Rhythms of Experience: The Interplay of Symmetry and Asymmetry in Development

Some years ago I leaped upon the opportunity to give my exhausted sister a rest during a visit, telling her to sleep while I took care of her infant at 2 a.m. Mischa was one of those babies who snuggles into the contours of one's body. I can see us in the dim light with no-one else awake to interrupt: relaxed, my body supported by the overstuffed chair and ottoman, his by the soft warmth of my body. I speak quietly, then sink into a dreamy state without words, caught up in the simple sensory experience of his soft warmth curling onto my chest, his head just below mine where I can smell the babyness of him, hear that quick infant breathing, feel the satiny texture of his skin with my lips. Memory becomes so intense that I can almost re-create that filled-full state; feel the pressure on my chest and shoulders supporting his weight; hear, see, and feel his breathing, which then fills me as I—now more simply a sensory being—concentrate on the rhythm of his breathing, then begin to hear and feel my own, hear and feel the two come into harmony, then diverge. The two paces—his faster, mine slower—briefly and regularly come into synchrony, then out. I next discover the firm pressing in of surface to surface, which settles down breathing and heart beats. I feel a quiet, very ordinary, intense pleasure.

Establishing a coordinated rhythm is not simply going into synchrony. It is going into synchrony, out, in, out, in, out—and