Light flurries in the night, and when I wake I see some blue sky, looking from the pillow on the floor up to the front, western facing windows, thin, if there are any clouds, grayness to the east, but the sun is out, and mom is snoozing on the couch next to the orange cat, wearing her bathrobe, over her clothes, still wearing her hiking shoes.  I walk past, take a cup of tea from the fridge, back upstairs to hide for a little while longer, then I hear her stir, so I go back down and take care of breakfast, a slice of Stewart Shop cheese pizza.  It's classic and very good, kind of a doughy junk Central New York baker's almost bread dough hearty pizza, quite delicious, not too thick, greasy cheese crust.  Could become a habit.  Addictive.

It goes okay at first, as I have my tea and then sliced turkey at the table, as I look over at her.  She's sweet enough, but after several times of telling her that we are invited over to Barbara's for dinner, Sharon will be there, what time, because she's with her son down in Florida, no mom, it's Tania's son who is in New Mexico, Barbara's joining Tania down there for the winter, so this is the last little dinner we'll have with them for a while...  

Mom indicates she finds the Tuesday dinner thing a little boring.  I'd rather stay here with my books, she says.

But, Mom,  you like going out.  It'll be good for you.

I've already told her, where, when, what time.  She's called me a loser, a woman hater, a sadist, any number of things this week, with the enforced closeness of the holiday.

If I mention anything to the effect of, you're ruining my life, mom will come right back, you don't have a life!  That's not my fault, that's yours!  No one likes you.  Okay, mom...

Okay, I'll take her for a ride.  Just to see the lake, get some sunlight on our bodies.  Stewart Shop for the newspaper, a drive along the lake by the loop road past the university, the Big M, home, hopefully.    

I'm worn out already.  She's pretended not to know where the sink is when I ask her to brush her teeth.  She's asked me again, and then again, and then again, what time, where... is it today?

I could just take her back, but okay, she tells me she wants to go out, for lunch, though it's 4:30, okay, fine, we'll swing by The Press Box, and the frozen peas will keep the sliced turkey bread cold enough for the hour, and then we'll go back

We pull in, finally, worn out again, into the parking lot of Cedarwood Drive Townhomes.  Help.  I can't hold it, my intestines.  I hustle her around the parked SUV, to the steps, two sets of them, pulling at her arm.

Soon, I hear her squatting on the toilet, squirts of liquified shit.  And now, help. help, Ted, Ted, I need to vomit.  So I bring over the big stainless steel bowl.  Pepsi.  So I get her a Pepsi, and later a glass of soda water to wash her mouth out.

I get her upstairs finally.  By her bed I find a package of rolled Kleenex around a half a baked potato and a piece of the chicken breast I cooked a few nights ago, still rolled up, on the window sill.  Who knows what happened.  I've eaten the same things she's eaten over the last few days.  I don't know.

I avoid Black Friday, and Cyber Monday.  If you allow your concentration to be distracted, you miss your line to the Collective Unconscious, the play of thoughts and the sudden reality of objects of art, thought and creativity that are like a stream to feed off, water to sustain us.  Caravaggio.  Vs. the iWatch.  

I'm too tired to write anymore now.  I'm not even happy enough.  I want to sleep, but lie awake.  I want to hide.

The cat is proud.  Mom is proud.  They all want , insist upon, their own thing.  Noisily.  To be fed, to go out.  And I'm fucked.

Mom is still feeling queasy by the time I could get over to our normal recent Tuesday night dinner engagement with mom's colleagues over at Barbara's house off of 104 near the university, a quiet ranch on a quiet street, and I'd stay home and stew in the usual things, and on top of yoga homework due soon and not even touched.

I stay later and it turns out to be a session of therapy for me, about how mom's anxiety is getting worse along with the dementia, when I'm not around to drive her back and forth she keeps asking for me.  Barbara tells me her mother was put on Ativan and it worked wonders.  

