The impossibility of everything here...

The impossibility of our being able, between myself and mom, put together, making a good decision that makes both of us happy.

Tuesday, early July, the Sixth, or so.  Tour De France in the background.  I'm feeling it about the prospects of my life, future employment, health care, now that I've beginning to show cracks, so when we get there it's hard for me to do more than glower over what ever I'm supposed to be enjoying, taking a peek at my phone screen for some kind of contact...

I've done nothing with my life, no teaching, no scholarship, only misguided things, and without a career of any sort, I'm pulled into the family black hole.  

Wednesday.  I take a shower, shave.  Towel off.  Downstairs in my underwear--mom is dozing--I pull my pants on, light, made of nylon, the same ones I've worn every day here after the winter left.  I put a bandaid on, finding one in the medicine cabinet, a nice fat one, for the chafing spot on the back of my ankle, then a sock, a thin one, then the velcro black ankle sleeve with the two strips that secure after wrapping, for a brace, then the Keens hiking boot so I don't step in any wet spot on the floor, and then just as I'm about to write, got the laptop out, ready to go, just these dull and stupid weary quick thoughts of no particular note, down she comes after the water runs in the bathroom pipes upstairs.  I'm feeling discouragement.  

But I know I will work with it, do a little better today, be kinder to mom.  

But first, soup.  

I add bone broth and the pulled chicken tenders I cooked two days ago into the small pot of Campbell's Chicken Noodle, low sodium.   Get the sliced turkey breast out.  Slice a small red onion, and a tomato, and bring a bag of romaine lettuce over to the table.  

I bring up a picture of the happy couple, my aunt and her husband of four years, from a Facebook posting. There smiling and lovely in their wedding finery.  I find a few pictures from my iPhone photo library.  Mom and Mr. B on the porch of the Red Lion Inn.  That had come up when I reminded mom of the phone call last night, the anniversary.  "Where are they going next?" mom asks.  Well, they're not really going anywhere, just out to dinner...  They're going to the Red Lion Inn tonight, for their anniversary...

Then it starts to go bad again.  I used to live near there, she tells me.  I'd like to go there before I die.

Well, we'll go out and see them at some point.  But I have to explain, it's not as easy as going around the corner.  A cat sitter.  The five hour drive.  

Well, she says, implying I'm making things complicated, more than they need to be.

There's the Toyota air bag recall.  There's the dentist.  There's my own health concerns, including the latest, a sore ankle I'm slowly getting over, skin barnacles...  

The box wine, I got up late.  I was up til past 4 in the morning, after the naps I took.

Mom sits in her chair, after lunch, after I got her to rinse her mouth out then brush her teeth, which she resisted.  She gets huffy about doing so.

 A ride.  First Ellen to Hawley to Erie, to 5th Street then across Utica, pit stop for the newspapers.  A dish of coffee ice cream for mom.   A quick chat with the woman at the counter, as usual.  Down to Bridge Street, then west for a few blocks, then a turn onto Liberty north toward the lake, around the circle, mom talking about how they are building something "over on the other side of town."  (Mom, I don't know what you are talking about.  I can't think of any pier over there).  Over the Breitbeck Park, but it's windy, and mom says she's cold so we go back to the car.  Then the view from the high bluff.  And it looks like she's not lobbying for anything, so okay, up 1st and into the parking lot of The Big M, and I remember my grocery list, tell mom I won't be long, in I go, make my rounds...  

When I get back to the car, mom has found the little advertisement from the humane society, a kitten, "Sarah," a long hair who indeed looks cuddly.  But I'm feeling pretty down, for various reasons.  "But that's a fifteen year commitment..."  Which is met with her retort, "you always say no."  And she turns away from me in the car, the silent treatment.  Mom, I've put my life on hold, I don't have a job, I don't have health insurance, I don't have a future to speak of, what?   And you tell me all I do is say, "no."  

By the time we get home, yeah, even I can't face the stuffed peppers with tomato sauce in the carton, nor the rotisserie chicken.  At least I didn't get any sliced turkey, as that is wearing thin too.  Maybe we should just go to The Press Box...

I'll try to watch the Ventoux stage later.  The first one I've expressed much personal interest in watching.  This ain't like childhood anymore.  

She's upstairs, she departed over my no to the kitten, the fifteen year commitment, to the dog, etc.  And with my ankle still sore hampering just about every pose I use for meditation and health I feel the walls closing in.  There's the rotisserie chicken, there's the three stuffed peppers, but I don't feel like presenting them as some form of dinner, and I can't take a walk now, so let's give it some time and just go to The Press Box later, I'll get a burger, glass of wine, mom will have her salad with grilled chicken, we'll be out of the house, mom can interact, I can too, a nice waitress and I can show how polite, how I still am a gentleman despite it all, saying please and thank you sincerely and making eye contact, grateful for everything now, as if I were indeed a prisoner about to be sent away, and nor will I cross professional impersonal lines, I'm too old and she's too young anyway, and people here are old, married, with children running about, with grandparents, or on dates, or with other units that won't invite in an extra proton neutron into the nuclear atom of their own...

Get back home.  I get to watch the Ventoux stage, after futzing with the cable box for a good twenty minutes to get it to send the cable single, NBC Sports Channel...    They're descending through this crazy road pine forest over tan soil roads into old Provence towns, twists and turns, they've already climbed the mountain once in this coverage.  It's soothing.  I get bored with it.  but I keep watching.  Riders going down the hair pin turn road and into the straighter part pedaling along, then tucking on the rivet of the saddle.  Okay, tired out, shot, beat, just about half dead, mom, etc., so I go back downstairs, the cat follows me, I let him out, I go down to the basement.

I take a meditation nap, a decent long one, just incapable of doing anything right now, not finding mom's last five years of IRS Tsx forms, no, just turn on the dehumidifier and rest, blank rest, thought of chakras, a vain attempt to penetrate the boredom with facebook or some other media thing...  No.. 

Then around midnight, I'm awake again.  The Tour should be on, but it's a rehash of Stanley Cup on the channel, so...  I just want more wine at this point, back down to the kitchen, the ankle brace chafing, rip the damn thing off.  

I'm about to light some incense to clear the air.  Mom comes downstairs as I'm getting into the little distraction of The Chosen, episode intrigue you sort of have to follow.  Back and forth to Jerusalem and the camp by the big lake.  Jesus is working his way up to the Sermon on the Mount, this season, apparently.  Well, mom, what do you want, I say, talking to her as if she were a child now, one hard of hearing.  Okay, stuffed peppers, okay...  reheat in ceramic dish in toaster oven 350.  

Maybe she starts in.  Why am I so miserable?  Well...  

We're sitting down now at the table.  Well, Mom.  What made me depressed, when I had my shot at things... hmm.  What I remember is you yelling at my dad, "you're a failure, you're a failure..."  

Well, I'm sorry you didn't have a happy childhood.

Thank you for apologizing. That helps.

But you hate me.  You're trying to destroy me.

No I'm not.  You don't need to get defensive.  I'm glad you apologized.  It's the way families are, the genes...  you got it from my grandfather.  so it goes.  

But you hate me.  You're trying to destroy me.

No, mom.  That's the response of a narcissist.  You know what a narcissist is, right?

Yes.  I   know.  what   a narcissist is...

Okay, well, anyway.  I know it's hard being isolated.  I know it's hard when you're retired.  I find it's those little exchanges with people at the gas station, the grocery store, just little stories you share back and forth, that help.

I don't understand what you're talking about.

Do you want me to heat up your stuffed pepper some more?

No.  It was good.      But I'm not hungry anymore.   You hate me...

I try to bring up, well, that's just life, that's just family.  You know, you and son number one butted heads from six months.  

She doesn't engage.  It's just more of my insulting her now, from the look on her face.

"Look, this is life.  I'm not insulting you, I'm just saying that this is the way people are.  It's in their genes...  And this is why some of us like religious things, because it reminds me of a greater will, something beyond your own self..."

She's not buying it.  The things I've said, maybe I shouldn't have said them, are still sinking in into her old mind.

"Mom, you apologized.  That's all I needed.  We're good now."

She goes off, out of the kitchen.  Not looking back.

Later she comes and stares at me, standing like a ghost.  "You make me want to commit suicide."

I clear the dishes.  

I go back to watching season two episode 5 of The Chosen.  Jesus building his ministry.  It seems to help, even though I've gone Buddhist and yoga, except for the sore ankle.  

For all his beautiful prose, Kerouac ends up unhappy, just another guy who didn’t fit in.  And hey, he didn’t even try, after a few fits and starts.  He was a quitter.  Quitters get what they deserve.  The bottle.  A readership that doesn't support camping trips anymore, and for him, the burden of fame.

Thursday.  I sleep in the next day.  It’s rainy anyway.  I was up too late, and by the time I wake it's afternoon.  I come up the stairs, hearing mom creak in her old Eames chair through the basement beams.  Earlier she sounded okay, like she was handling being alone okay.  

Do you want to go to The Press Box, she asks me, quite hopefully.  "Mom, we were just there last night..."  Blank stare.  Crestfallen expression.

It's going to rain, mom.  Thunderstorms.  Let me get you some of the salad you had last night, and we have rotisserie chicken too.  So I get her some of that.  Yeah, supposed to last for a while, maybe an hour or so...  And indeed, it's pouring out.  I get her a glass of wine.  Her two daily pills.

If we go to The Press Box it will just start up all over again.  Can I avoid having a glass of wine?  Now that I've made a stand I feel myself weakening.  I don't even want to face the good hard working people of Oswego, is part of it.

Look mom, I'd like to entertain you, but I have some work to do.  (What, I don't even know anymore).  She looks at me.  Maybe it will clear up.  But I still have a life to lead, and things to do.  (Dishes at least.)  You've got books to read.  

But you came here today.  Let's be social.

Mom, I've been here every day since November.   I'm sleeping on an air mattress down in the basement.  I'm living out of a suitcase.  She stares at me.  I didn't just come here.  

I feel like I'm adrift, floating again, not knowing anything anymore.  A stand still.  I soak the dishes from last night in the tub with hot soapy water, after tossing some things out from the refrigerator.  Turkey meatloaf, probably still good, but tired of looking at it, plus the clutter.  I get her a little glass of wine.  I slice off a little more from the breast of the chicken, still tender, as she picks at the soggy salad from dinner last night.  "I can't take that clanking," she says from the kitchen table, as the water pours and silverware lightly touches against a plate.  The dirty cat dishes add up quickly, along with the tea mugs.

"I'll just go into the other room so you don't have to look at me," she says, sternly rising from the table and aiming toward the short hallway past the cellar stairs door and the sliding door little bathroom.  "You hate me."

I look at the radar on my phone screen.  Yes, a few more bands coming through, I made the right call, even as I feel guilty and she's gone upstairs in misery.  Maybe she'll forget.  

Work.  Who am I kidding...  Some Jesus I am, not even knowing what to do with himself...  I alternate, between the chilled teas, one the Dragonwell green, the other dandelion detox.  Still with the feeling of the fermented grape in me, shame.  Honestly, I don't know what to do with her anymore.  It's day by day.

Amherst grad and all you can manage to do is do the dishes and sort out the fridge, cook something to eat tomorrow...  Shameful.  But what can you do.   

The cat is bored, meowing at me quietly.  I've shown him the open back door several times, but he stays put with the rain two feet in front of his nose.  No wonder he can kill so many creatures, including the mink from a few days ago I should have taken a picture of before tossing into the bush.  He is a well fed animal.

Care-taking for family...  It will change you.  It's not a grand spiritual quest.  It's a trip to nowhere.

Or so it feels like some days.

But enough of that.

Creativity makes its daily demands on you.  And if some days it is too much, there is wine to go with small chores, like cooking, to set the wheels free to spin.

You have a hard time letting go of it.