By Kimberly Gerry-Tucker

I have an abacus in my basement. It’s got a wooden frame and is about the height of a Kindergartner. My late mother worked in the school system over 25 years and when the classroom updated their room, my mother took the abacus from the discard pile. When I walk by it to do laundry, I’m struck by its simplicity. The faded colored wooden beads on a wire, slid to the side, to learn adding and subtracting. I glance at it often as I feed the dryer wet clothes and I imagine so many long-ago small fingers on the beads, intent with learning math, in a very hands-on way. I ponder many of the Kindergartners who used the abacus having gone on to learn algebraic equations. All learning starts so simply.

Brain neuroplasticity (“the ability [of the brain] to change its structure and function in response to experience,”) fascinates me. My brain loves to think about itself.