Ahh, but what do I know...  I've made my own messes.

Fear, yes.  That's a lot of what I get these days from her, waking up with an anxiety, what to do with her.  

I don't feel quite so bad today, as far as the ragweed goes, but we shall see.  I was careful yesterday.  I've made a fresh pot of tea.  Awake before noon, not bad for me.

I hear her stirring, from her bed.  I've fed the cat.  I hear her talking to herself, close the bathroom door.  She'll be coming my way soon.  I'm on the couch, not to miss the Meals on Wheels delivery, not that we need it, just one more back up.  

Job stuff.  A grocery list.  A bag of trash to take out to the dumpster.  The mailbox to check.

Why cannot my mind handle the complicated things?  The leaves of distant poplars dance across the road and the phone and power lines wave in the distance, the tops of the trees swaying.  My glasses need to be cleaned, maybe from cooking last night.  

Hello, anybody there?  Does anyone hear me?  She sighs.  She comes down the stairs.  Well, look who's here.  Hiding.  I missed you.  I'm lonely.  How are you?

I'm nobody, who are you, I respond.

She smiles.  I was just reading about the Prince of Wales and what a mess he made of life.  Are we doing anything for fun today?  Or just more loneliness... she says, acting it out, the sadness of such a prospect.  I don't answer.  She goes into the kitchen and crinkles cracker wrappers.

I get up from the couch, put the laptop down, move myself to the kitchen, mom, would you like a slice of turkey?  Yes, I'll take a slice of turkey.  I take two plates out of the cabinet, the clear plastic bag from yesterday's deli visit, and also the little plastic tub of bite-sized balls of fresh mozzarella.  

We sit there for a little while.  So what's going to happen today?  Well, I have some things to do, mom.  I get her a glass of cool filtered tap water, so she can take her pills.  Three today, in the little packet.  The extra, green gel, the vitamin D.  Will they hurt my stomach?  No, mom.  I'll call the Police on you if they do.  That's nice, mom.  

She mentions wanting to take a ride again.  Watches me for a second.  Poor Ted, life's so tough, she observes of my low-key gloom.  You have it so bad.  

All the trains I've missed in life, so as to be no longer redeemable.  The Professor who never became one, who talks to himself now, becoming more and more frightened of his own shadow, so it seems.

We sit there blankly for a few more minutes.  She brings down her empty tumbler glass of Pepsi heavily on the table, for emphasis of something.  She's always liked to stomp.  She likes to bang things, her hands on books.  Glasses on tables.  Hands on her upper leg.  Hmmph.  "Okay, my queen," I say, putting down my mug of lemon ginger water with a similar thud, humph.  "I will not be treated badly!"  She rises suddenly from the table, then walks away and I hear the front door with its seals shut tight.  Okay.  I shouldn't have mocked her, but I did.  I'm not a very good Buddhist, am I.

My mind is dull again, the ragweed, the lethargy setting in of waiting for things that will not happen.  I get up and rinse my mouth out with the new mouthwash, make the effort to brush my teeth.  I go check on mom, sitting on the stoop, still half in the shade.  My immune system is okay today, but the head is dull.  I already feel like taking a meditation or a nap.

Mom comes back in.  She speaks to me in a small voice, cut off, barely speaking to me mode.  I tell her about the fresh bottle of mouthwash.   No, she'll just have some cold Pepsi.  She goes over to the fridge.  She has her hands on the unopened bottle, but I point out the one she must have opened earlier today.  She steps past me as I sit on the couch again, taking my field notes, displeased with going back upstairs to her books and such and her sloppy bed.  No haircut today.  Mary had to go down to Syracuse for a wake today.  It doesn't even come up.  I take an allergy pill.  

I feel the pain again, of waiting.  

What to do with mom today...

I step out in barefoot and take the bag of trash out to the dumpster.  I check the mail.  Something from TIAA Cref for her.  Nothing for me.  

I come back and sit, as the garbage truck comes, wheeling in slowly like a tank, and the high branches of the poplars this side of the high power lines halfway up the window's view of sky.

She comes down later, forgetting that she's eaten not long ago, by the way she announces, I'm hungry.  Well, what would you like, Mom, some turkey or a slice of pizza.  "Slice of pizza," she says, heading into the kitchen before me.  Okay, easy.  I've found I can toast a slice of pizza and it comes out just about right, give or a take.  She likes the Paul Newman Cauliflower pizza, except the crust, a little soft, she says.  

By now it's push her back upstairs, endure her sitting in her Eames Chair throne, giving orders and dissatisfactions, or talking to herself as she reads.  She talks more and more to herself, at least making sense in her narration.  "I need some Pepsi.  Pepsi Cola hits the spot.  Where's a glass?  Here's a glass..."

Ah, so we go out for a ride, after groceries. for basics, newspapers, big plastic jug of kitty litter, Pepsi, not that it's good for her, but she can't seem to go without it, some cider for me, as an option to the Pinot Noir...

I drive the car out west, up the hill with the Ivory Tower of the SUNY, and the parking lots are full here on the second to last day of August.  The campus is back, humming.  There's the lake.  We drive slowly out past Rudy's drive in, by the water, then further on, out past the old little house and the Airstream style trailer, the estuary of Rice Creek, the lake off to the distance beyond the lower pool, then the cattle, by the junk vehicle farm meets Inspection Station garage, and along past the low lands that remind me of mangrove swamps, full of life, birds, snapping turtles, reeds...

You're being quiet today, mom says.  Well, I gotta think over what I should do with the Postal Service thing.  But I set it slip that my aunt mentioned it to me.  "She's always meddling with my life!"  And on it goes, just getting uglier, as I try to explain it, factually, that you know, maybe I could use a part time job.

It just gets worse.  "She's telling you what to do?  She's trying to take you over!  That's what she's done her whole life!  She wants to take everything away from me!"

Mom, she's just being practical.  I could use a retirement plan, you know, a... something I could do...  I mean, I know it's not what I dream of, but it's something...

It's a hard enough decision to make anyway, and even before that, so many parts.  It would depend on finding a helper to cover mom for the daytime.  If I mention, mom, you really can't be left alone for a whole day....  

I hint at this as we turn around, and I knew I should have kept my mouth shut about where the suggestion came from.  "I was thinking of this last summer...  I don't want to go back to the restaurant business...  I need something that gives you some security..."

I try to keep quiet, or diplomatic at least, about how this decision has many facets, in that, really, mom, are you sure you can be left alone for a day, and she says, I"VE BEEN TAKING CARE OF MYSELF SINCE I WAS TWO I DON"T NEED ANYBODY TELLING ME WHAT TO DO I CAN TAKE CARE OF MYSELF...  okay.  

I hint that she's not making a pained decision any easier bringing in the whole childhood she and her sister thing.  I always knew she'd steal you away from me!!  

And so on.  

Grimly I drive, back past the lower building centerpiece hockey graduation ceremony arena where mom marched in faculty retirement and where I drove up from DC early in the morning with fog over Civil War Maryland Catoctin Pennsylvania foggy lain fields of old vaporous ghosts, through Mount St. Mary's and then past Gettysburg, to drive up all the way to get there around noon after working the jazz night before, coming up through the direct route, slower, Watkins Glen, the Finger Lakes after tracing up the Susquehanna above Harrisburg, up through Williamsport, home of Little League Baseball and rivers, onward, some crazy Autobahn route, 99, freshly paved through curved breast like Pyrenees little mountain baked hills, where even an idiot like me could take a good Nissan Maxima rental car easily on a long straight downhill up to over 100 mph, watching for speed traps, but the road so quiet, in order to take Mom to see Charlie Rose give the Commencement Speech.  Young men are out doing exercises in their Laker Green and Yellow sweats and workout gym clothes, and crosswalks ready for an eager student of any stripe, color, shape, size, but all with good attitude, walk across.  But I'm driving on, in one of the lowest grimmest moments I've ever found in my life, worse than my father's death, that cold cold blooded supreme displeasure of having to deal with some sort of weird evil hatred, as far as I can tell, with my little books and thoughts of Jesus and the Buddha and Jack Kerouac thought and Alan Watts, and here's truly evil, and now she's telling me, "And now I'm the evil one, that's what she always does to me," and it's just so grim and unspeakable and horrible I think of Afghanistan, where earlier we were driving on Erie, heading to Fifth, to turn, and NPR's on, and she says, "well, he has a depressing voice," and I tell her, "well, what he's talking about, he's talking about what's going on in Afghanistan, and the U.S. did an air strike to take out some terrorist thing, but there's also this story... air strike hit a guy who's an aid worker, not an ISIS guy, and it took out his whole family, boom..."  Yes, it's like... Vietnam, I don't know...  That's the way these things go.  Better just to end them, almost, it's just not going to work anyway.

