Navigational skills

I

 keep walking into doors. Or more precisely, door jambs.

In the past, my brain handled stuff like this for me—Hey, look out, it said. Door jamb approaching. It communicated the message to my body—Hey, adjust course! Door jamb approaching.

By the time that message circulates now, I’m holding my head and telling bystanders, “It’s fine, I’m fine. No, I’m not hurt—it’s OK, please, go home, citizens. Nothing to see here.”

Oddly, these recent navigational glitches seem to target my left elbow in particular. Every week or so, I slam my left funny bone into something new—my dresser, the car door, the top of the dog’s head, a passing vehicle, the ever-present door jamb.

Why? I’m wider than I used to be, I admit it. Has my brain failed to recalibrate?  

I’m not afraid of growing old. Gray hair, the inexplicable longing for “Hill Street Blues” reruns, an urge to begin sentences with, “Well, in my day…,” these aspects of aging I can handle.

And I’m doing OK. In good light, I can still make out the tiny hieroglyphs that explain directions for over-the-counter cold medicine. Most days, I can step off a curb without face-planting into the cross walk. I can decode the programming information of 27 separate streaming services.

But awhile back, I opened the refrigerator door into my own head. Smack. I think I heard the refrigerator laughing. No carrots for you! I reached in and took the carrots anyway. Then I gently pushed the door closed with my left elbow, to prove a point. You can’t let your appliances get ahead of you.

The challenges go beyond physical klutziness and affronts from ill-mannered appliances. I’m having benign cognitive lapses. A few weeks ago we set out an attractive bowl of wintergreen mints on the dining room table. So civilized. So thoughtful. Something to share with friends who might drop by and need a refreshing mint at their departure. Something to arm myself against a possible halitosis-induced episode as I embark on a morning of errand-running.

For three days—three full days—I paused every time I walked by the table, trying to locate the glob of Icy Hot I must have dropped somewhere. I searched, actively, with purpose, under the table, under the chairs, on the rug, everywhere.

I wish I was making this up.

On the fourth day, the light dawned. It’s the mints, Einstein. You’re smelling the oh-so-civilized mints you put out. You know, back when you imagined you were lucid enough to have people over, or leave the house and run errands.

I stood in my dining room and laughed until my husband came to check on me. Then I sat down, wiped the tears off my face, and solemnly reassessed my value as a contributing member of society. I can see that ship, the one that carried me purposefully through life, far in the distance. Trust me when I say, it has sailed.

If I try to struggle out of a too-tight T-shirt and it goes for my neck? I’m in mortal danger. If my two feet, the left and the right one, don’t keep re-establishing their separate identities, I veer into innocent shoppers at the grocery store.

Meanwhile, I sit in my recliner and apply Icy Hot to my left elbow. I give the refrigerator the side-eye when I walk through the kitchen. I carefully line up my center mass with the center line of every doorway.

I’ll have to navigate aging the best I can. It’s coming.