So today, after a yoga sadhana, the first one in more than a week, clearing the congestion in my nose, the nadi kriya to develop, the Sanskrit chants, the pranayama breathing and further meditations, completed after getting mom some soup, as she's helpless now about feeding herself.  Down in the basement. It's not a bad place after all, though I can't quite tell if putting up a plastic sheet to cordon off my yoga mat end in front of the washer and dryer with the space heater like a radiator but with hot oil circulating in it.  The air is pretty dry now, another issue for trying to breath.

I make an appointment two weeks out for mom to check on her medications down in Fulton.

Later she has the large picture book of Audobon bird prints, taking in the beauty of it.  She sits in her chair looking over the egret in its print habitat, reminding me of Wyeth realism.  I pass by her a couple of times, checking on her as I do the dishes.  "That's very irritating, that sound," she calls regally from her chair, so I open the door to the cellar as a baffle, wearily proceeding with the dishes, the soup bowls, the pot, the chat dishes, the mugs, the assortment of small glasses used not long ago for Pepsi, water, her wine.  I venture past her, to see if she's taken the two pills from the morning which she refused to take.  Ahh, a bluebird, I say, as I pass, to go upstairs to empty the upstairs bathroom paper trash can, and she responds in a haughty tone, "Eastern Bluebird," correcting me.  Okay, mom.  

After the dishes are done I come by and there she is tucking her pills in to her pocket, the little pockets of her jeans.  So we go through, no, if you put them in your pocket you'll never take them.  I know my body! Okay, don't take them.  You're a cruel bastard.

Again she finds the recall notice for the Toyota airbag recall, and again I have to tell her, no, mom, remember when we took care of that?  I bring out the invoice from the dealership.  See, here's what it says.  Remember driving back?  But by now, I'm a piece of shit, not to be trusted, and she's getting aggressive, so, I take my yoga notebook and flee, taking yoga notebook binder and laptop, heading down to the Stewart Shop.  It feels weird at first, but everyone is encouraging me to get out of the house and not worry about it.

But the stuff has all been getting to me.  Kerouac was a writer and when he died his estate was worthy, oh, about 95 bucks, so I hear in a documentary about his presence and life in old mill town Lowell.  Later valued at what, ten million?

And not only that, he ended up so terribly unhappy, on top of the alcoholism, his mother having crowded any other life out of him, after the death of brother Girard, the saint he could have used, his father, never to have a wife, kids, a normal home life, a house, a job, though he did work a job on the railroads and other American jobs along the way.  Am I, will I ever be, ready for marriage, with a job and all that, or am I too warped already, permanently.  But you would be obliged to try, if you could.

I too was an anomaly in my work career, which lasted til I was 56 or so, before breaking apart taking care of mom.  Weill all the paperwork we could have never moved mom anyway.

The ladies observe me getting close to finishing the bottle of French pinto noir I brought alone as 6 in the dark evening turns into 9 at night.  I tell Barbara, the doctor tells me my liver is fine, and she says, Ted, that's kind of a low bar, with a chuckle.

Coming away from it l come down with a cold, no surprise from visiting at dinner with college professors.

After escaping mom’s afternoon accusations and unpleasantness, at the Stewart Shop, in the dank cold of 5 o’clock, I feed her a cursory dinner, offering her chicken tenders, fried chicken breast, a cold cut sub, or a slice of two day old buffalo chicken pizza.  My headaches, my body is sore, I can hardly breath through my nose, I don’t even want any wine at all.  I endure the table as long as I can, which isn’t long. She’s trying to argue, or talk about something and go upstairs for an hour turns out nap.  I’m awakened by frantic calls for help, doors opened and closed.

The children, she cries, we’ve got to do something for the children, for Christmas.  We need to get a tree.  We need to get presents.

Mom, your children have grown up.  …

But it's useless.  I've made it til past 9 PM on December 1st, but now just looking for something to make this all bearable, I twist off the cap of the $10.99 French pinot noir, pour it over some ice, and go hide down in the basement.  And hopefully, she'll stop yelling help, at some point go upstairs to bed so that I don't have to hear her creak away all night in her Eames Chair.

