My mother is visiting her older sister, newly diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. She lives many states away and I can’t be there with them this week, although I wish I were if only for my mom. She’s been adamant that I need to see my aunt soon. That time is of the essence.

It’s near impossible to imagine the slow-fast unlearning of everything someone knows about you. The at first unwilling, then gradually unknowing release of shared memories. Till those left behind are the only keepers.

So here’s the deal. I am a thirty-blah year old woman. And despite my  actual birthdate on my driver’s license, I always seem to find myself feeling either way younger or way older than my actual born-on date. It’s inevitable that I feel younger when I’m loitering around my friends with kids and ten year marriages and pee-wee basketball coaching gigs. Then I like to turn right around, strut into Forever 21 feeling all pre-teen and bursting with newly burnished bravado and am quickly and mercilessly put in my place. Now I am 68. With big, flapping jowls. And a dowager’s hump. Also childless and husbandless. Okay, so only one of those last few qualifiers is actually true.

One, two. Is this thing on?