I Really Mean It. You’ll See.

After briefly browsing in a shop in town yesterday, I stepped outside to an empty curb: my car was gone.Two men were making repairs to a storefront on the street, and I asked them in a panic, “Was my car towed?!” They didn’t think so. They’d been there for an hour and hadn’t even seen a car in that space. They tactfully suggested...that...um...maybe I'd parked further down the street? (Indeed I had.) Then they looked at me with an indulgent brand of patience and pity, and I know what they were seeing: one of those baffled middle-aged women, the kind who can’t remember if she took her vitamin pill five minutes earlier or why she went into the grocery store or even where she parked her car.

It’s amusing sometimes, but mostly worrisome. In this case I had been certain that I’d left my car in a space directly in front of the store, and I had absolutely no recollection of having parked where I did, even though this had involved waiting for a light, crossing a street, and walking a block. I’ve been taking fish oil supplements, making lists, and trying to establish more consistent routines (which has never been my style) but those blanks in the tape are disconcerting. I spend enough hours visiting my mother at the assisted living facility to be deadly afraid of memory loss, and I know this glitch in my recall button is common among people my age, but it makes me feel terribly vulnerable.

It comforts me only slightly to consider the fact that I’ve always been a little scatter-brained and goofy. I grew up in chaos; maybe I learned to cope by tuning out, and I guess this became a part of my personality early on, sometimes in humorous contrast to my take-me-serious side. Everyone in my life today knows how much time I spend hunting for things I’ve misplaced, how I circle the room in search of my keys whenever I am about to make an exit, how I return to the house at least once to make sure I turned off the stove. I am forever fumbling for my cell phone, dropping things, looking for the glasses on my head or the pencil tucked behind my ear, and I have long been the woman with the torn hem or the olive oil stain on her lovely silk blouse or the chartreuse lettuce bit wedged between her front teeth.

I was the teacher whose 11-year-old students used to help her get organized, the one who would invariably get her group lost in the museum, the klutz who defiantly wore high-heeled sandals and then tripped and fell like a tree in front of the headmaster and the entire student body. So what else is new? When I was in second grade, I did an on-stage twirl that revealed my white bloomers to all the kids in the auditorium. I went for a serious job interview in the 1980s and discovered afterwards that my blouse was unbuttoned the whole time. And just last week I got my fingers stuck in the mail slot at the Lompoc post office while trying to make sure my letters were in there real good. I'm funny.

I think what’s bothering me is that what might be endearing and charming when you’re young and attractive begins to look pathetic as you age. I can’t quite shake the half-smile I got from those construction guys when I asked if they’d seen my car get towed, and I know they were trying to be nice, thinking that I could well be their own befuddled mother. It reminds me of the policeman who recently pulled me over for driving too slowly in the left lane where I exit to get home and his touchingly filial concern as he made me promise to stay in the right lane next time, exit past the tunnel, turn around and come back so that my exit would be there for me on the right side where it's easier. Yikes.

The only thing worse than being invisible is being in everyone’s way. And I hereby resolve to fight it! You are witnessing an important proclamation. I’m going to pay attention, stay focused, and take care -- but not in a fussy old lady way. I really mean it. You'll see.

Step one to a remedy, as always, is to get outside, exercise more, and look around. Idecided I’d ride my bicycle over to Jeanne’s house, ostensibly to get eggs, but mostly to say hello. The fragrances of orange blossoms and jasmine hovered in the air as I walked down to the garage to get my bike. There are purple irises on the hillside, and fields of lupine and bright yellow daisies, and I noticed that my fledgling rose bushes are budding up, and on the road I caught a fleeting glimpse of a small bobcat bounding into the brush.

When I got to Jeanne’s, she introduced me to her brand new chickens. Tiny, peeping ballsof fluff, they had been born in Iowa on Saturday morning and were now ensconcedat their new residence in California – seriously, how amazing is that?! I marveled, too,at the wisteria that had burst into bloom about the barn, and Jeanne cut me some sprigs along with a vine of white roses and made an impromptu bouquet, which we lowered into my backpack. And the flowers arched over my head as I rode home, and fragrant blossoms snowed upon me, and I suppose you could say my head was in a cloud, but I was competent and autonomous, a one-woman parade.