But we wait at the light.  I said to her earlier, look, you're just making me more and more want to go over to the hardware store and buy a rope right now and just hang myself...  but as I'm saying that, no, that's of course not going to help anything, just that, you know, this is quite frustrating and destructive to me if I don't sit up late with a bottle of wine and write about it like I'm doing just now...

Afghanistan.  Why were we there in the first place...  The Russians knew, they're no fools.  The French knew this about Vietnam...  Just, why bother, another Civil War that will never end if they don't want it to,, just pull out.

We get in.  I let her walk in behind me, carrying the newspaper.  I rip open the little package of liverwurst, peeling the outside rind off, eating two, three slices.  Then going out to the car again to get my glasses, as I  was wearing the distance glasses with the clip-ons in the lower sun shining on us.  

The ragweed hits, and I just go down to the basement, I've had enough today.  I've had enough, even though it's not going to get better for me, no.

I've taken the green NeoAir mattress upstairs, but the yoga mat, eco-friendly, thin, will do it.  I fall asleep. And when I wake up, mom is bellowing again.  Help, help, I need help.  Is anybody here?  Where are those bastards.  And when I come up the stairs finally, to see what's going on, with the evening sun streaming in and encouraging the fly she let in earlier holding the door for the cat who sees what I see and hears us argue and me with no other option but to tell mom to just shut up, as she calls from far away, "what can I do to help," you've helped already....

I go up and look in on her.  Oh, I didn't mean anything. by that.  She's been into the wine already, and it will just get rose, I'll get dinner on the table with the stupid organic barnyard smelly chicken tenders with lemon and artichoke hears, rebake a baked potato, microwave some spinach, just get her dinner and then just go hide again.

 After the long nap, dead to the world after taking mom out for dinner and earlier taking her out to the farm produce stands, feeling the pollen hitting my immune system, I wake and mop the floor.  I cleaned the refrigerator out the night before, a process begun a couple of weeks ago to get the freezer defrosted and then the temperature settings right.  

I sleep upstairs, cramped quarters, in mom's old office stacked with books and papers and all sorts of things, and maybe I'll feel better.  

But when I wake finally I don't.  Not at all.  The depth charge within me from being outside, even wearing a mask, taking mom out 104 for vegetable and fruit, then a mile or so back towards town for the farm stand with frozen beef and sausages.  Mom finds a friendly tiger cat.  I get her back home.  Wash the dishes, and then she starts in on me, so I say fine, lets go out... and that's how it goes round and round, over and over and over again.

I wake up, but I don't feel like moving.  Mom's being quiet enough.  Til finally I hear in the distance, "okay, you bastard, let me starve," mom is saying.  She can't even open the refrigerator, see there's some things, maybe the sytrofoam box of chicken wings, leftover lemon pepper chicken, cheese, the slices of cauliflower crust Paul Newman pizza I prepared the night before with extra toppings.

So I heat a slice of the pizza for her in the toaster oven on toaster setting.  Fine.  I bravely pour out green tea and lemon water from the chilled containers, trying to get my brain right again to function.  Sunday, get a newspaper, grocery shop, reheat the ground turkey pepper onion tomato American dish over microwaved peas, call it dinner when the time comes.  Take her for a little ride around the town, not stopping anywhere, just sight seeing the same old sights.

I cook dinner after a pollen nap, and I've been hydrating all day, in the car, back on the yoga mat downstairs in the basement, til she starts getting louder, and I go up and getting dinner warming up.  The dishes are already piling up in the tub, six dirty cat dishes, silverware, lunch plates.  

"What's for supper," mom calls out from her chair, enthusiastic and taking that everything is fine here.  "What can I do to help," she states, coming in to look at me.  I'm good, mom.  

I call her to the table, after pulling out some brown rice from the Chinese two nights ago, after I get the peas out of the microwave still in their plastic bag.  She tends to keep her chair a little further away from the table, picking at things, then taking what she wants on her fork in her right hand, with her left hand cupped under it as she brings it to her mouth.  I've asked about this.  I offer to push in her chair, and sometimes do, but then she starts to get angry, building up to it almost immediately.  "I Can't Do Anything Right!"  Calm down, mom.  I've put the silverware out with a decent napkin under it just to the left of her plate.  This time I forget to tear off a paper towel section and place it in her lap.  She looks around.  "What's this?"  This is Turkey American Chop Suey.  "This?" she says, pointing with her fork at the clear glass bowl of brown rice I just heated.  "No, Mom, that's brown rice.  And these are peas."  "Should I put the peas back in the refrigerator now?"  No, mom, that's just the package.  The peas are here, in the bowl, and you can have more if you want.  I put some butter on them already.  "Oh."  "This is the chopsuey, mom..."  She looks at her plate.  

She has a forkful.  "Pretty good," she says.  "Yes."  And just as she starts to make little cooing sounds and flourish with her fork, "oops," and I see she's dropped some on her pants.  Chinos.  Almost white.  She's looked good in them over the last few days.   Surprising me Monday or Tuesday when she changed out her dirty Levis to look fresh for Sharon taking her out to lunch at Rudy's.  I can't help it, "Jesus Christ," I say, trying not to shake my head.  She stands up to get the Kleenex she pulls from the box I keep on the table for her over to the sink so she can put some water on it, then her khakis, the tissue paper shredding, then the napkin too.  But this is olive oil, tomato sauce, turkey fat, spices.  I go get a bottle of soda water and crack it open, a little bit spilling out on the floor, and a paper towel to place on the spot, and then she starts to worry about the wet floor.  Dabbing at it with her napkin.  Mom, don't worry about the floor.  "I can't do anything right..."  She starts whimper crying again.  I stay calm.  It's just thoughts.  The pants will be cleaned, no big deal.  "No biggie, mom.  We'll put some dish soap on the spot and wash them later and it will all be fine."

She keeps worrying about the soda water splashed on the floor.  I have to raise my voice.  Mom, don't worry about it now.  "But someone will slip."  Mom, I washed the floor last night.  The water will dry.  

I look into my phone about stain removal on the NPR sight.  Yup, dish liquid, for oily stains.  And if not rubbing alcohol.  Do we have any rubbing alcohol...

I get some ice cream after clearing her plate.  She's still upset.  But getting calmer.  "So what should I do now? Go up to bed?"  Whatever you want to do, mom.  You were reading the William Maxwell piece in the Sunday Book Review...  You could go read that?  "Who?"  Mom, you were reading it earlier when we called Lee.  (It was almost too significant to her then, an hour ago, for her to be interrupted.)

Parts nasty, grumpy, shaken by the pant stain, I usher her off to bed upstairs.   Twenty minutes later after getting the dishes soaking in the tub I go upstairs to ask her to see if she changed out of them, having given her a clean pair of jeans, but she's already fully under the covers with her eyes closed. 

I guess I had my chances, back when I was young.  Still at Austin Grill.  But later on, when I had to get serious about it, I guess any female could smell her on me, the psychological burden no one else could take away from me, such that I either abandoned her completely or didn't.  And creeps too would sense it, would try to root it out too, knowing that their own mothers were the template for their own experience of the worst fears of dealing with the female aspect, had destroyed them too, so that I might too be vulnerable...

I might have said, mom, maybe you could get a boyfriend, but she never did, and I never could push it, and she never met anyone.  She'll go on, never to be able to accept the slightest blame, telling me, "it's your own fault, it's your own fault..."  Yes, maybe it is.

It is, of course, my fault, too.  My lost years.  I'll admit to them.

And now for the third time since six in the evening I'm telling her that Mary had to cancel taking her to the hairdresser's down in Fulton tomorrow, because she has to go to a wake.  And each time it's another reaction, "what?  you didn't tell me this?  BUT WHEN CAN I GET MY HAIR CUT?"  Mom, later this week, no big deal.

 Despite my best intentions to quit drinking under the full moon, a fresh start, I have a cider and than another.  (Note: I  am thinking in terms of mood regulation;  don't push the brain's nuclear reactor into the happiness pain-free zone, and it won't swing back harshly too much the other way.  Admit all of it sucks now.)  Dishes, then I cook hamburgers.  Just for myself.  Everyone talks of smash burgers.  Got a skillet, give it a try.  Mom comes down.   I've been playing the guitar.  The Irish stuff, and mom comes down and I roll through them.

