Losing It by Cyndy Muscatel
Cyndy Muscatel has written for several publications including The Seattle Times and The Desert Sun. Her fiction, non-fiction, and poetry have been published in many journals including The MacGuffin, Main Street Rag, North Atlantic Review, Quercus Review, riverSedge, descant, Existere, and Jet Fuel Review. Her collection of published short stories “Radio Days” is available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. She is working on a memoir of her time teaching in the inner city of Seattle during the Sixties.
Author Foreword:
As a babyboomer, I find aging is tricky. You can lose confidence in yourself, especially in this youth-oriented culture. Keeping fit, mentally and physically, are huge clues to staying afloat.
As you get older, you get afraid you’re losing it. Take for example that you don’t remember where you put your car keys or, for that matter, your car. If you’re younger, you’re just annoyed. If you’re older, you think you’re losing it. You call it a senior moment, forgetting all the times in the past when you’d be late to work because you couldn’t find your keys. Or when you wandered around the Costco parking lot looking for your car in the blazing sun.
I talked about this to my neighbor the other day. I’d come out of the house to take our dog for a walk. Nina was standing in front of her garage with her daughter, who is in medical school. Neither had a clue where the keys to their car were. Nina had her sunglasses on—her reading glasses were on top of her head. I didn’t know if I should point that out. I had a feeling if I didn’t, she’d be starting a new game of hide and seek.
“I’m always losing things,” she confessed as she put her glasses into her purse. “Like when I can’t find my phone and I realize I’m talking into it.” She laughed.
That’s what you do when you’re younger. You laugh. When I was looking for my phone the other day and found it in my hand, I got scared. If you’re older, you keep it to yourself because you’re afraid—afraid your kids will find out and insist on power of attorney.
I admit I’m a bit scatterbrained. My brain is like a fast-moving freeway lane crowded with bumper-to-bumper thoughts running through it. I have quite a history of leaving things cooking on the stove—hard-boiled eggs are my specialty. I’ve done it on and off for years, much to the detriment of my pots and my kitchen. Once it was chicken breasts. I was going to make us chicken salad before we went to see the movie Seabiscuit, so I had four chicken breasts simmering in a small pot. When my husband hurried me out the door, I forgot about them. It was only during the movie, when the family on screen was eating chicken, that I remembered.
“We’ve got to go home now,” I whispered to my husband.
“But the movie’s not over,” he said
I stood up. “I read the book so I know the ending. And I left chicken on the stove.”
We made it home minutes before disaster struck. Nothing caught on fire but the house was filled with smoke, which took days to clear. The four chicken breasts looked like toasted marshmallows that had stayed too long in the campfire. And the pan? Forgetta ’bout it.
If that happened at my age now, I’m afraid it won’t be the fire department pounding on my door but welfare services coming to cart me off to assisted living. And I’d be put in a room that didn’t have a kitchenette. That’s why I instituted a new rule: If I’m boiling eggs I must stay in the kitchen until they are done. It works out well unless I get distracted reading headlines on my iPad.
I lost my wedding ring once. I have a habit of sliding my ring off and on, which I was doing in the back seat of a friend’s car. The ring slipped and fell off my finger. We searched that car top to bottom but never found it. Until the day my friend had her dryer vent cleaned out. That happened thirty years ago. No one could figure out how it got there. If it happened now, I’d be sure my mind was playing tricks on me. I’d know I was losing it.
Somehow when I go on the Internet, there are lots of articles about Alzheimer’s posted on my page. To counteract the implicit threat to my brain, I started doing brain games.
I’m not very lucky at games. I take that back. I’m unlucky at games. I started playing bridge but I had to quit. I never got enough points in a hand to make a bid. Being dummy only has so much allure. When my grandson, Evan, was three, he crushed me at the card game War. He patted me on my hand, saying, “Grammy, we can get you lessons!” My luck hasn’t changed with the passage of years. Recently my six-year-old granddaughter beat me forty-one games in a row playing Candyland.
But give me a game like Scrabble that’s all about words, I’m hard to beat. Enter Words With Friends! During the COVID-19 shutdown, I became addicted. Many afternoons were spent dueling with friends. My competitive streak was as out of control as my screen time.
Lumosity is another Internet game I play. A Facebook friend suggested it to help keep the mental cylinders firing, but it has taught me much more: I’ve learned the art of focus. I can now keep my mind on the task at hand rather than thinking in several other directions. Which is a plus for a random-abstract thinker.
Until I was getting into my car at Costco yesterday, I had a cutesy conclusion written for this essay. It started with “Getting older is not for sissies.” But as I put my items in the trunk, I realized I hadn’t had any trouble knowing where I’d parked. I’d done several errands before and hadn’t needed a list. I still walk three miles a day and now play pickleball. I head a committed on a Foundation board. So what do I have to be afraid of? Nothing, except the prejudice of ageism. I’ve fallen in the trap of stereotyping myself as “the Medicare person,” someone who isn’t healthy physically or cognitively.
I’m going to lose it.
