Bagels and Strong Opinions for BreakfastRick LewisEvery family needs a designated witness. It was the sound of sirens that woke me up, emergency responders were mobilizing from every station in town it seemed. The screaming vehicles were coming from all directions at once, their warning calls striking the hard surfaces of the city’s concrete, steel, and glass and colliding in a reflective chorus of distress that felt endless. It’s unnerving to be assaulted by the broadcast of an emergency that has no discernible origin or direction. Unable to go back to sleep, I got up and remembered it was family day. My wife and I regularly host my parents, our adult kids, and my brother’s family and kids in our home. That means bagels, cream cheese, and strong opinions for breakfast. My family sometimes feels like its own emergency to me, a sudden collision of needs, perspectives, and preferences. “There’s not enough cream cheese left,” my younger son announces. “No worries, I can run up to the store and get some,” my wife offers. “But then you’ll be gone for most of the gathering,” I point out. “And look, there’s half a container left here.” “That stuff’s gross,” my son complains. “It’s all dried out.” “We need more bagels too,” my older son adds. “Are you going to make us eat this?” my brother teases, picking up the open carton. I anticipate family gatherings with enthusiasm while forgetting the emotional labor of hosting them. I often wish I could relieve myself of an investment in things going perfectly between my ninety-year-old father, sixty-year-old brother, thirty-year-old son, and blossoming teen—all of whom respectfully consider themselves the intellectual superior of one another. I want to buffer conflict and manage a harmonious experience for them all, but I’m an ineffective intermediary because my own neuroses amplify the distress. On this day the conversation turned to the subject of cognitive bias—what it is, how it operates, and what we can do about it. Understanding the human mind, and pursuing a clean mirror of perception has been a lifelong passion of mine, so I couldn’t help but weigh in. Soon, however, we were talking about the planned introduction of robot umpires to major league baseball. In true human form, the less I know about a subject the more bluster I apply to my remarks. “I hate the idea,” I announced, launching into a diatribe about the erosion of human relationship that technology is quickening. “But if you can eliminate human error and the resulting arguments from the game, doesn’t that improve the sport?” my brother challenged. “How does a sport improve if you remove the need for humans to navigate conflict and manage their emotions?” I questioned back. Halfway through the debate my niece arrived, a psych major just half the size of any of us, but with plenty to offer on the subject of cognitive bias and enough pluck to meet the testosterone in the room with ample confidence. I drifted in and out of the banter. “That’s not what cognitive bias is,” I heard my father saying. “What you’re talking about is psychological conditioning.” “We’ve been studying this,” my niece replied, “and . . .” but I was having difficulty focusing, distracted by my perceptions of the social dissonance. I happened to look across the living room and noticed my mother, a silent witness in the plush, blue suede chair that rests in the corner of our living room. She’d been there the whole time, but we were carrying on as though her chair was empty. How had my mother disappeared from my view in the fray? Salience bias causes us to pay more attention to what is louder, most novel, or poses a threat. In the environment of debate she’d become practically invisible to me. She’s stated repeatedly since the onset of her slow-progressing dementia that her greatest joy is to simply be around family. She’s an invitation for us to freely exist, without any demand for attention. My mother’s presence has always been palpable, generous, and unconditional this way, even prior to her dementia. The vision of her made me sit up straighter and drop my shoulders. She beamed back at me, as if to say, thanks for noticing. The contrast between our volleying for rhetorical points and her natural ease, like a shining jewel at rest upon velvet, caused my breath to drop back into my belly, and my awareness to reenter the room. I had an immediate sense of relief regaining my ground in the present moment, initiated by the model of my mother. She was a delightful pattern-interrupt for my mind, as though she had magically produced an out-of-season snowball and tossed it over to me. With the cool orb of her presence transferred, I was suddenly in on the joke. We were arguing over whose interpretation of cognitive bias had more veracity while mom watched and witnessed, finding serenity in the chaos. I realized that she’s had to practice this a lot lately, finding the quiet center of dementia’s storm. My mother cannot choose to be elsewhere these days. She lives straddling the joy of the present moment and a perpetual nagging sense that she may have left something important behind at the same time, with no way to check if it’s true. I watch her struggle, inspired by how she must continually raise the volume of her faith to surrender to now, to trust that her family will pick up the forgotten details of recent hours and place them back into her hands when necessary. To trust that whatever brain wreck twists her perceptions into tangled accidents of memory, at some level, all is still well. Dementia must feel like an emergency that is coming from all directions and no clear direction at once. I can’t imagine the strength it would require to tolerate the predominance of such a state with grace—which my mother does. There are times to speak up about what we know, or believe, or feel called to defend. And perhaps an essentially loving family is the ideal practice ground for developing courage in this respect. But also, it seems equally important to look around the room on occasion, remembering to notice who is listening as much as who is holding forth—because the listeners are a vital component of the dialogue too. It’s the listeners who sometimes remind us that having no opinion is the greatest gift we can bring to a conversation. My mother Nancy is our designated witness for now. Like a designated driver who remains quietly sober in our midst, making sure that we can all get safely home after the bar closes and our eighty-proof arguments are returned to the cabinet. I found myself wondering who in our family will sit in her chair as that shining jewel of presence when she’s gone. Perhaps I’ve been tagged, and one day it will be my turn to look around the room and see who is paying enough attention to catch an unexpected snowball while everyone else is playing with fire. For now it’s a good thing my mom’s still around, modeling dignity in a world of resounding alarms. Because I’ve still got some practice to do.
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