I wake up, again, feeling poisoned, zero energy.  Does the basement allow for more ragweed pollen than upstairs?  I don't want to get up feeling like this.  Yes, I was outside in the breeze yesterday.  Even wearing a mask, an N95.  

I don't know where exactly I lost it, but I did, I lost it somewhere, probably in college, where I went off the rails of respectability.  Made worse by my neglect of forward motion afterward, those years, "trying to find myself," as it were, which is no way to go about growing up and laying a solid foundation to be a man.

This is why adolescents are attracted to the mindset I write in, Kerouac, Salinger, Hemingway, the rebellious thinking that doesn't get you anywhere at all in society.  You can't go living off the grid.  It doesn't work.  You have to fit in, so you have to make yourself respectable, and keep it that way.  You can't mess around.

Sharon's coming to pick mom up at three.  I've fed mom her pills earlier, a slice of turkey to tide her over, and she's doing okay, despite the noise, yelling help, help, is anybody here, and calling me twice.  (I picked up the first time, to remind her to be ready for the nice Meals on Wheels friend.)  I go up and pour myself more tea, and she's just been calling the cat out the back door and here he is meowing to be fed the rest of the can she opened.  I'm surprised that she's changed, out of her jeans, and into chinos, and out of her clumping Keen's hiking shoes into her pink Nike sneakers.  The regular medications are working somewhat.  

"When's Sharon coming?"  Three, mom.   "Is there a comb here?"  I find a brush.  The cat is fed now and wishes to venture outside, so I let him out, he stands looking out the door for a second or two, and give his butt a little nudge with the side of my foot, and he goes for it.  I've left the cellar door open, and she gets on that.  "We should keep this door closed.  I'm afraid of the steps."  Okay, mom.  "Is the cat in?"  No, mom, I let him out.  "It's too hot!"  Mom, he's a cat, he knows how to deal with it.  It's okay to let him out.  He has to do his thing.  

In the space of five minutes, four directives, bossing arounds, contrariness, loudness.  And I think of the family legend of how her father, my grandfather was a twin in the womb, but upon the delivery only he survived.  Great.  Establishing the karmic pattern I inherit.  Grim.   Dog eat dog world.

So it goes.

The big monster in the room remains.  No job.  No career.  What do I do?  

Where is a career outside of wine?

In a mad crazy situation, what do you do?  You have to go along with the weirdness, the craziness, the madness.  No?  That's life, isn't it?  

Rituals for the broken.  Come up the cellar stairs.  A tub with dirty dishes, dishes in the sink.  The pot I cooked the aduki beans from last night when I finished a bottle of wine.  Mom's left the Meals on Wheels carton on the table, still in a clear plastic bag with the milk cartons in it.  Fresh loose leaf dragonwell green tea.  Steep three minutes, pour out half a cup, then pour that back over the pot with the leaves still steeping, for extra extraction.  

"Banging, banging, banging," mom says, whenever I do, or try to do, the dishes.  As her hearing weakens, she is sensitive to noises.   So I'll get the dishes done before she comes downstairs, getting right on it as I have my tea.

She comes down the stairs and I hear her in the living room, "hello, hello, is anybody here?  hello?"  The way she speaks now, in a phrase, a word might have a hesitation in it, as if she has to catch her breath, as if a little hiccup in the speech.  "Here" comes out as "(hhuh)-here," the first part almost silent, a catching of breath in, as if there's a panic about to attached to the question, or a kind of baby-talk feeble note of weakness and general doubt.  A plea, it comes out as. 

Okay, mom, I have something for you to eat.  I've slowly cooked three eggs sunny side up, adding a tablespoon of water to poach them after they start to fry.  I took two out for myself just when the yolks had whited over, and the last one I've let get well done for her.  That with the sliced off the bone turkey from Big M deli counter, and store made pico de gallo.  After which she asks, do we have any ice cream here?  Okay, mom.  Coffee with chocolate chips, Stewart Shop brand.   She'll spoon the little chocolate bits to the side of the dish.  (I find one on her chair later on, melted in the smooth vinyl seat.)

I neglected taking a shower in the evening after the errands, so I go take mine, and mom's already asking me what we're going to do today, she wants a ride, she wants to get out and do things, and each time these thoughts run through her head, she gets more frustrated, taking it out on me.  Harrumphing as she pets the cat who's been out a large part of the night, sleeping it off, as I come down to find my pants down in the basement.

So after she applies more pressure, I get the car started with the AC going and bottles of cool water for both of us, check the mail, which has been forwarded up here, something from DC Human Services, maybe about my food stamp card, or maybe my health insurance.  I come back and she's just coming down the stairs after using the bathroom.  Okay mom, are you ready.  Her cane and her hat are right there by the door, but as she steps out she has neither.  I go get in the car.  She comes to the passenger side, and I'm sending a text to my friend Betsy the yogini, as she called around 11 at night and gave me some really helpful support, always non judgmentally.  She's texted me to check in on my ragweed allergy and what I'm doing for it.  Mom looks over at me frowning.  She mimics me, with her finger on her cupped hand, "click click click click click."  That's not being very kind.  Mom, it's my friend who's checking in on me.

I've told her we're going to the library.  That's our mission today, mom.  Charlie Watts has passed away, and I'm feeling sad about it, on top of everything else.  The pain in my left breast near the nipple doesn't seem to be going anywhere.  The pressure of mom being who she is, add dementia on top of that, and that feeling that comes with being unemployed, and being unlike anyone else in that you do not have a profession, which is a constant horror to be going through, a source of shame when out in public, the guilt of it slinking along with me on my hunching shoulders as I drift past the deli counter to bother the person, today the tall young fellow with a red blond beard, for some sliced turkey.  It's a feeling that follows you everywhere.  There's no glory in it, only pain, no matter how much you might fancy Jesus Christ, the Buddha, or any great writer, like Kerouac, who chose being a bum over being happy, and maybe all of these guys and the ones like them were big old depressives back in their day too.  Chekhov had a job.  He was a doctor.  Many have been journalists.  Orwell.  It is only I who am such a bum as to be 56 now and caught in this trap.

I get her to the library, parking the car near the front door at a slant on the fairly steep hill.  I take mom in, and she sees the books for sale, two bucks a pop.  I show her the books we are returning, hers a large print of President Joe Biden's tale of a death in the family, his son Beau, lost to brain cancer (caused by the toxic smoke plumes of military burn pits of the Gulf War).  She doesn't remember it.  Well, we've had it for two months, let's make room for some fresh reading material.  And I feel it too when I surrender the picture book of art telling the story of Christ from the National Gallery of Art, ending with one of my favorites, the Tintoretto blues of Christ on the shoreline of Galilee recognized by the Disciples out on their fishing boat, after He has risen.

I go back to the rear of the library and look through the listings on my iPhone screen for local physicians who accept Medicare or Medicaid, whatever the DC Health Insurance I have is.   Find one taking new patients.  I call a few.  No, not taking new patients.  Gives me a few numbers.  Next, well, I'll transfer you down to the business office, to see if we take that one (which she's never heard of).  I get the answering machine.  

I come back and find mom has three books.  Oh, they're from the book sale.  I remember I don't have any cash on me.  Oh, take them anyway.

Mom's still grumpy with me.  I get her to the car.  Then the Big M.  Then the wine shop.  Everyone in the world has a job except me.

The younger sibling does not act quickly enough to save himself.  He picks up the burdens.

My feathers are ruffled by the time we get down to Fulton for mom’s 12:45 with the doctor.  We are late, almost by fifteen minutes.  It’s hot and humid, I forgot to get gas the night before with all the contentiousness. I cooked a bone in chicken breast and also a steak, but there’s something about supermarket meat when it’s not organic.  A retained solution kept seeping out of the mealy New York Strip as I let it rest on a bamboo cutting board.  The best part of the meal was the okra with the onions from the iron pan.

We have lunch overlooking the big wide river at a tavern.  Unhappily.   I ask the nice woman who comes out from behind the bar if we could sit over on the side of the canal and the river beyond it.  Okay, sure.  Mom is looking the chicken cordon blue or the chicken Monterrey melt, with red pepper and mushroom, on the sandwich side of the menu, and one minute her choice is one, and the next it's the other.  And I'm no better, I know I should just get a hamburger, simple, but my mind is trying to correct the nasty experience of the mysterious additive tampered with preservative quality to the steak I cooked last night, and I get the roast beef with gravy sandwich, knowing full well it is a mistake, but hoping there's still real roast beef out there, as any decent American diner should do, if only to honor tradition..  And when our server, who is a very nice young lady, though the other one I might find more attractive not knowing any better, brings us our plates after telling us minutes before they'll be ready soon, and yup, there's a creepy shine and finely set even texture like a teeny tiny basalt outcropping even under the gravy, and strange little green spots here and there, good god.  But I'm hungry and I eat it, most of it, skipping the white bread, having some sweet potato fries as mom sips her wine and her eyes dull and I sip my soda water with lemon...  Hers came with onion rings, and I can't resist, knowing I don't want the breading and all, but the day hasn't been much fun, and I don't think I even communicated well with the doctor, as kind and gentle as he was.  I'll have to call him later.

