I'm Not the Only One!
Posted by Arwen Mosher in Just me on Monday, November 09, 2009 4:00 PM
My mother has an extraordinary memory. She routinely says things like, “Oh, yes, that was Harold Plinken. He sat two seats in front of me in third grade and used to pull the braids of Sally Davis who sat in front of him. Our teacher that year was Miss Swanwhite, and she later married Mr. Holt who taught science at the high school. They had three little girls and the youngest one, Barbara, married my second cousin Henry.”
Meanwhile, the main thing I can remember about third grade is that I went. I also know my youngest sister was born that year, but the only way I’m sure it was that year is that I know how old she is and I can do the math.
Anyway, since my mother has such a quirky mind, when I figured out that I have synesthesia, I assumed that if it had come from either of my parents, it must be from her. But when I asked her about it, she said that she’d heard of the phenomenon and was sure she didn’t have it.
Then this weekend when we were visiting my parents, the topic came up again. Mom’s reading a book about synesthesia, and she mentioned it at the breakfast table. I started trying to explain how my synesthesia works. My 16-year-old brother stared wide-eyed (“that’s so cool! I wish I had it!”) and my brother-in-law rolled his eyes (he’s a skeptic by nature), but as I struggled to describe how when it’s Friday I think of Monday as being on the other side of the “hump” that is the weekend, I noticed my dad was nodding knowingly. He understood!
And he said that he envisions sequences spatially too, and told about how he uses it to remember his intentions during morning prayer. (“You pray for one person, and then you go around the corner to the next one…”) I was so excited to hear this that I practically started bouncing out of my seat, because I keep track of my own daily intentions in a very similar way.
Then I had to laugh, because there Dad and I were, sitting next to each other at the kitchen table, tilting our heads and stabbing random points in the air with our fingers as we discussed the way we see these things in our minds. The rest of the family watched us in various states of amusement and bemusement, but we were understanding each other perfectly.
I was so happy to be having someone “get” me instead of being the lone family freak that I wanted to hug everyone at the table then and there. (I refrained because it was a dozen people.) What a great moment!
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