After the Christmas holiday, falling back to earth, as if one ever left, just one more thing scratched off a to-do list.  Survive.  The difficulty of dealing with the difficult elderly with dementia, hard of hearing...

And all along, in adulthood, somehow I've ended up not taking care of my own basic needs, physical, emotional, social...  ever since the bad year senior year in college...

Emotional support.  You get too proud to ask for it, apparently.  Or it just falls out of habit.  Becomes hard to ask for.  Shouldn't it be evident...  

That's where it starts, and it goes downhill from there.  You take a job that keeps you out of synch, around people all the time, but without intimacy.  Then on the other side you take up some form of poor self-explanation, pretending it's art, to keep yourself company, but it's all in a vacuum, in a sterile jar.  Then at the end of the day, pain killer, red wine...

The second day after Christmas, 9 AM, after the usual argument with mom the night before, I get up and go down to the kitchen, sneaking past mom's bedroom door on the way, and the cat is following me.  I pick out a can for him, but before opening, after a sip from the mug of last night's detox tea, the vomit reflex has hit again, and I move quick to the little bathroom off the hallway, stooping down on knees and vomiting up yellow liquid bile.  I hear mom call from her bedroom, "Hello?"  Stress.  The first day, losing unemployment relief.  

I wasn't able to find an ATM that would accept check deposits to my bank account, and it dawns on me, my unemployment has run out.  Congress let it happen, thanks to Trump.  I was sitting pretty before any of this happened, back in March.

Mom is quiet.  I don't feel so hot, the cat is fed, I sneak back up to my air mattress, just to soak it all in, let it ride over me, mom's habit of anxiety, always looking for strife, the little complaint, the question, repeated, again and again.  "Any reunions this year...  What's a Zoom...  How did you sleep last night... What are we doing for fun today..."  At 9PM I'd had enough, last night, and so I went up the stairs, into the hopelessly cluttered office, turned out the lights...  And when I come out of sleep, I hear her, downstairs, talking to herself and the cat.  Some of her dramatics.  She won't just go to bed and watch a blaring TV anymore...  "Help," I hear.  She likes to say this now, a mantra.  I might be saying it someday myself, soon enough.

But what queer gene inside of me does not allow me to seek what I should truly want...  emotional support, not just giving all the time...  What allowed me to waste talents groveling to the restaurant business and to the fickle gods of writing  as they will never pay a mortal in the act.  At best they'll wait till you are dead.

"What's a Zoom call?"  Mom, I've explained to you this a thousand tines...

Shrill voice, called out the back door:  kitty kitty kitty kitty kitty...  what stupid jackass let the cat out.  on a night like this, in pitch darkness...    boo hoo boo hoo hoo hooo hooo.   I get up from the couch, where I was finally writing again.  I walk over to the kitchen, I open the door, the cat's right there, I let him in.  He's all cold.  How could anyone be so stupid...  I wish I were dead.  She sits down in her Eames chair, fumbling around for a toothbrush, a book, paper, sags back in misery, exhausted act, her fingers still working.  Hi, pretty tree, she says finally.  Pretty sound it will be the end this year...  but we'll find you next year, if I still live...  Sigh.  Sigh.  Oh.  

I get up, take her out for a ride, after scrambled eggs.  A Sunday New York Times.  Sharing a tuna salad on rye sandwich from the Stewart Shop as we park on the bluff to look over the big lake and the light house.

She likes a little ride, it seems to entertain her, we don't argue as much, so we turn up by the university and then down to drive westward along the lakeshore, past Rudy's, then following the shore line around through a march where the water feeds toward the lake, then a wetland after the turn by the muddy farm, and turning to go a little further, the noise from the front end of the exhaust system blows.  Mom grabs her head, you've ruined the car, it's all I have...  Indeed, it is loud, loud as a B-17 bomber or a Harley.  Loud pipes, save lives.  Mechanic says a new catalytic converter could put us over the edge as far as sinking money into a 2003 Corolla.  We just spent $1500 on the gas tank, heat shield, fuel distributor....   Now what.

Cold.  Wind blowing.   Grey skies.  

