After mom is feeling better, after getting her lunch delivered, and then a round of groceries for later, delivered by Instacart on the way, I feel I can get out for a walk.  I chose to go down to the bluff, of course, in Merrill low tops to handle the wet grass.  Rain is predicted.  It's not warm out, but I'm snug enough in sweatpants, tee shirt, hooded sweatshirt, burgundy red rain shell my mom bought me from Murdock's in Oswego, NY, after I get walking a bit.

I have a call with my aunt, who is down in Leesburg, Florida, and everyone is in a holding pattern, not just me, with the COVID-19.  So.  I walk along the bluff, on the grass and dirt weed-edged path that used to carry the trolley from the city all the way out to Glen Echo, heading west, upstream.  By the time I get off the path, up some steep mud where you need to hold onto a tree and step over its roots and the rock, then down a narrow road that dips down to Canal Road, and then you're at Fletcher's Cove, and we've been on the phone long enough, and I get down by the old boathouse with the flood markings on the cement structure where you can rent a fishing pole or a little kayak or a bike or a canoe or a fishing boat or get a hotdog, tasty, in a bun for 2 bucks, 1972 being the highest mark, quite impressive, then I'm ready to head down to the river, but beyond the little stream, crossing over an old footbridge.  There used to be a mill here, a long time ago, but despite the old historic placard there is no visible evidence  of even a foundation, and the path is used by fishermen.


I'm walking forward, through the wet weeds and along the muddy path, past the Central American men fishing, wearing clothes you might buy in a shopping mall, a polo shirt, but sitting on rocks in the stream if not on the bank, casting, with fishing poles, and one pulls out an impressive catfish, and then Mom is calling me, and though I thought she might be okay, she is quite unhappy because the bottle of Simi is less than half full.  How many times do I go through it with her, "Mom, do you have a spare glass, maybe up by your bed, you could put that over an ice cube..."  "I"m not an idiot, why do you treat me like that," she says, her voice rising, sighing.  "There's a beer in the fridge."  "I hate beer."  Okay.

So I walk along, and finally I screw up the courage to text Mary, as we've gone back and forth, Mom and I, "Oh, don't bring Mary into it,"  but, even in my hopelessness, I compose a little text to our keeper, up in Oswego, and after my apologetic offering, I hear back her text that she would be happy to, thank god.  I try to call mom back now to tell her the good news, but she's left the phone off the hook.

I walk on.  There are, I'm guessing, juvenile turkey vultures, hopping about, smaller than the adult, a light colored band on their tips of their wings, and their little dinosaur Venetian mask kind of beak face is sort of cute, and I think there's maybe it's a Golden Eagle also in the branches above me, besides these  sort of playful comical vulture birds, and there is a strange kind of a very mild subtle, but noticeable high you get once you get away from paved roads and bricks and cement and exhaust smoke and piped water, coming from the green leaves, the trees folding you back in, welcoming.


I'm having a decent time.  I take some iPhone pictures of the light, the fishermen by the bank, looking at them from a distance, intending to include the finest details of the gathered cormorants drying out on the rock outcroppings.  

I walk back.  I see if Little China Cafe is open, but not, not this week, and I walk on, then Mom calls again, telling me she doesn't like the wine, so I tell her to drop an ice cube in it, but this too takes several phone calls and several tedious explanations, and why don't you give my brother a call, it's Sunday, family time, oh, no, I don't want to talk to him, we don't have a relationship, come on he's your son, you could ask about the weather out there, how the dog is doing, how is the dog doing, I don't know, why don't you call and ask him!, and so on, and even as I get back to my shitty little apartment building, she's calling again, do I put water in the glass, and I have to explain it all over again, pour some wine in a glass, put an ice cube in the glass, drink it...

So that all fucks me up, and I"m hungry anyway, so I have a little beef stew I made, heat some up, try to deal with my own shitty $12 Pinot, but it sucks too, and I finally fall into a heavy nap, and then again, my phone is ringing and it's Mom again, why...  Are you going to come and take me home, I, when will I see you again, are you coming by later, tomorrow?, do I have any wine here...   I try to explain, get a little curt, "I"m no good, I'm no good, " she says, and hangs up on me.

And this all, for some of us, sort of reminds us in bits and pieces and in ways of the principal drama we might have felt as a child growing up, in my case of how my mom was always anxious, not often calm, and how my saintly professor father finally raised his voice against it all.

I call her back, and she says, oh, I was cleaning out the litter box just now.  And I ask her if she can find her bottle of wine, and she says, oh, it's right in front of me.

She admits to being anxious.  "I can feel my mind doesn't work like it used to," she says.  "And I'm nervous about where I'm going to end up."

"Yes, Mom, we all feel that way, " say, and we talk a little while longer.  We are finally done with the day it seems, and ten phone calls at least, and settle in, and no wonder I like the night, and the pictures I took of the fishermen down by the river.

I mix up a turkey meatloaf, Ken Burns The Civil War on in the background, Antietam, and a lecture on Kerouac by Douglas Brinkley from a podium at UT, tuning in and out.   I eat well, but I drink too much wine, and wake up with that bad feeling in the morning, and need my rest.

And mom is cheerier when I reach her.  Her helper is coming.