My partner and I have done a fair amount of traveling in the last few months: We took a two-week driving trip out West at the end of August, and we went to Wisconsin twice for short trips in September and October. I also went to Wisconsin with a friend for a five-day writing retreat at the beginning of October. And so, traveling in the time of forgetfulness has been very much on my mind.

What I mean by the time of forgetfulness is this time in my life, when I am a woman of a certain age, as they used to say politely back in the day. I’m a baby boomer, and so are many of my friends and a ton of other people, so there are a lot of us of a certain age, experiencing the time of forgetfulness. And maybe it’s not just aging that’s creating all our forgetfulness. Maybe there’s something about the time we’re living in that’s making everyone forgetful.

All I know is that every time I tell someone that I am getting forgetful and it’s driving me crazy because I keep losing my glasses, my phone, my keys, or my words, every single person I say that to says something like, “Oh, me too.” And then we complain and commiserate.

“We can’t all be coming down with dementia,” I say to my friends when they say they’re worrying about that for themselves.

I think it could be all the things requiring our attention, taking up our mental space: all the details we’re constantly juggling, all the things that are constantly calling out to be noticed and remembered—emails and phone calls and text messages, PINs and passwords, and the myriad other things that have to be kept track of to keep life going these day. Not to mention the steady fire hose of news stories. It’s hard to grab onto it all and hold onto it all. And it’s normal to be a little forgetful when you get to a certain age.

Still, it’s kind of unnerving. I do worry about my own memory, no matter what I tell myself and my friends. And my forgetfulness is a lot more noticeable while I’m traveling: all that packing and unpacking, all that moving from one place to another, that steady stream of sights and experiences needing to be noticed and paid attention to.

I think of standing at the bottom of the bed in a hotel room somewhere in Colorado, my suitcase open on the bed in front of me. I’d just gone into the bathroom to retrieve something I needed to pack. Or maybe I went in there to do something I needed to do so I could finish packing. I couldn’t remember which. By the time I got to the bathroom, I’d forgotten why I went in there. We were leaving soon, and I needed to finish packing, but all these little moments of forgetfulness weren’t helping any.

I think of packing up at home to go somewhere else, remembering that I needed to bring a comb, going into the bathroom to get a comb, forgetting why I went into the bathroom, remembering that I forgot to bring a comb after my suitcase was packed, opening the suitcase, and then forgetting what I remembered that I forgot to bring.

I don’t know where to go with this topic; I don’t know how to neatly tie it up with a meaningful little bow. Maybe I can’t come up with the right words or thoughts to do that, or maybe it’s just that life itself can’t be tied up neatly with a bow and set aside. Life just keeps happening, and we are all just doing our best to keep up with it. And if we miss a few beats or drop a few stitches, that’s probably OK. There will be more life down the road where that came from.