I have a headache, but it helps.  I take another Tylenol.  I have yoga homework to get done, at least review the poses and so forth, but inspiration for that is rapidly dwindling.  I have a cold.  I tried to do some work, and at least got some writing in down at the Stewart Shop, but the grocery store errand took it out of me.  My joints ache, a feverish feeling that I've had all day worsens, as mom sits on the couch and ends up sleeping there, refusing to take her nightly pill, the meantime.  Okay, fine, Mom.  I'm never going to try to give you another pill.  Good luck with that.

Later on there's a news story, a writer, a female, who chronicled a horribly traumatic rape as a college student at Syracuse University.  5 months later she's walking and sees a guy, a black guy, thinks it's him, goes to the police.  I think I know those neighborhoods between the University up on the hill, and then winding down below the Carrier Dome down to South Salina Street, where mom lived as a grad student in an large Italianate on the upper floor, while the ghetto blaster cars rolled by.  The man, picked out by the Prosecutor, not the man she picked out of the police line-up, she later identifies, in her situation, and he's sent down the river.  He comes up for parole, but each time, five times or so, he insists on his innocence, so rather than being freed, if he had admitted to it, he spends the full sentence behind bars.   And then it's no better when he's out.  No possibly of any job.  He's shunned by his own community.  He's welcome to a very small number of people's houses, 10 or so, others won't even let him in.

Finally, a producer of the movie version of her book, sees the glaring inconsistencies, comparing the actual with her written story of the trial, with the script, approaches a private investigator to handle it to find a way through.

Here comes mom down the stairs.  I told her I had some pot-roast cooking.  Down the stairs she comes, hello... hello... hello, is anybody here... coming through the living room, past the couch.  hello?  Louder now.  Dinner is ready, spinach too if she wants anyway.  

Too sick to do anything for a day or two, fever of 100.  

Friday evening, the yoga weekend module thing starts up again, 7 PM.  Please, let's just get through this, get what we need to get, wine, groceries, so forth, I'll get some time, maybe start to catch up on the homework I wasn't able to look at.

She's insistent, needy enough, to demand going out.

Debacle.  I get her a pizza, to go, so she can have something to eat on when I'm doing yoga, but as it arrives she wants some.  Mom, you just said you were stuffed.  I've just packed up the last of her chicken fajita along with some Cole slaw from my fish dinner in the to go box.  I've put our plates aside, neatly stacked, silverware together, easy to take away.  I want to get out of there.  She wants her taste of pizza.  Almost just to defy me, I wonder.

Okay, here. I put the box in front of her, lift the lid.  She can't figure out how to lift the lid.  I help her open it.  Okay, mom.  Give her my fork.  The box open now, she takes fork and knife to it, cutting into several different slices, from one side to the other, haphazardly.  Mom... what?  I want a crispy piece.  

Mom, look, I have a class.  We have to go soon.  There's your wine.  

She tries reaching over the box, to get to her wine glass.  She can't do it.

She raises her voice at me, so the crowd can hear.  "I'm no good.  I'm no good!" she shouts.  You hate me.  

People are looking on now.

She ends up hatefully telling me I'm pressuring her and that she needs to use the restroom.  Okay, fine mom.

She comes back, without her cane.  I look at her.  Mom, it's okay, you can go back in and get it.

Behind, the four-top of retired aged women having a Friday night dinner, three of them, at least, drinking, parallel to us, over my shoulder, one appearing to have tea, or maybe a hot toddy.  I notice one of them is going to the lady's room, but as I'm encouraging mom to go retrieve her cane, green aluminum with a matching green rubbery handle, I hear behind me, sir, sir, so I turn around.  Our friend is going to go get it for you.  Which is kind, and good, but adds to the shame of the drama.  The scene we are has ruined their Friday night, I'm sure.  They probably take me as being the true lowly shit.

I thought it was all going okay, earlier.  I'm just trying to get her through dinner.  It didn't help that chatty Terry with the white goatee who plays some of the open mics here comes by even as we're at the back table by the brick wall of the old freight house by the gas stove with the fake logs but real heat, and I'm enjoying the music, came by to check in and tell us of his pending knee replacement and earlier eyelid surgery and other things, and we're eating and mom is getting irritated, and not engaging, and she probably can't understand a word he's saying.

