So let's see...  Let me warm up first.  I've just come in off the road, more than eight hours driving, and I pull in by the old G.I. apartment building.  I left at 4:30 in the afternoon.  By the time I get my bags and travel stuff inside to unpack, park the rental red Hyundai sedan over in un-zoned street parking by the Urban Ecology Center, and crack open a can of ale, it's 1:30AM.

I drove up Saturday or was it Sunday evening, arriving about 10:30 in the night.   And now, back home in the apartment I am alone.  Entirely alone.  This is the way I have lived, ever since I moved in to George's grand house after the apartment I shared with my brother.  Which means I have failed in life.

I'd sent an email off to the landlord.  If I'm lucky I might pay half rent for the next six months, that's about it.  This was Friday, before getting ready to leave.  That would be about the best I could do, roughly equal to the cost of a storage unit for all my things, my books, my bikes, guitars, odder cooking things, my closets of clothes, winter gear, plus all the costs of moving.  The cost of being in true limbo, not knowing where to land.

Then just after that, sending out the email, two hours later, the boss calls out of the blue.  Maybe come back to work next Friday, if you're still in town.  It's going to get cold out, and maybe we can open the wine bar again...

Okay, sure.  Sounds good.

So now I need to go see mom.  I had to keep putting off, expecting that eventually there would be a deal for a Stimulus Package, so I could plan it out.  But, on and on that goes, McConnell and his band of self-righteous Senate Republicans of the most obstructionist kind are blocking all efforts to pass a new stimulus package, while every economist in the world agrees it should have been done months ago, as far as averting lasting damage to the economy.

I rent a car for Saturday noon, Enterprise, 14th and L.   In the morning, I get a call.  They're overbooked.  I made the booking late last night, and their computer system took it, but they are short on vehicles, meaning they don't have a car for me.  Okay.  I don't feel like moving much anyway.  I'm not packed.

Sunday, I make it down to Budget at 19th and L.  I get back and finish packing, and all this takes a while.   I'm finally on the road by 3:30.

Canal Road, then onto the Beltway, then merge left to get on 270 Northwest to Frederick....  Once I get through Frederick, the traffic eases, the road opening up, through the Catoctin.  Gas south of Harrisburg.  And onward.  In the mountains, at Ravine, PA, I opt for the truck stop Burger King for an early dinner of a Double Whopper, no cheese, then back on the road.

Past 10PM, I'm through Syracuse, which first appears past the long curve descending to Nedrow and the Indian Reservation.

I arrive, parking in the quiet lot.  I take a few bags in, one with the wine in it.  I find the door unlocked.  Stepping in, there is a stench.  Cat shit?  A dead animal?  Something severe in the fridge?  Has a rodent creature died the heating duct?  There are tiny fruit flies.  There are regular flies.  

Mom comes down the stairs, after I've already started trying to tidy things up.  She has to ponder for a moment who I am... how are you, mom, you look good, I say.  Poor thing, like all of us.

I stopped at the Burger King in Fulton.  $2 chicken nuggets, a fish sandwich, Whopper Junior...  I open some wine I brought up.  There is some white, but not much.  We sit at the table.  She has a couple of the lukewarm chicken things.    Later I run out for a six pack of Labatt’s Blue at the Stewart Shop.  That will help me get on with the cleaning.

I’m back and sorting out the refrigerator and the pile of dishes left in the sink. I take out a full trash bag, carefully tying its odors in, out to the dumpster.  It’s five in the morning when I get to bed.

Mom has not been taking her medications, this is clear.  Repetitive.  Did you sleep well, five minutes later, same thing.  I find one drug store brown prescription bottle by her bed in her disaster of a bedroom.  The other I call in.

The next day I manage to get up fairly early.  Forecast for rain.  Clouds.  52 degrees out.  I write up a grocery to-do list on a 3 by 5.   I take mom on a ride out down by the lake.  Then the stops we have to make.  Getting her Aricept at Wayne’s Drug Store, original neon sign out front...  Then the grocery store and the wine shop.  

