I am toasting my bagel for the fourth time this morning, having started the process about an hour ago while working on a sudoku puzzle. I set a timer for one minute to remind me to listen for the bell, which just went off across the kitchen, which should be the trigger that has me respond with getting the bagel, buttering it, and slowly eating it, often forgetting to take bites because my mind is so easily distracted. 

Likewise, I keep putting my coffee mug in the microwave or dumping cold coffee into the sink.

I am absent-minded, easily distracted, forgetful, preoccupied and any other like-minded terms I can’t think of right now.

Twice in my life I have pulled into a local gas station, swiped my credit card, inserted the gas nozzle into the tank, stood there while it filled, returned the nozzle to the pump and driven away without actually getting gas. At some point those two days I looked down and noticed that the car was still on empty.

This past week, visiting the personal care facility into which my mom would be moving soon, I left the very important plastic folder containing all of her vital information–checkbook, medicare card, insurance card, power of attorney, will, medical records–lying in the empty room into which she would be moving. I did not realize this myself. Only when Liz called me to tell me a maintenance worker had found it while they were getting the room ready a week later did I realize it was missing. 

I’m not going to mention the time I left important paperwork in a cardboard box in the middle of the Home Depot parking lot. 

I’m pretty good at not missing important meetings. Mostly. I’ve paid a few fees though for missing doctor’s appointments.

I’ve missed my share of exits off of highways. Once, while driving to Indiana from Akron, Ohio, I was almost to Columbus when I realized I’d missed my turn. It was an hour later, over sixty miles out of the way. 

While teaching, I used to hide things in the ceiling, above the ceiling tiles, grabbing a ladder during class and pulling down the baking soda or triple beam balance as if that was normal. I did this so often, however, that I occasionally forgot where I’d put something important and would spend so many precious minutes before a lesson wondering which part of the ceiling and in which room I’d hidden the important item.

Comically, I just put the bagel back in the toaster and dumped out my cold coffee. 

I do not usually forget to laugh at myself for such events. At least at some point joy visits these memories.

I know that I am not alone in my forgetfulness. Plenty of us forget, if not all of us. 

When I have a lot going on, say helping my mom recover from a fall six weeks ago then moving her to a new home and cleaning out her old apartment and driving to feed her cat two times a day and volunteering for a STEM competition at my local middle school for over twenty hours this past week and weekend, that’s when things go sideways.

That’s why I just missed the ding for the bagel again. 

That’s why the coffee maker just turned itself off three hours after I started it, still sitting here nursing a cup that has passed the point I enjoy drinking it. 

That’s how this Hard Twenty entry became a Hard Forty, though large parts of writing here were spent looking out the window at the snow, amazed that it has returned after a two-year absence, as if nature is also forgetful and that there are larger natural cycles on top of seasons and months and weeks and hours and things to do and things to not do that supercede our needs and actions. That whatever I’ve forgotten to do and forgotten that I’ve forgotten are at most fallen twigs and leaves now under the snow, turning back into soil, the unrecognizable dirt we are all bound to be, whether we make the turn at the Mansfield exit or drive away on empty over and over and over again.