As we leave—I usher mom wearily to the ladies room—I can hear the waitress talking it over in the empty dining room, “… and she’s saying, ‘stop trying to control me,’ to him…” An understanding chuckle, an observation coming from another room, over up the carpeted step past the old school conventional salad bar… 

Too hot again to do anything of note today.  Ragweed high.  Heat Advisory for the whole region, and the maples aren’t doing well.  We could see that driving back up on Route 48, the quiet slower route on the western side of the River as mom’s head bobbed after the wine, waking to say something then chiding me for not responding.

We get back in, let the cat in.  Mom goes upstairs after suggesting that I'm stealing her cat, and I go down into the basement.

Later that night I make a foray out to the Price Chopper.  But there selections of meats isn't all that great either.  When I get back in with the groceries she is still asleep.  A welcome silence of the night.  I go up and check on her and she is twisted out to her right side arms out straight.

And today I just feel hollowed out.  Empty.  Burned out by anxiety and by the fool attempts to escape it with addictive pleasures.

So I brave coming up the stairs to the kitchen, to get the water on, to empty the silverware tray from the dishwasher, dirty cat dishes by the sink, the residue leftovers in two or three little cans with the sharp little lids still beside or on top, to rinse, and I go ggghhh at the gook.  Today's Thursday, no idea what to do.  Mom was downstairs, but mysteriously went back upstairs.  I haven't seen her for about twenty hours except to go check in on her while she was asleep stretched out on her bed, tired out apparently.

I didn't have too much last night, only a bottle as I cooked another turkey chop-suey, letting it cook down before indulging in a bowl of it with extra olive oil.  But still my head swims today, directionless, with a monkey on my back, and whatever chemical dopamine happiness you tried to find last night now it's gone in the other direction, and you don't find a steady flow until you sit down at the laptop modern typewriter pad, and type out a slow even sentence, which seems to reconnect the tangles you wake up with that hover above your eyebrows.

What do I feed her to start with?  Did she take the whole packet of saltine crackers up to bed?  Are we both so sad now, visibly, that we don't even want to be seen, attempting to function, but just slogging on for a higher meaning in the pages of a book but always elusive.  Should I take a shower...  I turn the radio on, NPR, for the 12 o'clock news, the mess from Kabul, a bomb at the airport.  I blow my nose, away from mom's complaints, spray some nasal moisturizing spray upward so the breath can go back downwards into the deeper nasal cavities.  Will it rain today...  Soup for mom, or turkey and an egg?  Keep her hydrated.  When to go upstairs and make a peace offering?

But I know, you really can start to feel like an unsavory bum pretty quickly when you rise and look in the mirror in your own little self-obsessive world, and you want everyone to remember, no, wait, I used to be a good clean kid back in high school, really I was, well, except for a few bad influences I should have shut down and walked away from, but as if I was somehow trained not to do that from an early age.

The pain's lifted slightly, as I hear the distant room reaction to the thud of mom's footsteps up above me, so, with some relief, I say, oh, well, that's about all I get today.

And then one day you wake up and you realize, as it's been slowly and surely coming to you, that you have nothing, absolutely nothing.  That all your years as a barman, as a "writer," as a "musician," as a "drinker of wine," gluttonous too, has amounted to nothing at all, nothing to rest on, nothing to save you, and worse, that no woman would ever have you as more than a miserable friend.  A hack, at everything.  And now nothing to do but sit waiting.

Mom comes down as I pour water from the tap waiting for it to properly heat to do the pots, the bowls, the cat food dishes, the silverware, the mugs, and I ask her if I can get her anything.  She reaches into the fridge for a cold Pepsi, one which I probably stuck back in after she left it out and walking away.  "All right, don't take to a only old lady... "  I don't say much, but now I want to have a drink of some sort, though I really don't want to.  It's heat advisory hot outside still.  There's a free concert down by the river.  But other than my miserable realization, my mind is dim, nothing to say.  I took her for her ride, and they grow a bit more pointless each time, as she yammers on.  "What a nice blue car..."  Then, "okay, Claire, I guess you're the only one is this car."  She goes back and looks out the window of the back door.  "All right, you miserable bastard, remember on my grave that you didn't speak to me...  "  She goes off.  Okay.  

There's a check to deposit for her.  But the ATM is closed down, and the drive thru window takes too long.   So I did what we did a few days ago, but in reverse, out southward, heading upstream along the wooded bluffs above the Oswego River running high, churning downstream of the hydroelectric break, down route 57 past quiet houses to the bridge in Minetto, holding up a pick-up truck driver's progress as I keep it at the speed limit with mom on me the whole way, slow down, slow down.  Back across the bridge, then up the west side on 48, up the hill, past the golf course, into town, the spire of St. Mary's rising in this fresh angle we don't often have the perspective of, then to the Big M, mom waits in the car, then to the bank, crossing the bridge again.

I go later past 6 PM to see what the concert's going to be like.  Not impressed, but that's how it goes, I go back through town and pick up sausage and steak with peppers and onions wrapped in foil from the Italian Importing Company's little trailer, waiting in line with the town folk.  Back to see mom, who's upstairs in bed, share a simple meal with her, and then take her down to the concert, get her back, and then later I feel the pollen again, nap, wake up, stay up late with the wine and HBO Chernobyl, and then the next day down in the basement I feel even worse, thick in the head, beat thoughts, mom keeps calling me, I try to get her to take her meds on the phone from my sleeping pad but she can't figure it out so I shriek out of frustration, climb the stairs, there she is sitting at the table with the EZ Med box from the drug store in her hand, but unable to see that she has to pull on the little plastic sleeves with the pills inside.  I ask if she's hungry, but she finds the turkey tastes a bit old, and I can't blame her.  Groceries, again, even if I don't feel like it.

And before that, after coming upstairs when the Friday Meals on Wheels came with a persistent knock on the door, I had a dream of being back at work, just getting settled in, and here she is calling me, and all of that was a worse nightmare than the one I'm now going through, in that you feel so helpless.  And of course, no one, not my brother, not my aunt, could really help holding her hand, it all falls on me, why I don't know and no wonder I lost my mind then and it's been downhill since, and never will I be employable again, it feels like, or certainly not as the erudite teacher I was cut out to be, being in a shameful depressive state that only got worse, passing up all the opportunities and suggestions a parent makes to put you on the successful paths they have trodden, and instead, failures and just dropping out and giving up, even if you worked hard, quite hard in the restaurant bar business as a sort of stop gap that ended up leaving you with nothing, not a thing.  But the dream is a sign of a need for deep sleep, achieved, even if you wake up in the same old frustration staring at the rafters of the ceiling and hearing your demented mother talking to herself and padding around on the floors above you.  

I will never write the book I intended to.  Things caught up with me.  It was all a misguided idea to begin with, the dream of a child.

I feel like utter crap, still, and she's even a bit sympathetic.  You're not feeling well, I see.  Do you have a fever, no mom.  Same question, five minutes later.  No, mom, it's the pollen.  When will it be over?  The first frost?  And again, the questions are repeated, and I'm not of much energy to answer them, having answered already, and even before that, and before that.  

Well, it's a lovely evening outside, not too hot, not too cold.  Okay, mom.  it seems she allows me to sit in the kitchen at the laptop for a little while, then coming in to watch me from the bathroom door opening.  

We could just order a pizza.  Okay, mom, I'll order some Chinese.  

Saturday, we drive out south on 7, then west on 85, to hook up with 104 and the farm stands.  Beautiful quiet roads, beautiful quiet farmland full of green and bounty, tractors parked by long green houses roofed with plastic like quonset huts to sell baskets of herbs and flowers in the Spring.

Mom gets out of the car with me at the vegetable stand.  I keep my mask on.  I try to keep the buying so peaches and plums and whatever else we buy, even if it looks so good, won't go to waste, ending up rotted like the things I've found in the fridge bins the night before, pressing on themselves till they got soft, then crushed, then mold coming.

