When stroke patients consistently performed and practiced concentrated, focused activities, such as using an arm weakened or impaired by stroke to stack blocks or wipe a table or pick up small objects, researchers noted not only physical improvements in terms of fine motor skill control or greater stamina or strength. They also noted improvements in speech and memory and other cognitive deficits. Somehow, their brains were able to make new connections, find new ways around the places damaged by stroke, find new ways to adapt and to heal, just from this intense, challenging, task-based work.
I read all of this—slowly, resting when necessary—with great interest. Because, just as in the stories of explorers, I recognize myself in some of the descriptions I read about patients struggling with brain injury. I didn’t suffer a stroke or a trauma due to concussion or whiplash or brain lesion or other neurological issue; but I recognize myself in the symptoms many of these patients describe in the aftermath of their illnesses or accidents as they recover. The way their brains are overwhelmed by sounds and visual patterns. The way that they only have so much brain energy per day, and the way that means their brain function declines as the day goes on. The way their short-term memory fails. The way words sometimes elude them, or become confused with one another, homophones interchanging themselves, or become entangled, rhyming and repeating, mesmerized by sound instead of meaning. The way social interactions fatigue them. The way narrative is a challenge.
But the other reason I find this all so interesting, reading through it with my healing brain as I wait through the purgatory of physically healing without knowing for sure if I’ll start leaking again, is that it reminds me of something. The physicality of small, focused movements; the repetition of these movements, with the brain at full concentration; the mental rehearsal of these movements; making these movements seem new and exciting, all in the service of learning a new skill, forging new neural pathways: All of this reminds me of work I did with my children when they were toddlers, building things and stacking things and playing repetitive games to nourish their growing brains. But even more than that, it reminds me of the work I have done ever since I was eight years old; work I did sometimes for upward of six hours a day, every day; work that likely helped wire my growing brain in the first place.
It reminds me of practicing piano.
35
The room was grand: dark wood paneling, enriched with details from floor to ceiling, carved patterns that repeated themselves throughout the room; tall windows flanked by thick, heavy curtains, with sills big enough for a person to sit and peer into the courtyard below, mournfully, after a bad lesson; high ceilings; rug-carpeted floors. Two Steinways, side by side, one for the student, one for the teacher.
Mrs. Kim introduced herself, holding out her hand. It was fierce—the handshake, the hand itself, with its veins and knuckles and muscles; and her surety, her firmness, her sense of gravity. My hand felt especially pale and formless and small in hers. I was seventeen. She was probably younger than I am now, but to me then she seemed ageless, beyond age, beyond any concept of aging.
“I remember your audition.” Her voice was heavily accented, hard to understand. She was barely taller than I was, but she was imposing, her movements fluid but controlled as she released my hand and walked to the set of pianos in the middle of the room, her steps light but centered, like a ballet dancer’s. Everything she did seemed to have a sense of purpose.
“I remember your Mozart. And some Liszt? Fiery,” she said, allowing an eyebrow to raise, a small hint of a smile. I wasn’t sure I understood what she was saying, and it must have been clear on my face, because she clarified for me. “You like the quick. The dazzle.”
I did? But I nodded my head.
“Refresh my memory,” she said, languidly gesturing to the piano. “The Liszt.”
I nodded my head again and sat on the padded bench. I hadn’t practiced the Liszt in months; the summer before leaving for music school I had mostly spent my time waitressing, saving money. There hadn’t been much time for practice—at least not at the level I’d been practicing before, while preparing for competitions and music school auditions.
I began the piece, trying to get a feel for the piano, the pedal, the ease of the keyboard as I went along. I realized too late I had started too softly, and now my pianissimo had nowhere to go. I tripped on some of the faster figurations and I could feel my cheeks flushing, the cycle beginning of my own awareness of my mistakes informing my performance, making me even more likely to make mistakes, making me hyperaware of how many mistakes I was making, leading to more mistakes, and on and on and on.
Suddenly she stopped me, a strong hand on my right forearm.
“That’s fine,” she said, but this time there was no eyebrow raised, no hint of a smile. “We have a lot of work to do.”
Two days later I was
