And then there is nothing that is good nor bad.  There are the facts of life.  Rejection.  Failure.  Struggle.  Persistence.  An education.  There is no plan, but that of God's.  There are simply people wise enough to realize the situation.  I care about nothing.  I care about everything.  There are the steps in life, 'tis all.

Everything and I are lost.  Everything and I are found.  In so called defeat there is the great success.  In the sorrow comes the laugh and joy.

Mom is a buzz kill.  I've set up the cooking of sausage with peppers and onions.  I've made a chicken salad from yesterday's rotisserie from the little friendly supermarket.  

I go and check on her.  Instantly the creativity is gone away.  Vanished.  The mood, the inspiration.

It happens every morning, too, or my version thereof.  Mom comes down.  Every single harbored thought, gone, chased away, fleeing the egos.  

But there is no point to writing, say, fiction, for me...  It's all about the long trip of riding out one's own psychological events and doings.  What was true one day is no longer true the next.

Perhaps that's why I adopted this awful insignificant form here.  Mom will be down soon.  I'll be obliged to listen to her will and her mood today.  I don't want to, but that's what will happen.  I got out of bed, hey, that's not bad.  It's not twenty out.

It's St. Patrick's Day.  Okay, so I'll take her for a drive, on the way to do the usual shit, the wine--I'm out of cheap low booze Italian red, plus there's nice people, women my age, who work there--and a run through the supermarket...  But I drive west, as the weather's not bad, the sun trying to come out through a high lake-cloud haze, over the steep hill past the water tower along to the three way intersection, the bottle can recycling place, the low muck farms on either sides of the road, and up around the bend, and behind the trees on the left there's a large bird, maybe an eagle, I thought I saw huge wings and the carrying of sticks.... then up the hill and over the hills the narrowly spaced trees of the forest tight together, then down past a swamp to the main road south, Oswego Center.  We take a left, and then a sharp right, and then over around the curve to a beautiful preserved old farming and natural area, across Rice Creek over the newly built short bridge, and then we park by the barn and I get her out of the car and we go for a slow walk down to where we can see the creek running clear below us.  The sun is out.  There's a woman with nice wide hips wearing high English muck boots on the other side of the creek walking in a field with two large terriers...  It feels good out here.  The grass field behind the long barns that serve for events might be suitable indeed for yoga when the weather gets just a bit warmer.  

Then onward, and mom telling me she doesn't know how long her bladder is going to last, so, we go down to the Rice Creek Field Station, the pristine new building of cool glass, and we put our masks on, and I take her in, down the long hallway, and she's telling me she's surprised by how many rules they have, like changing the sign on the bathroom door after sanitizing the hands, etc.  There are stuffed birds and snapping turtle and foxes, frog skeletons, a beaver skull, a snow goose, an owl, a few voles...  We're looking at the table with the newsletters and branded coffee cup and hat, and a woman, a professional, an academic, comes in and by us, and offers to help us with anything if we need.  No, we're good, I guess.  Mom's retired from the college and used to be on the board whatever you call it.  So we nod to each other, nice to come down here, mom needed to use the facilities, nice day, etc., and she goes up the hallway.  

As she's going away, I ask her, "are you a botanist?"  And she hesitates just a second, turning back, and says, yes, I am.  Oh, cool.  Yeah, my dad, I nudge mom implicating her too, he was a botanist too.  Old School G.I. bill.  Taxonomist.  He ended up at Hamilton...   Oh.  I grew up in Clinton, actually.  Cool.  I ask her, where'd she do her Ph.D., in what, alpine plants...  

A wistfulness has come over me, when I remember prowling the halls outside of dad's office in the science center, and the conversation comes to a masked end, and I take mom gently out to the car.  We drive past a funky little cool spot, the sign says, Acupuncture, and there are Buddhist symbols in the years of the old house.  There was a guy with a smile when we waved as I try to point out the sugar maple sapping going on across the road.  Should have said hello.

But on we go, and by the time we get into town, yeah, it is St. Patrick's Day, after all, so why not go to the Press Box...  risky, stupid, I know, but I'm desperate to keep mom entertained, and while I mentioned how bad I feel, having passed up so many lives and studies like botany that would have led to decent and productive and scientific field studies...  ahh, regrets...   No, mom, to tell you the truth I'm not happy with myself, in fact I'm quite ashamed of myself.  But people like you, they respect you...  Yeah, but inside I feel like the biggest creep...

We get to the Press Box.  I get a Guinness.  Mom her wine.  I'm hopeful, thinking we can get in and out, then we'll go by the grocery store, we'll get home with the newspaper, I'll make a beef stew, but it starts to go in that direction where Mom begins to be sort of stomping happy, "I never have fun," she says.  Then she'll look over the booth table at me.  "Look at all these people having fun, and we're the only miserable people here...  If you want to leave, just go do it.  If I'm making you miserable, just go.  I'll find my own way home."  Mom...  I hang on, finish a lovely burger on marble rye, Reuben style.  Mom picks at her own corned beef sandwich, too much mayo, she says, I should have known...  Damn.  So, I'm stuck again, trying to bouy up her mood, my own sinking, listening to her stories about the old diner, and at least there's Irish music going on, and I know she'll be crazy on the ride back home and in fact, she will be, but that's later.

There are long tables now, handsome young men, children, wives, everyone wearing some green, a day off almost, happiness, beer, all around, the kids running about reasonably.  Why are they happy and we're not, mom asks.  Well, look mom, those are families, husbands and wives, you know... Mom doesn't get it.  Later, she'll say some things that will creep me out about what she might think our relationship is about, with her, I'll find a new man, and my constant Mom, I'm your son, then leaning, banging my head against the nearby brick wall my side of the booth, so that she might get it, when she asks me again, if I've been to Ireland.  She smiles at people who don't smile back at her as far as I can tell, the older man with his wife and another couple, he's wearing a green knit Tam O'Shanter hat, at the booth behind me.

And we are invisible to the rest, except the kindly staff, the waitresses meeting our needs, because we are truly miserable.  And it doesn't help me to look around and see a world full of normal lives, happy family social gatherings, free of angst and hatred and aggression and judgment and strife and murderous thoughts, all around us. 

It's gotten louder, and to continue my attempts at conversation, with all the few bits of charity I have left, I move over to mom's side of the booth, to tell her again, yes, we all went to Ireland together, yes, isn't Irish music great, yes, and here, do you remember where we went earlier, down by Rice Creek, pulling out my phone to show her...  

Why did I do it to myself, and I go hide on my green air mattress, too wiped out and terrified by her vocalizations to want to watch The Quiet Man, now playing on TCM, for the scenery at least.  I fall asleep, and into dreams again.