We end up at The Press Box later, a booth for us, bar full, no problem.  I'm answering a text when she takes offense at me.  And then it gets worse.  She starts crying, you hate me, you hate me, you hate me, I wish I were dead.  Great.  Now it's spilling over to when we go out to eat, even, even with all the distractions.  The server is the youngest one.  I used to see her over at the Five Points Liquor wine shop at the five way intersection this side of the big hardware store lot.  Several times as she swipes by mom is either just going off on a drama crying jag or ending one having forgotten about it.  "Look mom, you're telling me, 'you hate me, you hate me,' and my brother never even calls.  He's sitting far away in his home with his wife and kids perfectly calm and psychologically healthy because he just decided to write you off a long time ago.  And he's the healthy one.  He doesn't have to sit here and listen to you, 'you hate me, you hate me, kill myself, I'm going to kill myself as soon as I find someone to feed the cat...'  "  I shrug.  "Well," she says.  "You're a kind person..."  and some more of her logic, which I let go hummmm in my ears.  I'm tired.  I look at her.  She's got some wine left.  I've had a third Woodchuck cider in the stress, finishing it up after paying the bill and asking for a box for mom's leftovers.  I get her out to the car.

She apologizes, or tries to, as we leave.  I’m sorry, I've been depressed.  I'm afraid you'll leave me.  I'm sorry I ruined the evening.  I’m almost caught off guard by this.  That's okay, mom, I say, and I drop the little car down the slope into the lower parking lot by the newer jazzier riverside hotel restaurant, the marina to our right lined with fishing guide boats and sail boats and even some pretty nice yachts.  Across the river, by the cement towers, a ship is off loading through tubes that hang from industrial arms.  Closer by is a beautiful old wooden boat, from 1938, of a certain style, Trade Wind, her name.

I just want to get her home at this point.  I need to crash.  Too much.  The pollen again, and that we have to go through the same thing every night now leaves me in a grim mood.  Everyone else, educated or not, is a success.  Not me.  Flashes of the family picnics we saw out on the road today.  People who have lots of people.

 There was a squabble over the bedtime pill, mom protesting, she doesn't want to be medicated.  No, I'm going to run an experiment.  Mom, but the pills help, I promise you.  No, they don't, they interfere with my sleep.  Mom, you sleep just fine.  They make a difference.  I can't tell.  Well, I can.

Okay, don't take the pill.  See if I care.  I give up.  I go back downstairs.  I got her thus far today, it's almost 11:30 at night now.  The ragweed pollen is up again, even in the rain somehow.

Later, she comes down, still resistant.  I want to see what the medicine does.  I lost the piece of paper from the pharmacist for the Memantine, so I show her the one on the Aricept.  See, mom, they help you.

But it takes me telling her, okay, I'm not going to give you the pills anymore.  Then we'll just see what happens...

I just don't know what to do anymore.  She's upstairs still.  I don't want to engage with her.  Sleeping dogs lie.  I'm feeling bitter.  I'm not getting anything done.  I can't do yoga with her around, can't go outside to do it.  I can't go for a walk without feeling half dead two hours later.  I can't get a job, because she can't take care of herself.  I can't write, not in the day time anyway, and so I do it at night, when I've been into the wine, when I get a little silly.

But now, at the suggestion of a guy who went to my same high school, Mat Ward, older than I, a basketball player, I write now, by daylight, this, at his suggestion of writing as catharsis.  He was a barman himself once, when he worked in Utica at House of the Good Shepherd.  A pastor, a social worker.

"I think you should take some time and write.  It has a Catharsis effect for the one writing.  I think it would be for you on many levels."

It's as if I never thought of that, almost.  Never occurred to me, beyond the blow by blow.

Mom asks me about Raymond P. Tripp, from Amherst days.  How we went to go see him way up in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, Mt. Washington in the distance, when he had his brain tumor.  He gave Mom and I books, mainly about Thoreau.  "I won't need them where I'm going," he said.  In his cabin, attended by his wife, Myoko, who tended to the Master, as he laid in bed upstairs.  I went out for a walk, and let mom have some time with him.  She used to be head over heels in love with him, she always says

I wish I knew what books he'd given us, mom says, put a mark in them.  Mom, they're here somewhere.

I feel very sad later, the pollen effects coming in and out.  Trying to entertain mom.  The farmer's market, tomatoes, collard greens, two little artichokes, a cluster of beets with their greens, from the tall vaguely Thor-like guy, not quite hippie, just down to earth, well spoken.  I ask him how he cooks Collard Greens, as he's acknowledged my good taste, because they taste so good after all.  Oh, put in a ham hock or a turkey leg...  the old school way.  It's hard not to like the farmer's market.  There's a slender child with her slender father, a few stands up.  I pick out a few things.  "I like the dirt on the tomatoes," I tell her, and she tells me how it got muddy with the rain over the last few days, in her quiet brave voice.  Some peaches, a little pint size of ocra, $4.  I hand her a five.  Ah, keep it.  I turn around and look to see where mom is.  

We have our Garofolo's mild sausage and peppers and onions on a roll, and a sliced steak, also peppers and onions, kind of tough, tastes better when you're eating the roll too, but we eat with plastic forks and I watch mom tear at the sausage link.  We get back home.  I'm tired again.  I unload everything.  She wants to talk.

"What's for dinner," she asks.  Mom, we just ate.  Remember?  Oh.  I try to feel her out if she wants a glass of wine.  No, not saying anything about it.

I need a nap.  Maybe a post office job is the way to go.  When I get back up, she's reading, or looking at a book from her high school reunion, an update about how everybody turned out.  Doing well for themselves.  I might like a glass of wine, she says.  Okay, you could have gotten one for yourself.  But I don't live here...  Okay mom.   What are your plans for today?  Mom...

I can't.  I sneak out the back door with a couple of cans of ciders in a health food store shopping bag, needing to get away, feeling guilty about it.

The Billionaires are playing, a band, up from Syracuse, very good.  Down by the river on the band stand.  Park the car.  The river is rolling strong.   There were flash flood warnings throughout the day and the night before.

I sneak pictures with my iPhone camera here and there, warming up, seeing what my eye might want to capture.  Caravaggio scenes by the little tree and Johnny's Roadside Barbecue Stand.  Just shoot, when you can, not trying to intrude, being subtle about it.  Pretend to take a selfie, or talk into the phone as if on FaceTime.

If God and Jesus are out there, They are everywhere, and that's why you let the camera open its eye and let it happen, you will see the Disciples, there before you where you look in the every day and the townspeople.  Gethsemane by the river, under the shadow of the relative high-rise building, apartments for the poor and the elderly.

But none of this encourages me as I get up finally and plod up the cellar stairs out of the cool, knowing mom is in her chair, bringing up my pair of pants, wallet, iPhone.  Mom is cooing out loud as she looks through a bound alumni book.  She's talking personally to the individuals she remembers, based on their biographies, their reports on life.  "Oh, you should have cats, too, not just dogs...  Nice hair.  Ha ha ha.  You've aged so well.  You made it this far.  I should..."  Every now and then exclaiming a name.

I go in and look in on her.  "So what have we planned for fun today," she asks.  Almost shouting in a way, as she does.  Like a stamping of feet, authority, I Want This!  I Want That!

And I feel a great grave sense of depressing worthlessness.  I was up late completing my U.S. Postal Service application.  If I take the next step, taking the exam, will they want me to take the job right away?

My aunt shoots me a text.  Maybe they are starting with the booster shot.  She and her husband are getting their shots today.  "Okay, big boy...  he's hiding from me.  Where's my cane, someone stole my cane...  I don't know...  This hat, ooohhhh..  The man has taken over the whole damn house...  I'm freezing."  

I step outside in the yard to place the little filter on mom's portable Dyson vacuum out into the sun to dry, a funky smell to it from the last cat who widely soiled the carpet in her last year.  There's one little tomato on the tomato plant, and it's red, 

She comes into the kitchen.  She goes to the back door.  "I'm going to get some warmth, seeing as I don't get any from you..."

Yeah, sorry mom, maybe it's the ragweed.  Maybe it's the depression of thinking how I might apply for a job at the U.S. Postal, but then what will I do with mom during the day.  Maybe I need it for my sanity.

I try to keep us organized, food in the fridge, etc. 

I never know when mom will tell me, she's starving.  Or, what's for supper?

