You Are Better Than a Nap

I don't normally read my horoscope in the paper, even if it is right there next to the Jumble and the Sudoku, both of which I do religiously. This morning as I was trying to unscramble SIPOME I also was thinking about how to respond to the reactions to my last post, though, I glanced at the horoscope.

PEOPLE! SERIOUSLY!

The stars obviously knew that I had just written a post exposing what truly is one of my deepest fears and shared it not only with my nearest and dearest but also with the internet.

Then my nearest and dearest and the internet responded in the kindest ways. Ways that were touching and made me cry. Ways that were practical and made me sigh with relief. Ways that were funny and made me laugh out loud.

"Hey, we all feel like we're losing our minds after we turn 60," someone wrote, and that probably was the theme of the day, that theme that I was not alone.

But I also heard from a favorite aunt, who told me family stories I had never heard before.

I heard from a dear friend who is taking care of a husband who sometimes can dress himself, and sometimes cannot. "Sometimes he gets completely dressed and other times he can't figure out the belt or whatever," she wrote. She sounded so very tired that I wept.

I got an email from my best friend from high school, who is keeping a list of things for us to bring to her when her mind is completely gone. The list includes a lava lamp, Lincoln logs, and one of those little multi-jointed animal toys that sit on a pedestal and when you push the button under the pedestal the animal collapses. "I'll be able to do this for hours," she assures us. I laughed and laughed.

And then I realized that talking out loud about my very real fear of Alzheimer's is like having one of those terrible dreams that seems so real that it sticks with you all day, but once you talk about it you get some perspective and realize that worrying isn't going to help matters.

That's when the newspaper decidedI needed one more reassurance and it printed today's horoscope.

"You could be overtired."

Why, I believe that is correct.

Also, SIPOME unscrambled is IMPOSE. Boom. I haven't lost it quite yet.