I call the mechanic's shop Monday.  Bring her in tomorrow, as early as you can, so we can order the parts...  

I'm awake early, snoozing, then at 7:20 the alarm on my phone goes off.  How bad is this going to be...  Does this sink the economic viability of keeping a 2003 Corolla on the road.  Snow has come.  Mom is awake, but when I check in on her again, in her bed, she has dozed off.  I start the car up, after dressing, boots on, triple layer jackets, scarf.  Change for the bus.  Clutch in all the way.  A tap on the gas pedal, it starts.  I take the brush out, sweep the top off and the windshield and the side windows and the back window with the long armed yellow snow scraper sweeper.  Oh, turn on the defrosters...  Clear the windshield wipers.  I go back in, stomping to get the snow off the boots.  The pipe coming out of the engine...  it comes down, then it opens up into a wider tube, as wide as an old coffee can.  There, where it looks like it had been patched, sautered, the pipe has failed.  

So, I drive down, to First Street, and then on to Bridge Street, and I'm 104 all the way east... 

Hey mike, how are you.  Yeah, so...  Well, we'll give you a call.  He doesn't offer me a "need a ride?" so I walk out and on to the road, the shoulder.  Back west on 104.  Trucks going by.  A snowplow, then another.  I keep on walking.  Maybe I can catch a Centro Bus back into town, from the Walmart Stop across the road.  My bus schedule blows in the wind, and skin is beginning to hurt.  When will this end?  Well, I need a walk, a long walk.  People in history have made worse marches.  I pull my scarf out from the courier bag, wrap it tight.  That helps.  My timing for the Walmart bus is off.  I might as well keep walking.  I deserve the punishment.  The sky is blue, but then clouds come over.  I push the large buttons which barely depress to signal when to walk across intersections.

I slip and fall on the icy plowed parking lot by the Dunkin Donuts at the top of the hill by the two story motel.  Do I walk the whole way?  I cut across the road to the side street on the other side, maybe it will be more direct, lead me straight to the Utica Street Bridge...  The Big M.  No sidewalk on the other side anyway...  I follow this path, at least it's quiet, but then, coming back to the main road, oh, I just miss the bus into downtown, and now this is hurting...  Jack Kerouac suffering on the roads, and he could suffer it, tough, and make art of it.  I'm just trying to get back to mom's, and maybe the car will be fixed by tomorrow.  I'm back on the rough snow covered sidewalks headed west on the south side of the street, past Garofallo's where they make an excellent sub here in the poorer end of town.  I think of stopping into the convenience store, something warm, coffee, a breakfast sandwich or cold cut sub, but shyly, plighted, I walk on, too shy to stop.  Blocks become longer.  

Okay, so I cross the river over the old diagonal old railway bridge walking path, and gulls hold over the waters of the great churning cold river below us, looking down, beaks down, studiously, over the canal lane, over the river, perched just so thanks to their winged hold on the air, and I shuffle onward.  I'm close to the Big M now, now far away.   (The wind is stronger over the valley of the wide channeled river.)   There I can find warmth.  Wait for the bus.  I cross first street, and embarrassed by my state of affairs, I duck in to the covered shopping cart can recycling foyer, out of the wind, finally.

Mike, the boss of the mechanics and our friend from the service center shop has called.  I call him back.  From the dealership, the catalytic converter costs $2000.  Yikes.  But I found...  $650.  With labor and struts... 

Could be a lot worse.   I shop.  I finish shopping.  I go across the street, to replenish the pinot noir supply.  The Italian Covit will work just fine for $9.  

I've lost it all.  I cross past the snowdrifts, to get back to the Big M.  Take a minute at the little bench by the newspapers just inside the automatic doors in and out.  At 10:50, the Ellen Street bus will finally come, after all that hour and a half walking trudging along, in low Bean boots that slip sometimes.

And miracle of miracles the bus comes, and I'm alone on it as it takes me up the hill and over, and then I go down, the back way, slipping on the hill where four wheel motor vehicles chop up the ground, and finally I'm taking my boots off coming in the back kitchen door of Mom's.  I sit with her for a bit, feed her, get her her pills.  And then I take a nap.  It's cold up in the room.  I've got nothing going on.