to plant another
tree or fumbling in the flowerbeds. He spent more and more time there. Eventually, he separated from his wife and came to live in the garage, which
had no plumbing. He wandered around the yard freely, assuming we
were the interlopers there. Every morning, he would drive to McDonald's to use
the bathroom, get ready, and get coffee. It was so surreal.
Newly
married, I was more alone than I’d ever been. My husband worked 6 days a week and
got up at 3 am, returning home around 4 pm, when he would eat something and go to
bed. Growing up the oldest of 7 children, I felt the emptiness of the house almost pressing on me. It seemed I was living
with two ghosts: the shadowy specter of my spouse, who wasn’t present even
when he was there; and the apparition of my omnipresent, lurking landlord whose
face would appear startlingly right outside my bedroom window as he puttered among my flowers.
I was in
limbo myself…. wandering in between worlds. I was part of college life, but
not. I was married, but alone. At
school, men tried to strike up a conversation, or ask me out, and I hurriedly extricated
myself, feeling I was representing myself as something I was not. Women my age invited me to Spring Break in
Palm Springs, half an hour from my house, and I felt like I shouldn’t go because
I was married. The university cultural life was so invigorating: concerts,
films, exhibits. But it was too long of a commute to drive back in the evenings
and I felt I should be home, I saw so little of my husband. I loved church events, but I was
expected to attend with my spouse, who rarely had the energy to
go out. Everyone kept to themselves in our neighborhood; I didn’t meet any of
our neighbors except the one next door whose dog chewed my goose’s head off
through the fence. I was in purgatory and
thought it very lonely. I felt I shouldn't go out, make outside relationships; yet, I couldn't build anything at home.
My own psychological conundrums seeming unsolvable, I threw myself into studying things that could be revealed, if one tried hard enough. The
academics were exhilarating; the biological and medical sides of the brain, in particular. I focused on my studies and did very well.
David
Bainbridge said: “The modern geography
of the brain has a deliciously antiquated feel to it -- rather like a medieval
map with the known world encircled by terra incognito where monsters roam.”
How I loved to
roam that world: along axons and synapses, to look at how drugs and
neurotransmitters fit into receptors and change how we think and feel. I had my
own lamb’s brain; I sliced and labeled the anatomical structures. I loved
looking at it, so grey and uniform, and imagining the complex magic it had
produced when alive. I kept that brain long after I graduated… a symbol of the wonder. The paradoxes amazed me: I spent a lot of time
researching how a certain chemical calmed the nervous systems of baby mice, but
stimulated them as they got older. I was offered the chance to do some
meaningful research on rats and wanted to so badly, but my heart was too tender
to sacrifice them. My professor told me what I would have to do to harden up
and I just morally couldn’t agree with it. Looking back, I know that was a good choice for me.
I respected one professor, Dr. Nelson, more than any other. He agreed to mentor me in a
research project I was doing. I took a long time choosing a topic because I
wanted to throw myself into something personally meaningful. I spent hours in the library studying the
process of how couples make decisions and the power dynamics at work there. I learned
so much. I began to recognize some strange things in my own life. We
took winter break and when I went back to report my research to Dr. Nelson, I
found out he had had a heart attack and wouldn’t be returning. It was such a
blow to lose my wise mentor. Few professors still had openings left to supervise students,
so I was assigned to a man I did not know. When I went in to discuss my
research, he was angry, defensive, and kept insisting that my topic was
politically incorrect and sexist, though dozens of scientists had studied the
topic. I left very confused and scrapped plans for my own research. Later,
someone told me that this particular professor was in the middle of a bitter
divorce and might have been hypersensitive to some of the traits I would be
studying.
I graduated
with honors, but chose not to "walk" or tell anyone beside my immediate family.
When I went to a banquet to receive an award, my date was dismissive and derogatory.
I came away feeling that I somehow didn’t belong in the academic world, as much as I
loved it. My professors encouraged to continue my studies and get my Master’s
Degree, but I couldn’t figure out how to pay for it and realized I would be competing for a limited number of openings at a handful of competitive schools that were near my home. In
the end, I didn’t want to take out large loans that would require me to work
full-time in a specific field to pay back the money. I wanted to keep my freedom. Looking back, I don’t
have any regrets.
During those
years, unbeknownst to me, leading neuroscientists from
around the world were moving to La Jolla, California, making breakthrough discoveries at Scripps and the University of San Diego… 90 miles from my house. Close enough to touch, but too far to drive. I certainly felt a portion of that excitement of discovery. And so I come back to the paradoxes, of life and of the brain.
"Most of us
have spent some time wondering how our brain works. Brain scientists spend
their entire lives pondering it, looking for a way to begin asking the
question, How does the brain generate mind? The brain, after all, is so complex
an organ and can be approached from so many different directions using so many
different techniques and experimental animals that studying it is a little like
entering a blizzard, the Casbah, a dense forest. It's easy enough to find a way
in - an interesting phenomenon to study - but also very easy to get lost." --- David
Bainbridge
And for me… it
was lovely to be lost.
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