I just watched my dad try to figure out a 5-letter word for “relish” in his crossword puzzle for fifteen minutes. Fifteen. He kept saying things like “zest?” and “spice?” and I just sat there, waiting, because I didn’t want to give it away, but also because… because I was watching him. He’s 84, and this isn’t new, this slowing down, the word retrieval issues, the way he sometimes loses the thread of a conversation. It’s part of the human condition, I know that. The inevitable entropic decay of our cognitive faculties. But seeing it so starkly, so tangibly… it makes me feel something I don’t even have a descriptor for. It’s not fear, exactly. More like a pervasive dread, a cold anticipatory echo. And the thing is, lately, I’ve been having my own moments. Nothing major. Not yet, anyway. Forgetting why I walked into a room, misplacing my keys for the third time this week, struggling to remember the name of that actor in that one movie. Just little slips, easily dismissed as “mom brain” or sleep deprivation, which, let’s be honest, is my default state as a stay-at-home parent of two toddlers. But then I see my dad, painstakingly trying to recall a basic word, and the little slips suddenly feel like precursors. Like the initial tremors before a significant seismic event. Am I just projecting? Or is this a legitimate, early manifestation? Is this what it feels like to start losing it? The insidious creeping in, barely perceptible at first, then gaining momentum until it’s all consuming? I’m 31. I should be at my cognitive peak, or at least somewhere near it. Not wondering if I’m already on the downslope. I spend my days doing laundry and negotiating with a three-year-old about broccoli, and sometimes I feel like my brain is actively atrophying from disuse. Is that a factor? Can a lack of intellectual stimulation accelerate cognitive decline? I used to read scientific papers, write actual analyses… now I barely finish a picture book. And I feel guilty even thinking these things, like I’m ungrateful for this life, for my kids. But the thought, this persistent, quiet hum of “what if I’m next?” — it’s just always there. And I don’t know what to do with it.