I pick up some chicken tenders for a little lunch, to tide us over before The Press Box for an early dinner, wine, wings, a burger, something chicken for mom.

I get Mom home after dinner, but she is nauseous again.  Oh, there's nothing more I hate than vomiting, she says, as I bring over the mixing bowl coopted for use as a bedside puke bucket, which I then go empty in the bathroom toilet.  She was ill yesterday morning, the first day of my visit.

I turn to faith.  That's all I have now.   I have left.  That's all I ever had.

And how difficult it is for any of us even to have faith.  Buddha himself had to have faith, faith in his heretofore unheard of and unimaginable strange logic, such as no one had ever seen before.

Few of us learn much, or much to leave behind, about having and keeping faith.  If any writer could discover such, that would be a marvelous achievement.

The first day back is not easy.  The first time I have to get ready for work in a long time.  I have to take the rental car back, and I'm running behind, as I have to set the bar up.  I'm finally in the car, taking it back to 19th and L to the Budget Rental parking garage, and through a series of missed turns and one-way streets concentration being difficult, I make it back.  I pull carefully across the sidewalk and down into the garage, nodding at the Ethiopian guy, and down several levels, following the signs, down another level, and there's a guy before me, and I guess this is it.  He comes around to the driverside window and asks me to read off the odometer, and the fuel level, poor tired old guy, slender, in jeans, dyed blond hair, and I see on my phone in the darkness, do I have everything, that mom has called, twice at least.  I haven't had time getting ready, etc., yet today.

 I get out of the garage into the light of downtown, but she doesn't pick up when I call back.  The food trucks aren't lined up, so I get an overpriced gyro, stuff it in my courier bag, drink some water, go to K Street to find a bus. 

I'm waiting, and now my phone is buzzing, and it's Ben from the townhouses, the paramedics are here with your mom.  She's been going into other people's apartments again, and someone called.  He turns the phone over to the paramedic.  Once we've come, and she's in this state, we can't just release her, we have to take her in.  So I tell the guy that Mary her helper should be coming any minute, so I call Mary and then call him back, and he seems satisfied.  They'll wait for Mary.

I take the red Circulator bus, free, about five people on it, a young African woman, an older DC bum type, another guy, an older woman who gets on through the front door, not understanding, up to work, getting off by the public library after the bus takes us down along K Street before heading up Wisconsin Avenue.

Hugo I see up ahead of me after I cross and come up the sidewalk, bustling about over the new outdoor seating tables behind the cement balustrade blocks set out into the curbside lane.  "How are you, Mister," he calls, without missing a beat, having barely seen me, from what I could tell.   "Lotta work, man," he says.

Chef JeanBaptiste is there at the open door to greet me, and it's good, very good to see my old friends.  I get upstairs to the bar, and there's a lot of work to do, and I'll have to figure out what I need as I go along.  I start lugging things up.  I'll need a full load of mineral water, and all the reds we pour, sodas, bar garnishes have disappeared to, I see as I look in the cooler.  I wish I got in earlier.  I clean the ice bin, and start running things through the dishwasher.  Most surfaces are clean, just that the old stuff is in a jumble.

Mary texts me, after I try several times to call mom's landline.  "I'm taking your mom out for a drive.  She's fine."  I hope we don't get kicked out.

So I work my first two shifts back.  Then I'm tired for a couple of days.  I try to get outside, one day sunny, late in the afternoon, but the ragweed has come back.  I find out I've qualified for Medicaid.  

I did some grocery shopping after my shift Saturday night, but I'm hungry, and even though I'm just about broke I order cheap Chinese food delivery.  I'm starving.  I'll need my energy for what cometh next.  Then I settle in for the night, not knowing what's going to happen to anybody, and feeling bad for mom being alone.

