Some nights I stayed up late, playing the D-28 in the kitchen or down in the basement, sussing out a Hank Williams' song and thinking of the life he led, the way that life ended, how he come not to care anymore about performing for the Grand Ole Oprey, how he really was a song writer.

Mom is talking to herself more,  and between being trapped in here, even over three floors, with the cold January in the teens, it is hard to escape and hide from her.  Help, she stage whispers, everyone hates me.  They hate me, from her Eames Chair.  I was tired and feeling pretty bleak myself, there being no answers any more but money.  "I don't know what I'm doing," she says, then lifts herself with a groan as I wait to be interfered with.  Sighs, and more sighs.  The cat is in.  I slept all day, only getting up to see the last of a clear day and the golden light of the setting sun out to the west here, below the lake.  They are supposed to be getting snow back in DC.  There is not much here, except for the drifts by the power plant I walk through.

Last night cooking dinner I took mom's iPad and showed her a YouTube of FDR making his 1944 speech including Fala, as she'd been happily referencing that from new biography book of Eleanor Roosevelt, our little effort to keep the local bookstore up and running through the pandemic and all.

It's pretty cold down in the basement, and once I get down there, down on the air mattress and a comforter over me, it's easy to sleep and not want to move and time can go by.  It has been exhausting here.  She'll tell me she's lonely, I say, well, why don't you call Sharon or call your sister but then she won't do it, she's not in the mood for that, she'll call them when she gets home, mom you are home.  

Even taking her out for a ride, down to the little gas station shop or the Big M little supermarket and then for a pass by the lake and the frozen river is exhausting.  I'm trying to listen to pertinent news from NPR but she drones on over that, about the weather, how much is it going to snow, I've never seen cold like this, what's new in the world, maybe we could go out for lunch...  On and on, and the same sighing, and we should get another cat.  The other morning I spent an hour getting through to the DC Unemployment Office, as I had not been able to file my claims for the whole month of January and finally I get through.  The latest round will go to Mid-March, but after the car repairs mom's own checking account is getting too low for comfort.  So I am justified when I say, mom, we cannot afford to go out.  Then there's the matter of getting the vaccine, then the matter of the airbag recall in the Toyota, and mom's teeth as well, and it would be nice to find her an inexpensive set of hearing aids...

Before bedding down I made a beef stew, after cooking dinner for mom earlier, her usual potato with butter along with chicken wings, and she tells me again about what a fussy eater she was, her poor mother, and how she'd put bacon over mashed potatoes, and on and on it goes, was your mother a good cook, mom you are my mother and you were a good cook.  She seems now to be in perpetual need of approval, and praise, and in the meanwhile the running commentary, help, where am I, I hear from the living room over her in the kitchen, as I try to eliminate clutter and other things

I wake up desperately depressed about what I've done with my life, having started out as a very good reader, into a wide range of subjects...  but how I got depressed and all that slowed down and maybe it was the drinking, as that will get to your brain too, and I hear her coming on her dragging feet and can feel her looking at me as she stands leaning on the tall trash can as she goes over to look out the back door in the winter darkness at 8 o'clock, calling a cat that doesn't exist.  She looks over my shoulder as I type, on my old slow Macbook, did you write all that, yes, do you need a reader, and I tell her no, and she says fuck you and walks slowly back to the newspapers.

I grew up amidst and amongst a lot of powerful people and assured directive voices, my father being the mellowest of them, and he had two modes, quiet and lecture, a gentle inward man who could come up with an answer for everything if you cared to ask him.  Like brother like mother, I suppose, commanding personalities who know what they want and are willing to butt heads, and since they don't speak anymore, I am the one stuck here with momma and her sighing, and no wonder when I yell at her for all her acts.

My old laptop heats up now, the fan coming on, the little color wheel swirling, and I have to shut it down after this little burst.  Mom is getting possessive about her laptop and comes down every two hours to tell me I'm wearing it out, it's all she has.

Mom likes the beef stew, which I serve late, around 9 PM.  With dinner she can have some wine.  I manage to hold for awhile.  Yes, mom, this is your home.  See...  your bed is upstairs.  When I'm writing and she comes in it's the same feeling you'd have with mom walking in on a self-pleasuring (masturbation) session.  And by the time we're done for dinner, please, please, go up to bed, in my mind, but she dawdles around.  I get her ice cream.  Okay mom time to go to bed.  Okay, I'll leave you in peace, but minutes later she's there in her Eames Chair again, looking at the bookshelves and talking to herself again, apparently believing that these are books which she can borrow from but that they are not hers because this is not her home.  I go upstairs and turn her bedside lights on.  I find the remote.  I turn on the TV.  Please, please, please go to bed.  I go downstairs.  She's still in her chair.  Mom, please...  She's looking for her Eleanor book.  She needs a glass of water to take with her.  She wants to say good night to the cat, who's there on the top of sofa back, where he blends in.  Please, mom, please.  

Finally, I can barely hold back, I clap my hands in an effort for instant prayers and intercessions from God, Jesus and Mary.  Then it comes.  You hate me!  I wish I were dead!  You've ruined the day...  And so with a final indignant look, bitter, mistreated by the world, she finally goes upstairs, but not going easy.  I love you but you hate me.  Mom, please.  Do you want to watch the news or PBS?  I move a few books and other crap lying at the foot of the bed so the cat will have a place to spread himself out when he's ready.

She comes down the stairs one more time, poking her head in, a parting shot of some sort to my despair.  I hear her climb the stairs again.

And then it's hard even to regain where you were.  It exhausts you.  So patient I was through dinner.  The stew was very good actually, slowly cooking away for 24 hours, low and slow.  I showed her the pictures from Sterling Nature Center from a week ago, after she asks me about the weather for the billionth time, such that I show her the Weather Channel App on my iPhone.  See, mom, it's 16 out.  The low will be 9 degrees tonight.  Tomorrow the icon is for cloudy, but no snow, high of 25, low of 19.  Tuesday the icon if for snow, 70% chance...  my energies crumbling, sapped.  

She goes back upstairs, and I put layers of coats on and let the cat out, and walk with him out to the two pine trees and the edge of the grass to where the wild brambles and weeds grow.  The moon, fullish, waning is a coin in the cloud winter sky, and it's pretty cold out.  Crystals reflecting from the snow covering the ground.  I go back in and take the brown paper bag for the recycling out, cartons of stock, V8 cans, wine bottles, cider bottles, plastic that once bore fresh baby spinach, for $4.99.

Now what?  By now I'm feeling too messed with anxious to be calm, so there's the wine, over the last week a box red from Portugal with a black Labrador dog on the box, Vinho Regional Lisboa, aged in oak, 13% abv.  And if she has a migraine coming on, I do too, or some sort of headache to match the dry air and the winter and the boredom, such that I could not be blamed for delving into some of the things that made old Hank Williams tick. 

It eats you.