my sister amy told me that 50% of people who live past the age of 85 get alzheimer’s.
kevin and i have concluded that this is not going to affect us, because it’s starting to kick in already. by the time we reach 85 we won’t even know who we are so we won’t have to worry about it. or anything at all.
two weeks ago we went out to Site M, where we’ve been camping before, to take Mollie for a little walk. kevin’s knee is improving enough so that he can walk a little. we parked near the primitive campsites, i put my purse in the trunk where it would be safer, and we headed out for our walk.
it was colder and windier than it was in town, and pretty soon i was ready to go back. kevin agreed, saying, “can you see the car from here?” we hadn’t walked that far, and i could see it off in the distance. and it appeared that the trunk was WIDE OPEN.
yes, wide open, with my purse perched on top of all the other stuff in the trunk. how did we manage to walk off leaving it open?
senility, creeping in.
and then the day before yesterday i told kevin i was going to make some cookies. i started getting out ingredients but realized i didn’t have enough oatmeal for the cookies, so i put the stuff away. kevin was sitting there in the kitchen with me, tinkering on something, as i flipped through a cookbook. after a while he got up and headed for the kitchen counter with an expectant look in his eyes. “you’re not going to have a cookie, are you?” i asked him. “uh, yeah…”
i hadn’t been making cookies. i hadn’t mixed anything up, i hadn’t baked any cookies, there were no warm and fragrant cookies sitting around anywhere. but since i said i was going to make cookies, kevin assumed that they were then made, even there was no evidence that might make him think this was actually reality.
it would have been kind of crazy of him to think this if he’d been out in the garage while i wasn’t making cookies, but he was SITTING RIGHT THERE WITH ME.
so if you run into either of us and maybe we don’t remember your name, or we’re drooling or walking around in aimless circles, you’ll know why. the creeping has begun.
ok then,
grace.