Yesterday I take her for a ride, in the afternoon, south along the river.   Over the bridge in Minetto, one lane, traffic light on both ends, for construction.  The weekend nights are pained.  Back up northward along the river, looking at the neat houses that back up low to the river, which is high and eddying bubbles of current on the flat surface of the brown water, green debris along the edges.  An old historic cemetery.  Part of the road, Route 57, is supposed to be haunted, a farmer who murdered his wife and child.  'Slow down, you're going too fast..."  over and over. "Mom, I'm going ten miles an hour under the speed limit.  Look in the rear view mirror."

She's not satisfied as we come back from the Big M with modest groceries and the newspapers.

I thought we were going out to lunch.  So it's Friday evening, about 5 PM, and the Press Box inside tables are full.  We end up at the bar.  I mean to order a cider, to pace myself, but knee jerk I order my usual Chianti, and after dinner, mom wants another one, so I have one too, and then another.  Coming back from the restroom I tell the waitress talking to Mr. Canale, the owner, to tell her boss, drinking a beer with his old buddies and his son in law, that the men's room is out of toilet paper.  And some jerk threw in a long sheet of brown paper towels, which will inevitably block it up.  As a restaurant guy, this bit of an intelligence report, seeing as the entire front of the house is female, and young, is practically quite valuable, even if it is a stupid thing.  I looked for toilet paper under the sink, but there wasn't any.

He comes back, and then I watch mom teeter with her cane back from the restroom, and the men say hi to her.  Hey, we saw you down at the vineyard, you were good.   (Caught my open mic night act, three of four songs, Rainy Night in Soho, Lullaby of London, Flyswatter/Icewatter Blues.  The last I cut short, figuring no one wants to listen to this kind of weird mellow music, unrecognizable.  No warm up.  Mom, grumpy, complaining about being abandoned when I went to get us glasses of wine and water from the bar, in tow.  Some kind person moved her up to a front little table in front of the open band stand.). I shrug, say something like, well, each night is a discovery, a work in progress.  Maybe make mention how I didn't know the family would be there to torture.  I mention a few developments over at the other restaurant, but maybe I over emphasize, and I don't know the exact relationship between the brothers.  Later, I think to myself, I was a drunken asshole, a strange person for a man of the normal, get it done, a man of the kind of town we're in, friendly, but, every cog that works has its place.)  Next time: Switch to beer, or cider, be one of those guys watching football or S.U. Basketball.  Wings and burgers.  Works for me.  He's a provider, with a family, grand kids.  His son-in-law married his high school sweetheart, got a degree in nuclear engineering so he could come back and work at the plant down the road.

And what man, what person, wouldn't want to, more than anything else out of life, get a solid responsible adult jog, so as to take care of himself, his career, his wife, his family, his elders, with the power of showing up to work and doing a professional job with compensation.   Forget this worthless artist stuff.  That's almost the work of the devil.

By the time I get home, I realize, wow, I'm pretty drunk from four glasses of wine, at this time of day, just getting dark, so I pass out, and then I'm awake at five in the morning, hungry, not knowing what to do with myself.  A memory of stopping by briefly, mom waiting in the car, to see Steve Watson, who hosted the open mic night at the vineyard, playing as a trio, doing a Ton Waits song, Downtown Train, cool.   "Yeah, Steve," and I have to get back to the car.  I want to go out later, but pulling up and getting mom back in, she's shouting now, "oh, help, help," get her inside, I realize I'm too drunk to go out.  And this doesn't strike me as right.  Is it the histamines?

I climb the stairs about six in the morning, and mom's still in her Eames chair with her shoes on still, with a towel over her in the air conditioning light chill.  I sneak a peek into the fridge, rummaging for what I can, and now that I'm awake I need something to soothe me after another "experience" with mom, dragging me out, and then I get into the wine, out of some kind of desperation trying to be convivial and entertaining while at the bar with your 82 year old mom.  I grab a can of cider and go back down the stairs and try meditation.  Nothing else is going to happen.  Dirty dishes, at least I got groceries earlier, for that crucial first feeding of mom during the daylight.

I've been feeling pain in my left breast, maybe there's a little lump.  Or is it fat deposits, from an overworked liver.  Is it a compound found in red wine?  Google tells me a few possibilities and all of them seem grim to me.  I'm on DC Medicaid, as far as I know.  

Later that evening I get mom through dinner.  She doesn't push it about going out to eat, a major achievement given that's two lunches, dinner, and then the later, I'm starving announcement.   I go out, because my horoscope says I should and prospects are decent, so I get in the car with the guitar in the back seat under a towel and some newspapers, to track down Mike, who played earlier, watching Dave Hawthorne play at The Sting.  Which was a blur, and a bit of a waste, but that's how it goes.  Not to get oo close to the mad ones, and this I succeeded in doing, and when I got back, I opened another cider and took the Postal Service prospective mail carrier test 474 on my phone screen, figuring I wouldn't be able to get in done before the quick deadline of 72 hours from applying for a local job, and who knows about that anyway, all disheartening.  

Today, hot it was, earlier, and I got mom to the park land of Fort Ontario in front of the old ramparted gates for the car show under the lindens, enduring getting her to the portopotty and waiting a long time just standing there, then moving her on closer to the music, but more in the hot sun, so she wants refuge in the shade behind the sound man's mixing board pop up tent, just enough space, but embarrassing me.  I get us some of Jonny's Roadside BBQ, the brisket, and he's not as chatty as he might normally be, been working hard the last few days, and he must be hot, waiting for six o'clock, and I have to get back to mom anyway.  

Panko parmesan crusted chicken tenders ready to cook from the Big M, and also some sausage and peppers, as we missed that earlier outside watching the live music.  It's a huge relief to get to dinner without arguments, and the daylight peters out, the full moon has yet to rise, and I'll do the dishes later.  I avoid alcohol, the cider I thought of remaining un-cracked-open on the kitchen counter as I got the peppers and onions ready and the heat right for the chicken for mom, the sweet potato, the link of sausage into the small iron pan into the oven, finding odds and ends from the Farmer's Market in the refrigerator, and I'd like to cook the two little artichokes, but, looks like it will be spinach tonight.

I forget to tell mom, over dinner, how I saw the woman we picked up over at the Stewart Shop so she could get her five dollar pack of Seneca cigarettes and a ride over to Flat Rock, I see her there at the deli counter, looking cleaned up, almost normal, and with a bag, like a purse over her shoulder, and she walks out without paying, but I'm not going to say anything.  She made out with some fried chicken, I think, maybe a sandwich or two, then just slipped away.  Many people up here work on their suntans, knowing full well what winter will bring.

My poor liver.  

With the power of the Full Moon to change I try my best.  I give mom her midnight pill, and find the Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid I figured the cable channel would be running for free for a while.  I ask mom, do you want to watch the History of Sit-Coms on CNN, or Butch Cassidy.  "I don't know, what do you want to watch?"  Well, mom, I've got to do the dishes and sort through the fridge, I'll be back later, and I slink away and have myself some more water with lemon.  Fill the trash bag to full with the Meals on Wheels trays, sadly.  Is this mold on the peaches?  Are the plums over chilled?  For much of the week I worked on defrosting the freezer, a first step, and then making adjustments to get the refrigerator down to forty degrees where it was closer to fifty, to my horror, having sensed something bad about  all this.

So I wrote, at 1:30 in the morning, Dostoevsky time, under the full moon.  I've taken a shower, washing the pollen off under the shower head that doesn't pour evenly in any mode now, and mom's asleep, and I turned the light off.  She'd switched it away from the Butch Cassidy and Sundance, and there's an interview with a man who is a quarterback from what I can tell, for an entertainment channel, how he empathizes with the horror of any African American man pulled over by the Police.  He being recognizable, though I don't recognize him.  

And so I have real really mixed feelings about having a cider now.  If you make it so far on one day, why go back?  Look forward, to the direction your moving into, not the way back to the past.  But I'm also depressed, which should tell me something, that I feel just a bit of numbness, maybe in honor of Pani Korbonska, and her late night full moon invites for Tadzio, going into the wee hours with wine and pate and cheese and maybe something stronger from her chest of entertaining.

The dreadful awaken-ness comes to me.  The soothing of the cider as I get burgers ready to cook in the big iron pan, gives me energy to remember the thoughts.  The cider provides relief, after one, cracking open a second can, pouring it the same mug over ice cube tray ice cubes, and just for a little while the problems feel away from me.  Who knows, this might be a good thing, this sense of relief, and the possibility of my playing my guitar, as I haven't in a good while comes to me in my solitary state.  You can always practice.

But how do I face decent normal people with jobs and duties, performing in real ways to make kids educated, everyone ready for society, group behavior, the great democracy.

