I do love words. I asked my husband, does everyone read books with a massive dictionary at their elbow like I do? I am fairly literate, but I don’t want an interesting new one to get by me. He usually knows them all, so he doesn’t need to, but he knows far less than I do about what “everyone” does. So we both don’t know that. I rarely remember the ones I look up, at least the first time through. I find out what they mean to make sense out of the passage I just read, and then they may vanish instantly as if in a computer crash. Sometimes I am even dismayed to find I have to look up the same word twice in one chapter, but I console myself that perhaps the repetition will help me remember it this time. I rarely use these new-to-me words when I write, partly because I don’t want to pretend to be more erudite than I am, but mostly because I don’t want you to have to read my stuff with a dictionary at your elbow if that is something that you do. And most often I don’t like them that much. But sometimes I encounter a winner, and will probably write that one down.
Being a wordsmith, however, I love to write and I enjoy working and playing with words. I especially like double entendres, or creating funny or new-to-me meanings out of known or laden existing combinations like “make America grate again, always a melting pot…” being my cheese-making handle. But I rarely make up words. That is a higher order of creativity than I can claim.
About a week ago I hit a jackpot of learning two really excellent, related and even useful-to-my-purposes new words in one weekend, and both were home grown, meaning uniquely made up by the speakers. The first was in a conversation with my friend and colleague, Lars. Lars is the rockstar who runs the education program for my neurofeedback community and is probably uniquely responsible for my not going rock stir crazy from the professional isolation at the start of the Pandemic. Lars rapidly started producing webinars and recruiting the best of our brains to teach and keep me company in those wee insomniac hours where there was only BBC news to talk to me. The news was particularly, and frighteningly bleak then: thousands dying every day and “new” wars starting as well. Some of our webinars were even fun and funny, but all were enlightening, enriching and comforting. I will be ever grateful as I recall those rough days. Thanks Lars!
This was a purely social zoom with Lars. We live in sunny states on opposite coasts of this big country, I haven’t seen him in person in some years. When I sked him about his adorable little daughter, he lit up and began telling me about how she is learning to swim. He sent me the sweetest photos of his gorgeous little fish. He described how with all of his busy work life, he does not get to spend nearly as much time with her as he would like, but every Saturday is their special day together. They call it “Dadderday!” I said, “Wow Lars, what a great word!” For an attachment hound like me, I immediately asked him, “Can I use it?” “Of course!” he quickly and delightedly replied, his delight being the sheer delight he, and I am quite certain she as well, feel about those precious days.
“Dadderday!” I remember Saturdays when I was her age, and really for most of my childhood. Our dad, being a cantor, performed services every Saturday morning. He was nervous in the morning and rushing to get out of the house. Often services were followed by a bar mitzva luncheon or some sort of congregant special occasion. Then he usually went by the local hospital to fulfill the mitzva of “visiting the sick.” By late afternoon he got home, tired, and hit the bed, his firm credo being that “if you don’t have a good nap on Shabbat, the day of rest; you will be tired all week.” So we had to be quiet if we were at home. He slept all afternoon and often in the evening my parents went out to some other social or professional grown-up event. So much for “Dadderday…” I was duly moved by Lars’ special connection to his little girl, and his palpable love and authentic joy. That little girl is truly blessed.
Husbands
For some three decades, I have been an eager follower of the work of Sue Carter, long before the word “follower” had the meaning it has now in social media. (Interestingly in cheesemaking, the “follower” is the cover of the cheese making mold, that holds the press in place. Oy vey, don’t get me going on this word thing!) Sue is sometimes affectionately referred to as the “Oxytocin Queen.” As a biologist she has spent these decades seriously studying teaching and writing about love, sex, and attachment across the lifespan and across the animal kingdom. These are all favorite subjects of mine, as by now you know. She also happens to be married to Steven Porges of the Poly Vagal theory, of which I am sure you also know. I have always been annoyed by the fact that many people referred to Sue simply as “Steven Porges’ wife as if she were not a luminary in her own right. That continually irked me.
Growing up as the “cantor’s daughter,” our dad would routinely ask when I might have met a new-to-me person, “Do they know who you ARE?” Meaning did they know I was his daughter. As far as he was concerned (and I certainly bought and believed it,) there was no me. I was either identified as a satellite of him, or I was nothing, I did not exist. Poof, like smoke, which was how I felt anyway. So it has always bugged me when anyone is known only as “so and so luminary’s wife.” My husband retired some years ago from a long career in tech. I never once in three decades had to masquerade as a “corporate wife,” never once attended a corporate event that would require that. Although to be honest, being a child of neglect, he rarely went to work social events himself.
Attachment
Interesting to me is how many attachment researchers and neuroscientist teams are spouses working together, most notably Mary Main and her husband Erik Hesse, although in their case the more famous one, certainly to me, was her. Well I had the privilege of a private interview with Sue, that momentous weekend rich in words. I had prepared a bit watching a recorded recent talk she had given at a big international conference, so I would have more articulate questions for her. I was struck by how proudly and collaboratively she refers to her “wonderful husband Steve” of 53 years. Describing their respective work she noted “we are really talking about the same thing, [meaning the attachment system] he from a nervous system standpoint, I from a hormonal one.” Interestingly she described the two systems working very much in tandem. “The nervous system is faster, and the chemical system is more enduring.” Hmm. That gave me a lot to think about. In conjunction with that notion, she quotes an African proverb “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go with others.” A tough but important lesson for the solitary, self-reliant child of neglect.
Here is the wonderful new word I learned from Sue: “Sociostasis.” I had written it down from the webinar I watched. What does that mean? “I made that one up,” she laughed. She explained infants, all of us really are physiologically regulated in relationship. There is no physiological homeostasis, no bodily balance, in isolation. “sociostasis” is the return to a stable baseline. It is in a relationship that we can do that. What a splendidly streamlined way to explain regulation which I tend to be so clumsy and wordy in trying to teach. “Sociostasis.” It is a grand word. Thanks, Sue! Those are two I won’t forget. Not in any of my hefty print dictionaries- yet, but already in use.
I am writing this in glorious Hawaii. It happens to be Saturday, for some it’s “Dadderday.” I wonder what Lars and his little fish are doing today. Hope it is a good one! Keep cool everyone! Aloha!
Today’s song:
