May Sketch

Mind:

But then it occurs to me, maybe I am indeed a scumbag, just like the undercurrent of people who've found a place in life have been saying.  The girls who thought you were a creep and drinking too much, they were right.  They knew what you'd turn into.  The "Uncle Robert" ne'er do-well of the family.  The old college alums, class of 1950, at the reunion, when trying to be friendly and convivial with the old folks, accused you of being the thief who took the jewelry from the safe, they knew it, what a punk you'd end up being.   Maybe they're all right, and you're a bum, nothing but a goddamn bum, who will never be employed as long as the lives, the rest of his life.  (And all the talents he could have brought out, but was too diffident, shy, ignorant small town, to do.)

All it took was one strange year to show it all out.  The year when Mom became unbearable, but no place to put her, nowhere...  Nowhere to put all your own stuff, your own clutter...

Well, Sharon invites us down for lunch.  That's a forty-five minute drive, down 48, along the river, south, toward Fulton.  The invite is extended on Monday in the evening.  Tuesday is a decent weather day, if a little muggy, no rain.  Wednesday I'm cautious about, because of the prediction of thunderstorms, at some point, seventy percent.   But it turns out, on the phone call Tuesday night, involving Mom, okay, sure, tomorrow, great.  So the plans for hospitality, the frittata, the apple pie, just bring yourselves, is set in motion, and after getting Mom to bed after making us a nice salad for dinner full of vegetables, and later making a meat sauce with sausage and ground beef, I go through the bottle of ten dollar Montepulciano d'Abruzzo, "Vino del Fratelli," imported by Quintessential LLC-Napa-CA, bottled by Cavira S.C.A. Faenza in Forli Winery, Italy, because I'm thirsty and it's been a day and mom was angry with me, impatient as I cooked asparagus, and green peas, and red pepper, to mix with some nice greens and a vinaigrette with tzatziki, throw in some pulled rotisserie chicken, mom slapping her newspaper and her thigh from the living room, 'til I said, Okay mom, dinner is served, What?, dinner is served.  She helped me sauté the zucchini earlier, that seemed to help.

After some wine, and getting her off to bed, after giving her some chocolate to quiet her down after she started sort of bellowing at me, after I get her off to bed, and after the full moon comes up, and I even go upstairs to tell her to look out her window in this direction and she sees it, as it's really something, a super moon in late May, then I go out for my nightly walk up to the National Grid South Oswego power station to see what's going on in the wetlands.   And even in the darkness, under the moon, I see the beaver family, a big one up close, working on the side, rather than the front of the mesh grate that he's working on damming up.  Mud as a kind of adobe wall, fortified with branches and small tree limbs and branches and whatnot.  He's using the things left behind from when the Northern Clearing Company Crew came in earlier with the big John Deere bucket loader back-hoe.  The dark mud from the bottom of the pond used as a stucco and as a cement, effectively.  

After a few ciders to nudge myself into a calm for bed, mom okay, cat in, off to bed.  Waking at nine, but not feeling so hot, drink water from the Nalgeen bottle, take a pee, sneaking past mom's view from her bed as I slink to the bathroom, and I don't feel so good and need more rest, and by the time I get up, around 10:30, get ready for the shower, keep things calm, feed mom, still feel like shit, shower helps, why do I feel like such shit, did I forget to eat?  I get mom, who's very anxious, into the car, and some water bottles, rain coats, a spare of shoes for me in case the walk by the Erie Canal down by Sharon's is mud, only can take a quick look at the forecast, but by the time we hit the gas station at the Stewart Shop, there's an ominous darkness and humid to the clouds in the sky as you look south, and as we pull away, my guts churning from too many vegetables from last night or whatever, but mom's already impatient with me, after I turned the engine off to pump twenty bucks of gas in, then go in to get her a New York Times to read for the ride, and so off we go, after I set in the map instructions for our destination, so that I can hear from my phone where to turn, as mom is going to make me incredibly nervous the whole way, and I might as well be Lindberg taking off into this storm with crazy dementia mom next to me with an open mike and a spotlight for all her anxious craziness and twitches and "please slow down," and I'm going to kill myself, or we need to pull over, and sure enough, as soon as we get out of familiar territory, and on our little way along the river bluffs than even with it with a few cars behind us, it's truly like a tornado is dropping out of the higher cover of clouds, ripping through the fresh maple leaves along the road in little twister swirls, and the rain is falling now heavily and I know the windshield is compromised, but you know it better when there are such conditions because at the top of the glass of the windshield the wind is coming in much louder than you'd think, though you don't know why, when did a car become so noisy, and here's mom and I scaring each other and making each of us more anxious, or at least she is deviling me in this way, and then we're dropping into Fulton and it's terrible now, wipers going fastest back n forth, the small car straining beneath me pulled upon by various forces, the west wind gusting now, the rippled winter busted road puddled up for hydroplaning, a huge pick up behind me, when do I hit the hazards, and mom, please, we need to pull over, we need to pull over, can't you pull over, Jesus Christ, and finally as we come finally into Fulton there on this West Bank of the old river, man, there's The Price Chopper, big parking lot beyond the little Greek brick diner, still in business...  And when we get in, the fury of the storm is upon us, and wait, why is my left foot getting wet, and then I see a heavy light trickle of water there below, and this does not improve my confidence.    The rutted road is holding massive pools of storm water, and in the parking lot, with my nerves shot, it feels suddenly like the car is moving, several times, to my addled brain, from all the run off in the parking lot, the water washing past us hurriedly downward on its paved supermarket parking lot incline with suds of chemical cleaner or something.  Finally, after a good fifteen or twenty minutes there are signs of it all subsiding, though it's still raining, and there's not exactly any sunshine coming out, no.

But we get back out on the road, even with the paper towels down on the floorboard by my wet left foot, and trying to work the courage to drive well, forward, and on 48 and mom herself did this to get to school before she moved up from Baldwinsville by 690 up to Oswego.  I grasp the directions, but I still need a nudge, and I know eventually, after miles more we will be on 690, a major four-lane highway, but I'm freaked out and nervous, and not wanting to go fast and mom going slow down please slow down I can't take it anymore, crying, boo hoo hoo, I can't take it, please slow down...  They pave this road often enough but it's not easy, not a smooth surface, an old road with old buildings like old markers, the old public house and that sort of thing.  And everyone here has a job up here in these parts that suits, and there are lots of fine old houses along this route, and mom's asking me how much further, how much longer, when will we get there, we should have turned back, this is hell, I can't take it anymore, and I drive along, not having much confidence anymore, rattled, and everything's a threat when you're life is going so, when the old fakeness of your old fake job is further dropping out from under your feet along with its petty attempt at financial security, eating you alive as it does, your own fault for viewing life as a sort of fame personality cult rather than buckling down to actual work and vision and a trade, a craft, instead of dabbling at this, dabbling at that, oh mom needs help, and then your life is sucked away bit by bit and what have you done, nothing.

We don't have long to drive on 690, and the car, though it feels fine to me in private, alone, with mom in the car suddenly feels like hell, like it's going to fall apart, and I have to nurse it everywhere, and now I see, thanks to the computer voice, turn off on this exit, 31 East.  The road dips down, you stop.  But then there's four more lanes to cross, with nothing but a stop sign.  I look right, I look left.  There's a car behind me.  Wait.  Okay, give it a go, and it's still raining and raining and old roads that aren't always the best for a light footprint kind of a car, but eventually, finally, up and down, farmland, straight, then stop at the bottom of the hill, then wait, then nudge left, and then over the Thruway, then over a river, then the right hand turn and suddenly we are there.  6407.  Good God.  What a disaster.  No one would know though, not having been in the car with mom and I.  

I'm numb from the tragedy of mom falling apart bit by bit, crazier, volatile, but she's still herself, no fun to deal with on any hour of the day, except she'll guilt you into feeling that you should be friendly with her, and she used to be, I suppose, a time ago a person of caring, or an illusion thereof...

But as soon as we see our old friend Sharon, mom, in the same grad school circuit at S. U. back in the late 80s early 90s, waiting for us on her porch, calm has arrived.  We have made our rather painful pilgrimage.

When we get in, and admire the house, and we made it, mom is at it, where are the animals, do you have any animals....

Well, anyway...  I don't know what else to tell you.  First we sit on the long couch, and I take a picture and mom has a glass of wine, iced tea for me.

Then, a beautiful luncheon service, how can I put it otherwise, with beautiful homemade still warm frittata with spinach and layer of soft potato, layer of egg, crisp top and flakiness...

And all of this is so shattering and miserable and shaking that it all only serves to remind you of all the miseries you have for so long so bravely suffered. enduring inch by inch, day by day, faked smile above your own.  And it all sucked.  Try but fail.  Then they, the people who fit in, getting up early and doing their days bravely, producing, leave me behind in the dust, and have little mercy for the rest of us, impinged by the close relative with mental illness, narcissism, what have you, you're not so great yourself, who's to know....

Obnoxious work posts an Instagram about the first live Jazz Night at Lepic, the first one I've not done.  They are marketing.  Clearly my absence does not matter.  I see some old customers of mine, in the quick run through in three or four seconds.  The bar is full, all seven seats filled.  My presence does not matter anymore.  That's the way it goes.

I have hit the Big Sur point of the writer's life, or laugh, if I were such a state as Kerouac, but not there yet.