I wake up late today, this day, Wednesday, and in the afternoon, checking my emails, I read, the Wine Bar is now open Tuesday through Saturday night, and "Ted your favorite bartender is back."  And this too is news I have to absorb.  Ahh, I say to myself.  What does this mean.  The clocks will be changing soon, meaning I won't have but a little light of day's sunshine to play with.  Five shifts?  I used to barely be able to do four, but things are a little different now, the set-up.

The world writes itself.  We do not need to embellish upon it all.  Writing is necessary unto ourselves and gives us the dignity of a work to do, but I wonder if it is unnecessary beyond the lessons of faith are observed, the lessons we are rewarded with for our travails.  In my view, Kerouac understood this.

Out sitting at a picnic table I felt too overwhelmed to add much thought to it all.  I'd been up the night before watching a new series, The Chosen, and I told myself I'd hold onto this moment of faith and perseverance as long as I comfortably could, even as I thought of how I should have spoken to the pretty young woman I've been wanting to say hi to, as we both made it to the last patches of golden sunlight a few days ago in this field here by The Urban Ecology Center.  I was sitting away, out in the field, but the sun went behind the tall pines, so I moved closer to her, asking her "May I borrow your sunlight," and she was friendly and smiled, "be my guest," she said, which was witty, and I sat down before her ahead of her, and went about my lotus pose, and when I stood to do my tree pose she was gone.  Dumb ass me.

Ahh, but it had been a long summer.  And sometimes you felt like dark things, hard to take it, everything coming at me, but day by day, I kept the faith, thanks to wine in the evenings and Jack Kerouac, and a few spiritual type of readings here and there, a little Jesus, a little Buddha, each in turn, then mixed together, and I thought less of buying some rope, which I wouldn't do anyway, I promise.

Just as I'd thought the eve before this small break in the clouds, I'd thought of faith.  And now faith was telling me about what I had observed being back at work the first two nights in seven months, that there is wrapped within bar-tendering a higher calling.  If I were to try to write about that I would or might wear it out so I'll tread carefully, it was just that faith, with a good dose of the Jewish and the Christian stories of faith, helped me see the appropriateness with the way the world had arranged my life, and that I just needed to see the good of it.  The very good.  The good of everything about it.  One doesn't always get a lot of support in life, us people of faith, but from our faith.  Good thing we have it.  Because to the rest of the world, as we all know, even I, it's all about the mighty dollar, and believe me, now I realize, the larger economy.  After thirty years in the restaurant business I found it not at all easy to pivot, and there I was in my depressed state, isolated, not working, either helping mom out up north 400 miles away, or here, meditating, praying...  

Therefore there was something indeed appropriate to my return to my real-life job and my livelihood.  I'd put a lot into it over the years.  I'd cultivated the garden of the Lord and the vineyard, and I'd put in just about the best effort I could have greeting people with kindness and letting them in, being a good lover of neighbor.   There could be no solution anyplace else.  No Jesus, now you're going to be selling software, and you'll make more money anyway, a lot more, nothing like that.  I'd grown Biblical, if you will, like I had become some sort of  a vine that had grown and sunk its roots down into poor soil, worked hard physically and certainly sweated through many a shirt, scared, on the edge sometimes, but always a job to go to.

The sky was grey, and even on a nearby picnic table the day before a crow right above me, directly above me, had cawed and cawwed, and kawed again, with a tiny little guttural giggle purring clicks thrown in, and of course I thought of Poe, but the bird of blackness in branches right over my head seemed comfortable with me, and they are smart, recognize us as individuals, observe us just as we observe them, and sometimes even spiders jump up on me, but anyway...  (I made a joke of it to a woman who asked me if she needed to put her dog on a leash, and she said, oh, I saw that...)  The sky was grey again, and the hopes for the appearance of the sunshine girl dropped and dropped, and why did I pass up my opportunity.  But I could see the world clearly again, and felt myself to be in the right spot.  Starlings, or Grackles, were gathering on the high mown lawn banks of the reservoir, ready to gather to do their murmurings, shimmering, as if the camera of thine eye was shaking...  But I felt like, my mother speaking to me, I felt, your (meaning me) time has come.   This is not the voice of your tormentors, the ones who ask you many many questions, without telling you any truth.