Just get through this, and then I can get in with 15 minutes to spare, and get, at least, a decent start to the class.

I'm buying wine later, after The Big M.  There's a guy giving wine tastings, and I would slink by him, but I get a good vibe from him.  At least see what he's offering. Oh, a Montepulciano, cool. And guess what, it's pretty delicious.  Though I was draining Guinness over the bitter Friday placate the bitch dinner.  I have a nice chat with him about wine importers, working with them, etc., it's a pleasant moment for me.  Sean, from Fulton.  He studied, marketing, at Oswego.  I like the importer's taste.

I get out to the parking lot, after passing a hot chick, tall, and I say hi, and she gets it, and says hi back.  She could hear the goddamn you're pretty but I'm burdened by some serious shit now, my wistfulness, hope-gone deal with mom, no one else will, vibe, and when I get back to the old Toyota she's not there.  Darkness.  I don't even have the car door light on the right setting so the light turns on.  What the fuck...

Okay.  So.  I look around.  Will I need the car?  I look across the street.  Toward Big M.  I look east, toward the river, I look west.  I look by the tree at the corner of the parking lot, 2nd Street.  Good god, has she wandered off, crossed the road?  Where could she be?

I go take a little walk through the parking lot, and then in the car lights, I see her, with her navy short purple overcoat on, pulled up, I think, I hope, her jeans down to below her knees, leaning forward, her back almost against the dumpster.  I see the pale flesh of her thighs in the headlight lamp light from the liquor store parking lot.  A squirt of shit, followed by another.  I can't tell if she's reaching her left hand around to her wipe her shitting as her right hand holds her pants up.   

She's...  I walk over toward her.  To shield the scene from the light.  She's fishing for crumpled Kleenex in her pockets.  Are her hands clean?  

I go back to the car.  Box of tissue paper in the glove compartment.  There's a full one somewhere in the back seat, but I can't see it.  Rattled, I can't get the car overhead light to turn on.  She's still shitting when I get back.  Her hat fulls down on the used tissue paper she's wiped with.  

I pick up her hat.  I take her by the arm, back to the car.  I open the door for her.  Pull out the bottle of hand sanitizer.   Squirt it over her hands, which she dutifully holds out for me.

I get her back in.  By the time I tune into yoga class I'm fifteen minutes late.  

After the true ordeal of the weekend's classes--I haven't done my homework, running a fever, exhausted, joints aching, mom demanding, haven't turned in the written asana pose assignment, have lost touch with what we are supposed to be doing, losing sleep over it all--okay, let's go out to dinner.  Even if it's cold and dark, and raining on and off.  Maybe we can call my nephew, mom's grandson, from our booth at Canale's, if they're not too busy and we can get a booth, whatever, they are nice.

I have my 20 minute teacher training practice session to live down.  Even the boss cut me off.   Early.

I think the team realized I was having major troubles with this yoga teacher training, with all the language-ing you have to do through the poses, a musical scale, a script to put into the motions and actions of the yoga poses, step by step, and even remembering what you're supposed to be doing.

Mom dogging me everywhere I go, no wonder I hide down in the basement where there's obviously some airborne mold or something that makes me feel like my lung tissues are fighting something.  Or just appearing, I'm starving.  Or, I'm so lonely.  Kill myself.  

Or I'm down in the basement, trying to follow along with the class.  And I have to hear her above me.  The  intensity of the feeling.  Ohhh, help...  HElLO?!  Creaking in her chair.  Self-important.  Unwilling or unable to feed or entertain herself, so she acts, bellowing like a king from Shakespeare, bring me the map there!  I am Lear!  Nothing is happening here!  What are we doing for fun today?  What are you doing next?  Where are you headed?  Any summer plans?  Mom, it's winter, the beginning of Winter!

