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­My mother slices onions, the knife meeting the cutting board with staccato beats. She dices tomatoes, too, and I picture their juice spreading into pink puddles. From the living room, I sneak glances at her to make sure the blade in her hand doesn’t cut into her tender skin.

I remember a different mother – a well-coiffed mother who sprayed her hair with Aqua Net, a mother who wore knee-length skirts and lipstick, even the occasional trendy wig during the hair-obsessed ’70s. Not this stranger whose standard uniform is white pants and a t-shirt stamped with lettering from some run my brother did who-knows-how-long-ago. Alzheimer’s does that – makes it difficult for her to think about changing clothes day in and day out. Much easier to wear the same thing even if she must wash it nightly. Simpler, too, to not think about her hair, to sweep up the thin strands into metal clips stripped of their original tortoise-shell color.

Something about her limp hair loosens a sigh from my chest. We’re Latinas; I always assumed diabetes, cancer or high blood pressure would eventually take my mother, one piece of her at a time. At least the body’s demise is something science and common sense can sometimes predict, prevent or slow. But this? It’s overwhelming to witness the departure of her mind, one memory, one skill at a time. Which is why I bring her to my home for weeks at a time, to give my sister, the main caregiver, a break.

Like others with dementia, my mother responds to routine. It helps her focus. Function. And our nightly routine the past few days has gone something like this:

“What shall I make you for dinner?”

“I’m fine Mom, we have a frozen pizza and salad makings.”

“I’ll make you chicken with vegetables like I make for your sister.”

“Mom, how many times do I have to tell you? I don’t eat meat.”

“But it’s not meat. It’s chicken.”

She can barely remember what she had for breakfast, yet she remembers how to cook some foods. Simple things, mostly. Scrambled eggs. Fried rice. Staples so long ago assimilated into the bones and muscles of her hands that it doesn’t matter if her mind forgets. Her fingers cull grains and crack eggshells of their own accord.

But she made my sister caldo de pollo? How? Her mind is a study in contradictions: She doesn’t recognize some of her siblings, but remembers the shortcuts to her favorite grocery store. She forgets my age, but can count backwards from one hundred in increments of seven.