.

I could see the world fresh and new and alive, and it was as if, as the old saying goes, my time had come, and that I had to go back to the life my mother has always approved of, beyond all others, my sweet life as the quiet first miracle wine guy.  So don't be too hard on yourself.

Oh, things the summer had taught me.  And you can really leave things up to the way they happen, to the way God gives them to us.  For these sufferings, too, are our friends.  Each a kind and gentle lesson that will mature you has a man, as a human being.  And then you have far less of worries in this world.  And oddly enough, one barman does indeed stand a chance to be as noble as Lincoln or whomever, in that he will finally get the cadence and the meaning of all the old stuff.  In fact one of my occasional but decent customers, Andy, a New Yorker, was by with his wife for dinner on Saturday night.  We talked about Kerouac, and he himself knew a famous old professor who'd taught the man as a kid.  (Not the best student, but a really nice guy, the old teacher says about old Jack.)  We also talked about The Book of Job.  And it was good, to be back chatting with my old friends and acquaintances...  Where were you when I laid the cornerstones of the foundations of the world....  And his whole business, taking students on travels, shot all to hell.

And all the good old rare stuff comes back to me, the real stuff from people you won't get anywhere else, having administered a truth serum and a decent meal, and a nice place to dine, pleasing music in the background, the sharing of life, even to this hovering idiot of a mad Irishman Austro-Hungarian Po-lock.  

Yes, it made sense.  I had to be re-manifested back at the holy Wine Bar of The Dying Gaul.  And what did I have to live for anyway, such as it is, no wife, no kids, having tended to mom pretty long but not done, so if the damn thing of Covid-19 gets me, it does.

Ye shall know them by their fruits.  Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit;  but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.

A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.

Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.

Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

Matthew 7:16-20

I don't know, it felt like I had to go through all this anxiety and doubt and concerns of having all my stuff out in the street to feel like I was making a home out of this humble apartment and my place here by the palisades of the great Potomac River.  You could sit in a field on a picnic bench and watching the cycles of nature and seasons, like nowhere else in DC.

After talking to my aunt and then my friend from with Jazz Nights at the Wine Bar, Leslie, I'm wiped out, so I sleep for a bit.  The phone calls drive me into the wine, when I should or might be writing, for the same reason that writers are the people for whom writing is very hard, taking a great effort, grappling with the deeper truths that of course we can never consciously know.  Then I am up, and finish the half bottle of wine, and open another one, and it tastes good, and I have some black-eyed peas with hummus and some cold cuts before I go to bed, but again, the next day, as is the unfortunate pattern I feel rather ill from the wine and the dehydration, and also depressed, or down, as too will always happen, such that I feel rather tired and sore and mope around.

As soon as I get writing, building up a little head of steam, mom calls.  Up and down, and 40 minutes of trying to answer her question what should I do now, and I try to explain to her about the three Wayne's Drug Store pill bottles I've taped to the counter right in front of her, to the left Mom, to the left, but she can't do it, and asks why I'm being so cruel to her, such a prick, so mean, I have never been treated so in all my life even by my mother, I think you're trying to destroy me,  etc., etc., etc., spaced over two calls.  Then a third, ending with, after I tell her, yes, just go off to bed mom, tomorrow is another day and Mary will be coming in the afternoon.   I love you, she says, not that it matters, I love you too mom.  Good night.  Then I go crack open a tall boy can of Labatt Blue from my travels up north.

And so, things end where they started, with my reading books from the library in a spiritual vein, Jesus, A Pilgrimage by our friend James Martin, S.J.  And that's about all I got left anyway, life too complicated to have much time for a pretty girlfriend, I'm afraid, and me back to working nights at the old Dying Gaul.  The beer feels watery, which is maybe why it's good, you can't hurt yourself sipping away on one.

But the apartment feels like home now, after all that, after all the ups and downs and waiting for Congress and all that bad habit of doom scrolling on Facebook.