What happened to me, the Idiot.  Dostoevsky's best friend, his own inner self, the version of him that could be used as an explanation in polite society, before society clamped down and put everyone to work, or maybe that was the beginning, or maybe it's just gone on forever like that.  Get a job.  No money, no honey, and we're strict about that.

To be wounded, and to continue to go around so, this is not the point.  Society is supposed to be able to help you, even when you are at the fringes.

I mean, if you don't even try to fit in, well, you're already beginning your own slow suicide.  Attempting to be your own remember-er of things, of bringing back an artistic effort to look back at the history of human doings and self expression, well, either you keep on doing that, or you change, or something.

At two thirty in the morning the stupid stubborn boot hiking shoes are heard clomping above, the bathroom floor above the stove and the refrigerator, water stains in the ceiling, from her child oblivion.

Attempting to be individuals, we turn into creeps.

 I feel it most acutely when I'm listening to NPR news, the voices of the different reporters, the putting together of a news story.  

I feel it acutely, how I fell for the image of myself, the Narcissus effect, engaging in my own little world, a feeble act.  I fell into an image I created, thinking that it had welled up inside of me and needed to come out.  Well, that's not how you grow up, young man.  You grow up by joining in with a team, working together, as pained and painful as it might be, an exchange of ideas.  You don't get anywhere thinking of yourself and only yourself, and so I suppose I'm paying for it now, having to take care of mom.  

Now I'm left with my worries, as we get back from our little trip out and about in the little old car in the rain.  First stop, the Stewart Shop, newspapers, a cup of coffee to revive me, off the burner with the classic black handled clear glass pot, a dash of half n half, a little dish of Columbian Coffee ice cream, mom's favorite, get my ice cream loyalty program card punched, free next time.  As I come out, there's a suntanned woman smoking a cigarette.  "Is that your mom," she asks me.  I look over at her.  "Yes, that's my mom," my hands sort of full.  "She's nice.  Can you give me a ride to Flat Rock?"  "No, I'm sorry, I have to take mom to an appointment."  "It's just five minutes away."  "Oh."  I soften a bit, and finally relent.  Okay, making room for her on the back seat.  "This is stupid," I tell myself.  But what are you going to do.  "You'll have to put out your cigarette...  Mom doesn't like smoke."  I mean to tell her to take her time, but she's already rubbed out the flame on the edge of the metallic picnic table.  "Sorry to rush you."  "That's okay."

In the car, I open the windows up.  Covid-19 Delta variant, regretting picking her up already.  Mom's spooning up her ice cream already with the fresh newspapers on her lap, after I show her the spoon wrapped in a ball of napkins.  "That's over by the power plant, right?"

"Yes.  Could we go buy cigarettes first?  There's a house across from the Kinney's...  I'll show you.  Only five dollars over there."  She tells us how her boyfriend hit her last night, drawing blood from her nose.  Jesus Christ.  He's on a bus to Syracuse.  She used to have a house, and a job, but thanks to him she lost it all.  

I introduce myself, and mom, by name.  "My name is Tracy." 

We pull up to the house, which sits on a quiet corner.  Yes, right here, she says.  Will you wait for me?  Yes, of course.  Another car pulls up.  I wonder if the guy in the car is her boyfriend.  She goes up on the porch.  The door opens, and a nondescript man steps out and then he's gone, and she has her pack and the guy has two packs in his hands, and up comes a thin kid with long hair and facial hair.

"Does this boyfriend smoke crack?"  Yes.  "Synthetic marijuana?"  Yes.  "Crystal meth."  Yes.  Anything he can get his hands on.   He went off to Syracuse.   She hopes he won't be back.  She used to have good looks, three sons, love them to death, they want me to stop smoking.  She used to have a house, and a job. She lost it all, thanks to him.

Yeah, that's how people are.  It's hard to shut them off.

We stop at the light at the Five Corners, McDonald's to left, on the side of the four lane road, 104, away from the lake, the liquor store.  Past the Raby's hardware, and then the next right, yes, just past the power plant.  "What's that, a water plant?" she asks.  "I think it's a power plant, too."  I pointed it out to mom as we passed by it, out of habit when I take her out for a ride.  We were probably going to go along the lake anyway, and the students are still coming in to fill the freshman dorms nearby.  

"We were down here, having a good time, and then my boyfriend hauls off and hits me in the face with a bag of ice.  Hurt like hell."  

Down to the lake.  "I don't know what to do," she says.   "Should I call Human Services?  They won't do anything... Should I go down there?" Yes, you should.  They'll help out, I offer, not knowing.  Slowly over the bumps, underneath the two towering smoke stacks, the high chain link fence, the road rutted.  We once took the neighbor, youthful, gay, to drop off for a swim here.  Flat Rock.  Makes sense.

I look at her in the back seat after we come to a stop.   She's wearing fairly short denim shorts, a black knee brace.  "Do you mind if I take your bag?"  It's a Price Chopper large reusable shopping bag.  "Sure."   I take a quick moment to peer into it, without offending her.  She has our SUNY Oswego umbrella in her hand.  There's a brown bag within the shopping bag now.  "Yes, please take the bag, go for it.  Uh, but we only have that one umbrella..."  She puts it back down, laying it on the seat with the other things of ours, the opened roll of paper towels, some old shopper newspapers, an old blue towel I draped over the guitar case to hide it.  

She thanks us.  I love you.  I'll pray for you, she says, and walks away.  I watch her go slowly further away now.  The bond has been broken.  What do you say?  Take care...  There's foliage on all the trees.  She lives down here, it occurs to me, somewhere.  She's up talking into the window of a red Ford pickup truck.  I turn the car around, and we slowly drive away.  

It's a quick right turn and we're on the main road through the campus, running along the lake.  All summer there were hardly any cars parked along here, the playing fields and the campus to the left, but now there's activity, students walking, crossing the road, gathering into tentative little groups, the black girls with other black girls, but also mixes of people.  I look at the way they all dress, and end up looking at the form of a young woman as it leaves the bottom of her shorts.  Flesh, skin.  All over the place along the sidewalks.  They've all got it together.  They'll keep it together.

We drive slowly on, at below twenty miles an hour, out to the drive up fish and hot dog and burger stand, Rudy's, on the loop, there on the rocky little beach protected on a concrete platform.  A few people are out eating on picnic tables underneath the roof of the pavilion.  A slow day for Rudy's, on account of the rain. We park and get out, and the raindrops leave a little pattern on the grey surface of the lake that stretches out the horizon, no sun out today, you'll get wet if you're not wearing a rain coat.

On the way back, again past the campus, now on the righthand side, slowly, I think about how it was wrong not to allow her the umbrella.  

"Such a difference," my mom says.  "Yes," I say.  "Such a difference."

I cook dinner, and let my mind work quietly without my interference.  Too wet out to take a walk to the power station where they dug up the beaver lodge pipe completely.  Mom will be hungry soon.  I hear her talking to herself, for a while, coming back and forth, into the kitchen, to ask if she can help with anything.  I've given her her little glass of Yellowtail Chardonnay.  I chop and onion and a green pepper, to get the link of mild sausage going, a potato, sliced in half.  Then I work on a curry simmer, for the chicken tenders, with the Marsala curry sauce for the chicken tenders.   

I really don't know how exactly Anthony Bourdain wrote.

 I really don't know how exactly Anthony Bourdain wrote.   Did he write as an ongoing process, every day, did he write at night, or fresh early in the morning.   Did he avoid alcohol until he was finished, like Hemingway says about himself.   Hemingway put down other writers, "can tell the exact moment in the sentence when Faulkner starts in to the whiskey," can see that Fitzgerald, after some quick fast years of abuse, can't take the drink anymore, gets drunk easily, acts like a fool, the car, the rain, the famous chicken of Lyon, the hotel, calling Zelda...  And yet, while his sober monkish seclusion of his mornings, however he managed, another cold water flat in Paris where he'd get bored with himself and squeeze mandarin orange rind peel oils into the fire, the flames dancing with new colors from the citrus oils, a second wife's wealthy gift of a house in Key West with a writing hut out far enough away in the back, he left record that he might have fudged it just slightly, having a glass of Muscadet in the cafe, treating himself to the views and fresh oysters as he brought his mind back to being Up In Michigan.  

