A letter of love to one without whom I would be nothing, nothing at all.

To my brain,

I love you. I think you're totally awesome, what with the crenellations and indurations and foldy gyri of memory-holding and whatnot. You sit inside my skull, cradled in cerebrospinal fluidy goodness and command the body, MY body (and also yours, isn't that weird?) to do marvelous things like walk and chew gum at the same time.

How do you do that?

Also, how do you know when to get sleepy, and when to tell me I'm hungry, and how to make my hands hold the mascara wand in such a way as to get the outer tips of the lashes done at the same time as the rest of them? Because that right there is fairly amazing stuff.

There's a lot to like about you, dear brain. How you hold memories for dozens of years (though really? You could do a way better job, because I'd think you'd remember things like the time I went to a sushi party in grad school where the sushi was full of WORMS, and how I was the only-ever 4th grader on the library squad in elementary school, but no, my Mom had to tell me about those things), how you recall phone numbers easily, how you provide terrific dreams on such a regular basis that I'm convinced at this point that I'm actually being transported to another world every night. For a 3-pound wrinkly lump of jello-like parynchema, you really really rock.

One thing though: could you maybe do a touch better with helping me remember the little things, like the fact that we DID actually print out Thing 1's school project last night, and that a last-minute panic this morning really wasn't necessary? Honestly brain, I have a need to keep these kinds of things in line or the possibility of me flying completely off whatever handle I'm precariously clinging to is heightened ten-fold. Never mind that I had to ask twice if we'd really done that last night, never mind that I was in the act of e-mailing it from my work laptop to the home computer YET AGAIN so we could print it out while the first half of that first cup of coffee wasn't even finished, never mind that (and this is arguably the most important point) it's really not my responsibility to ensure that the kid has his schoolwork; I would think (or YOU would, I guess!) that something like the fact that the printing out had already been DONE would have turned a tumbler in your lockbox of important items so that the assurance of completion would have made its way into memory and I wouldn't have to embarrass us (yes, US. We're a team. Without you I'd be nothing, and with me, you'd be a rapidly desiccating lump of unidentifiable goo on the sidewalk) in front of the children.

It's a little thing, but an important one. Tell me/us you'll work on it, mmkay?

All My Love,
Tiff.