But the truth is, the walk only takes about 20 minutes. After that, I spend the next 45 minutes sitting on a bench by a little pond in our neighborhood, calling my mom.

We talk about nothing. We talk about everything. She tells me about her garden, I tell her about my day. She asks if I'm eating enough, I lie and say yes, she knows I'm lying, and we both laugh.

My mom was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's two years ago. She's still mostly herself right now, but I've watched it start to chip away at the edges. On Tuesday's call, she repeated the exact same story three times. I laughed all three times like it was the first time I was hearing it.

I don't tell my husband the real reason the walks take so long because I don't want him to look at me with pity. I don't want this to become "sad." Because these calls aren't sad to me—they're the absolute best part of my day.

I'm storing up every single conversation right now, like I'm filling a giant warehouse for the future. I know one day the phone won't really make sense to her anymore. But right now, today, my mom still laughs at my terrible jokes, calls me her baby, and tells me she's proud of me.

So yeah. My confession is that I'm a grown-ass woman who sits on a park bench every night pretending her dog needs extra exercise, just so she can talk to her mom. And I'm not even sorry.

TL;DR: I tell my husband I'm going on long dog walks, but I actually just sit on a park bench to call my mom, who has early-onset Alzheimer's, before she forgets how to use the phone