Is it when you find the house keys in the refrigerator that it’s time to worry? Is it when you forget which car lever does the blinkers and which does the lights that it’s time to worry?

Or is it when trying to find the right word turns into a disturbingly elusive treasure hunt, is that when it’s time to worry?

I’m sitting in the living room with my youngest and his wife. It’s mid-afternoon, their infant son is napping, and a pleasant lull has replaced the busy-baby energy of earlier. I’m telling the new parents about my morning routine; First I do Wordle, then The Mini, hopefully in under a minute, then Connections and then Strands. This is how I try to wake up my brain every morning. The unsaid part, my fear of a sleeping brain, a forgetful brain, a brain that like Elvis has left the building.

Connections can be so frustrating, I say. Of the four categories, the purple one can be so obtuse. Inwardly I’m tap dancing over retrieving the word, obtuse, then add, I often have to rely on … and that’s when my brain empties, the plug is pulled, the power switches off. Like dried leaves on a path when the wind picks up all my words scatter deep into a murky forest.

I’m searching in the dark with a waning ember. I’m digging with a shovel in ground too dense.

My youngest, his wife and I all wait in an awkward, and for me slightly terrifying moment that feels like forever. I know what I want to say, but the concept I’m clawing at has morphed into a slicked pig. I look up as if my words might be on the ceiling. I look down in case they’ve fallen. I can’t look at my patiently waiting son. This pause is too thick. Does my silence unnerve him as much as it unnerves me?

Ultimately and finally the lights come back on, the tap opens, and I blurt out, the process of elimination. I often have to rely on the process of elimination to solve the purple category. Oh thank God! Thank God the words found their way from the storage closet in my head to my lungs, my vocal cords, my tongue and lips.

Word retrieval has never been my strong suit, but is it getting worse? My poor husband has had to endure my word constipation too many times. During my quest, I either go completely mute with squinty-eyed and futile concentration, or I expel every word in the dictionary other than the one word I’m searching for as I to try to get my point across.

In response, my husband either sits and waits as patiently as he can, which has its limits after 40 years of marriage, or like a jigsaw puzzler, he grabs pieces of my broken language from thin air and jams them into a word image we can both see and understand. When the sought-after term finally does erupt, I feel like a Mama bird regurgitating pre-masticated food for her babies.

Expressive dysfunction. I saw it in some of the preschoolers I taught. At times their thoughts took the slow train from station to station while I smiled and remained silent to give them the time they needed to express their ideas. For them, and occasionally for me, the goat path was the only available route toward communication. We’d stop here and there to munch on weeds or twigs instead of zooming along on the superhighway of verbal exchanges. I did my best to create a welcoming space for them, safe in the knowledge that we would all eventually make it to our destination and be understood.

So, when to worry? Keys in the fridge? A mix-up in the car? No longer being able to share with others the wonder of your world, your secrets aching for air?

Therefore, I tell my son and daughter-in-law, I start with Wordle, then The Mini, then Connections and then Strands. I’m proactively employing one of many brain-gym strategies in the hopes of remaining a reciprocating member in our society. I don’t want to someday find myself lying on a hospital bed in a fetal position lost to myself and those I love, unable to find the words I’ve come to adore and count on.

Nancy Smith lives in Ashfield with her husband. Three kids grown and gone, Nancy spends her days writing, puttering in her pottery study and babysitting grandchildren.