All I can think about is groceries.  How can I be prepared...  cold-cut turkey, frozen pizza, maybe a fried chicken breast to pull apart after getting rid of the fried crumble of skin, to shred into a pot over a large can of super market non MSG soup with added broth, hopefully bone broth.    Eggs.  V8.  Cans of tuna I have not used to mix for a tuna salad, with Hellmann's mayo, lemon, chopped celery, parsley.  

The teacher practice came at the end of the day, at the very last, where I was so worn out with stress I didn't care anymore.  Fried.  I'd listened to all the presentations, and done my best to comment.  I'd paid attention, followed along with all the poses.

So when it's my turn, after rising at 6 AM, now it's 4:15, and I've had mom to deal with, take your pills, no, please, I'm losing my will and energy and focus.  

And so when I try to tell my story of why we should connect, how do we do this, how do we apply to the theme, in this case of CELEBRATION, and to, specifically, the Fourth Essential of Expansion, radiate out from the Spanda center, etc., just telling the story of the theme, which I desperately wanted to do correctly, I've flubbed it, unable to read my handwriting, confused, and I can't quite tie in reading Edward Arlington Robinson's poem, Mr. Flood's Party, in that classroom with the rippled Chapel windows where Frost himself taught, the loneliness of poor old Eben Flood, how one cannot have a party all alone, and how, maybe, if you do yoga, you can really understand and experience that there are Multitudes within, that No Man is an Island, as Donne said, that within us are genies whirling around in atoms, and within those atomic particles, more genies, and all down the line, and that if we realize this we don't feel along.

But as I muddle through explaining to this artificial class where everyone is looking at you, the poses, a sequence I didn't even have time to plan, as I get cut off by the Master, now we are picking apart my theme.  "You have to do it quickly, simply.  Get them engaged."  And it all feels dumbed down to me instantly, but that's how you learn.  You get hit by the bamboo pole.  Okay, fair enough.

I look at the computer zoom image of myself. Ashamed.  I thought I'd do slightly better.  That's how it goes, though.  I understand.  I am lagging behind.  My habits as a poor student are coming out.

And then, so it goes, as I've had to devote attention and time to monitoring the refrigerator's temperature, by the time I get mom home from Sunday night dinner, get mom in the house, after she tries to charm her way with a man she's been asking me about, Mom, no, he's not familiar, he just looks like Chatty Terry, because of the goatee, but I can't restrain her and she goes over to the table, and I hear a chuckle, but then, as I go over to pull her back in, they are from in town for a funeral.  

I wake up in the early hours, down in the basement, not feeling well, lungs in pain, and that feeling of now shower stickiness.  I have a cider, there's nothing  left to do at this hour, besides take a shower, drink a can of cider.  And after the shower I need something to relax, after also doing the dishes, and checking the freezer and refrigerator temperatures, wearing a bathrobe, I'd like to write, about how I got called out, the Master a good humored sweet guy so you don't mind him having the powers of discernment.  Okay, my statement was not so concise.  

I put on a little show, on my iPhone to record, the samurai monk I've always wanted to be.  I put on being Lord Kikushiro, from The Seven Samurai, as if he was your yoga teacher for the day.  I have fun with it.

But later on, my little performance, while winning a nice complement, is deemed to be offensive.  My new friend the restaurant guy even himself doesn't see how my references to the Shakespearean quality of the a great work of art have any bearing on the specifics of our facebook group discussion.  Okay.

Okay, fine.  I can imagine who the complaint came from.  A person who has kept her dog Fluffy's body in the freezer for the right moment of funereal dispatch.

And so I'm left alone again.

Friday, with a bundle of nerves, I sneak out the house.  The air is dry.  My heart is in my throat.  Mom is up in on her bed.  I get the car packed, and proceed to the library.  I need to escape, and yet I feel guilty the whole way.  Over the bridge.  A very grey day.  I find on open kiosk.  The wave of anxiety, this grey winter morning, dissipates slightly, but I could still jump out of my skin.  I ponder my future, what I'm doing here.

I am behind in my homework for the yoga class.

It's almost too still here in the library.

I've escaped the gravitational pull of all mom's worries.  I've become skeptical of the basement.  The mold, the mildew.  The breathing problems.  Will I ever have a job ever again...