For three days, I lived on the edge of fear, hoping and praying that what I suspected was not true. I had searched through all my cabinets, even in the pantry and could not find my favorite glass measuring cup.
Each morning, I checked through all the cabinets again. Maybe I had missed it the day before. Maybe it somehow reappeared during the night in that clandestine hide-and-seek that dishes and socks and silverware play.
No. I looked in the dishwasher. Maybe it was dirty and waiting to be washed. No. Maybe it somehow found its way to the cabinet with the smaller appliances. Was it stuck inside the blender? No. Hiding behind my son’s George Foreman grill? No.
The reason this search for the missing glass measuring cup was so important had nothing to do with the fact that this is my favorite measuring cup. I could probably replace it at Target for less than five dollars.
But this is the exact behavior that my mother exhibited when she began to struggle with symptoms of Alzheimer’s. She “lost” items around the house. She forgot which cabinets held her pots and pans. She safety-pinned her house key inside her pants whenever she left the house so that she could get in again, because her keys were easy to “lose.”
Was I beginning to see the same pattern and this time…in myself?
Please, God. Oh no, please, please.
After the third day of searching for the measuring cup and not finding it, I mentioned it to my son. “Have you seen it? Do you remember taking it out of the dishwasher and putting it somewhere?”
He helped me look through the cabinets one more time and sure enough – there it was. Hiding behind the divider on the top shelf, within the shadows where I had easily missed seeing it before.
But how did it get there? I have a particular place where I keep my measuring cups. Why was this cup in the wrong place?
I thought about Reverend G and how she misplaced a half gallon of Chunky Monkey ice cream. Instead of placing it in the freezer where it belonged, she hid it in the pantry where the “brown and white droplets of melted ice cream puddled on the floor.” http://amzn.to/11QATC1
Was I joining my own main character in the world of Alzheimer’s, putting things where they didn’t belong?
Please, God. Oh no, please, please.
Then my son fessed up. “I may have put the measuring cup in the wrong place, Mom.”
Whew! “Okay. It goes here, in this other cabinet. Next time, we’ll both know where to look for it.”
Thank you, God. Thank you, thank you.
©2014 RJ Thesman – Intermission for Reverend G – http://amzn.to/1l4oGoo
WHEW!
Yes, indeed!
Four or five years ago my daughter went to an activity at a church not far from our house. I attended VBS at the church when I was in grade school and have passed by it countless times. When I went to pick her up, I could not find the church. It was such a strange feeling. It scared me so bad I cried, something I don’t usually do for such a silly reason.I did find it, but it took weeks for me to get over the fear that I might have Alzhemier’s.
What a scary moment for you, Martha! I know how that feels – any time I forget something I immediately start praying like Reverend G, “Oh God, oh God, I can’t stand it!”