So the lipstick was missing, and Willie and I were wandering in Target. 

Willie is my mom, if you’re new around here. 

Well, she’s my mom even if you’re not new around here. 

She has dementia. And it’s been an interesting few months. 

A few weeks back, we went to Macy’s. I bought her a lovely pink lipstick. 

We made this Target trip approximately 3.563 days after we bought that lipstick.  

My mistake this day lay in the first words out of my mouth as we crossed the threshold into Target. 

“What did you need to pick up?” I asked. 

“I don’t remember,” Willie said. 

A vital lesson in caring for a parent with dementia is, apparently, getting their shopping list before you take off from work, spend twenty minutes driving to their place and getting them out the door, then another 20 minutes on the road to Target. 

I ran through items I thought Willie might need. Shampoo? No. Chips Ahoy? No. A toothbrush? No. 

Keurig pods? Nail polish remover? Pretzel sticks?

No, no, and no. 

That was when Willie recalled she needed lipstick. 

But we’d already bought lipstick. Pricey lipstick. Pink, summery lipstick. Where was it? 

Willie wasn’t sure.  

But this is Willie’s thing — I go to Willie, try to help her with Problem A. In the process, I discover Problems B, C, and omega. 

Sometimes, the problems I accidentally discover are bigger, more pressing than the problem I was originally tapped to solve. 

Like the time Willie had oral surgery, back before the dementia. I wanted to make sure she didn’t need anything, like water ice or pudding. 

What I found was that Willie had taken the narcotics the oral surgeon prescribed. Also, she’d taken the narcotics left over from her hip replacement surgery.  

And a leftover antibiotic. Just in case. 

“Just in case of what, Nancy?” I asked. “Sid stabs you?!”  

On that day, the need for water ice was jettisoned for the need to rid the house of narcotics. 

When Problem A remains the overarching problem du jour, I have to tell myself, out loud, to focus on Problem A. Everything just has to wait its turn. 

So I told myself to forget the lipstick for the moment. Focus on why Willie needed to hit Target. 

“Let’s start at the beginning,” I suggested to Willie, escorting her aisle by aisle.  

In office supplies, Willie seized upon a red notebook. “I could use this!” she said. 

Maybe she has a gaping hole in her life where that red binder with all the passwords in it used to be. 

I dropped the notebook and a packet of pens in the cart. 

I mean, do I think Willie needs a notebook and pens?  

No. But shopping with an ailing parent is a bit like shopping with your kid — if a $3 notebook makes them happy, you want that $3 notebook for them more than you want anything in the world. 

Except, maybe, to have asked them for their shopping list before you took off from work. 

In the storage section of Target, Willie found a twelve-pack of velvet hangers. She needed hangers, she said, but not twelve. 

“It’s OK,” I said. “We can store the hangers you don’t need at my house.”  

Confidential to my husband — yes, they’re in the garage. But I’m sorting through those boxes soon. I promise.  

See, Willie’s about to get charged $199 for something in those boxes I need to return to its rightful owner. 

I — I don’t want to talk about it. But I have until Friday. I’m like Naomi Watts in The Ring.  

Which you don’t understand because you don’t watch horror movies. You’re more likely to see the wisdom of Bret Michaels than you are to see a horror movie. 

Also, I love you. And I’m so sorry about the stuff in the garage. 

Anyway. 

Back at Willie’s, I hung the hangers. I carefully laid the notebook and pens on her desk. I searched her five hundred square foot room for that lipstick.  

I checked her purse and a weird brocade fanny pack I didn’t even know she had. Her walker’s basket and her makeup drawer. Under the bed and in the medicine cabinet. 

Nothing. 

Except for a needleless syringe filled with saline, tucked in that brocade fanny pack. 

“I’m sure that’s fine,” my husband said. 

How can a lipstick disappear in a space the size of a hotel room? 

I took a screenshot of the lipstick from the Clinique website. I sent it to the family chat. I asked everyone to keep an eye out for it. 

“Found it!” my aunt texted triumphantly a few days later. 

Don’t get too excited. 

It’s missing again.