My sense, my immediate reaction to my own question, follows on my experience of what he must have done many times, going through a shift, maybe a double, a long one, and finally, even as you're finally cleaning up, wiping things down, calming, coming down from the adrenaline on top of adrenaline rush, is to pass around the shift drinks--in those days--the beers for the guys in the kitchen, when the quiet laughs can come out finally as sweat is wiped from brow.  The talk comes out.  This would have been his rhythm.  I saw somewhere, in an early video clip, that he would get up, light a cigarette, and write, first thing in the morning.  The fruits of which were varied, broad, and which also got him having a piece published in The New Yorker, the genesis of Kitchen Confidential.  He would have worked on his chops, put a lot of wood splitting in to do so.  Remember, he was in New York City, a native.  He knew the energy, he knew how to talk the talk, he knew the constant struggle, he knew "you gotta get up and face the commute, and all that."  And he did it, and he gleaned, through his curious and nervous bright energies, a lot of stories and forms and little tales and bits of actual dialog.  How people really act, how people, real actual people, talk, what they do, the kind of shit they try to pull.  The egos, the vanities, the supposed pecking orders of worldly appearances.

He lived life at a fast pace.  I imagine he was very disciplined, and obviously he was, to produce all the prose and the narratives of his television shows.  He was, I heard this recently, described as a polymath, a fellow who knew a lot about a broad range of things, take film, take literature, take, well, you name it, politics, history, as if he were a street side John F. Kennedy with a team of speech writers who could pluck out the knowledge of the master himself.

Of course it was all shattered, this whole world we live in, if we try to think of it as a whole, or to find a big enough chunk of it with enough to say things about, enough history, enough character...  And he put it back together for us, reconnecting things, maybe we even ourselves in our little private quick thoughts as we go from one place to another like a school kid in the bus looking out the window, could tune into and understand, having thought them ourselves.  He, Bourdain, was a man for the shattered world.  He got the sense of humor in it, running through it like the grain, the wave pattern, found in nature, in wood, in meat, in metallic things like fine wrought chef's knife, the fiber of everything that exists.   Because, as Einstein tells us, substance is really simply just slowed down waves of energy, so slowed down as to appear to be brought to a solid from, concrete, a standstill, whereas, if we knew better, and could look better down into it, beyond the powers of our intentionally unaided eyes, we would see the vibrations still vibrating, the rainbow in everything, even the rock you might stand on, the tiny rocky parts within slowly dribbling and dancing and ready for the next whatever it is.  Even you.  Like smoke.  He was a man for the vibrating world.  The world of reality that enabled one to fight against the harsh authoritarian regime, the hawkish dogma that itself, of course, fell apart, broken by the very vibrations of reality itself.

All you can hope to do, is be true to that.  Maybe it's in the small underdog Parisian cafe, that's been serving organic and biodynamic small producer wines, along with local organic ingredients.  Maybe it's a local movement.  Preserving old school local cooking, barbecue, street food.  Maybe it's in the politics, how the Turks tried to stamp their authority upon the Armenians by slaughtering them by the family, by the town, by man, woman and child, out in the fields.  He found a home in Berlin nightlife's candor.  He found his people in sushi chefs in old Japan, masters of martial art and stance, of the human being and how that creature is cut out to work, in a stance, so as to be able to move, from one side to the other, efficiently, able, capable of doing many things at once.  

I wonder, I wondered, for awhile, particularly after what happened with Khashogji, who paid for his dissident note against the Saudi crown prince, if a Turkish hit team didn't enter his hotel that fatal night in Alsace...  for the show he rather bravely did, as all his shows were brave, and for the people, and for the energy that runs through the world.  He went to Iraq.  He went to Palestine.  He went to Libya, China, Vietnam, the Congo, where the script can write itself.  He saw things, as they came through his skin.  Hong Kong.  Right?

 He could quote from Orwell's Down and Out in London and Paris.  He had a command of the body of work of Italian cinema, Fellini style, Passolini, etc., as his friend Argento facilitated with her direction, how to get to Napoli, Rome, the real Italy, beyond the post card picturesque.  

The same with the legends of French gastronomy, friendly types anyway, and through his obvious appreciate and respect, through the enlightened attitude he had toward the beauty of what he came across, the poetry, the art of it, the very appropriateness of all elements the chef has brought together, in a professional manner, sure, he got it.  (Perhaps why the airport hamburger of Johnny Rockets or whatever it was depressed him so deeply.)

He coped with the distractions of the road.

A fine machine, such as his, needs to rest sometimes.  I see his depressive moments as times calling him to slow himself down, to return to a gentle womb of reintegration, day dreams, dreams in general, the gift of shutting down the mind to just not think, to not be overwhelmed by all the details, the details we're all supposed to, as adults, keep on top of.  He seemed to do well with Bhutan, the Buddhist nation of a different sort of GNP.

Remember, he was one of the first American males to be able to go public, in a humorous convivial way, about the brain's attraction to the birds of Thailand, the clever illusions of ladyboys, the shemales, dressed and looking very much like females, in a way that brought some acceptance and some laughter, a joking chagrin about how he needed to get back and reassert his American Manhood by drinking beer and cooking out a summer barbecue of burgers and franks and football to turn his mind away from what it had seen and couldn't easily unsee in its own lustful tastiness.  Yet another part of the culture, of the deeper waves of deeper reality that come through all of us.  Responsible for making wine.  Responsible for getting us laid.   Responsible for birth, for life, for death.

He was honest with us.  He regretted out loud for us, being such a spoiled little prick with a bad attitude that he tossed away many opportunities, quit Vassar, didn't apply himself.  Didn't take advantage of the God given good thing set before him, falling into the realm of addictive pleasures and mind alteration.  Yet, scarred, he came back from that.  He was honest.  Hey, we all have this genie within us...  See, it's like he was speaking in our heads, and we were speaking in his, and we all said, "Holy Shit, This is a match!"  This hasn't happened since Vonnegut, or Kerouac, or Hemingway.  (He was a Burroughs fan, far more than a Kerouac prose stylist.  He never relied at all on Hemingway, in my recollection, which might be sort of odd, given Moveable Feast, but then again not.  As a man of his own, he knew there was no overlap, there was no desire to replicate, except if it was something weird that none of us would have gotten without his guidance.  Morocco.  All those expat cats.)

Boston, that was funny.  Staten Island, a classic piece of stylistic autobiography.  A podcast from Bemelman's Bar drinking gin martinis.  

I know at night, given a sort of anti circadian rhythm given to me by thirty plus years being jerked around by the restaurant shifts, day, night, day, night, then later, all at night, the standing on the feet for so long, well, you end up submitting to it, and your whole body and your entire brain say, hey, now, we need rest.  I don't care how efficient it is, such that light is now "creeping up between the shutters and you heard the sparrows in the gutters," and the "sawdust trampled feet that press to early coffee stands," but you're missing all that, sorry, T.S. Eliot and Preludes, you need your rest, and if it can't be real sleep, at least meditate, as in corpse or lotus pose, don't think, just breath.  The night schedule is not good for you.  It's the cycle of migration, as in what the Monarch does, or the whale, I suppose, but a more inward one undermined by logic, but by the spirit, I suppose.  And thus it was for me, so enriching, even if it meant I'd be away to five in the morning, or worse, to be ready and capable and indeed meeting so many wonderful varied and great people from all around the world, when I tended bar in Washington, DC, at the coolest little wine bar you could ever imagine.   A real Jesus Buddha life, now that I look back on it, I mean, if only the impossible were not even more impossible than that.  It the price you have to pay, a different kind of library of experience, more tailored to my own mind's workings.  

And you can't all record that.  You can't have customers come in, and then you tell them, hey, I'm clicking on the record button, because I really value this conversation, and I enjoy you, and I really think you are cool, I mean, way beyond my own poor powers to add or detract.  You can't do that.  You should be able to, on the one hand, and New Yorkers are probably strong enough to not give a shit if you put them on some form of record, but of course it has to be some particular peculiar maybe circumstance, i.e., you, customer, have come alone here, and if you wish to share anything, well, that's totally cool, and by the way "here are tonight's specials.  The soup du jour is a celeriac soup, garnished with duck confit.  In addition to the salmon tartar on the menu, there's an old school Lepic dish, tuna carpaccio, with ginger.  A salad, fresh anchovies with hearts of palm over arugula with a lemon vinaigrette.  Black Cod with leeks a la nage, stuffed leg of guinea hen with red cabbage and wild rice and balsamic port reduction, and a braised beef Paleron, with sweet potato puree and asparagus."  Something like that, the ballgame of every day.  Gehrig's the first baseman, batting third.

There will never be another, of course, goes without say, Anthony Bourdain.  All of us people, restaurant or not, have to nod at that statement, and think inwardly, prompted, by themselves.  He did a lot.  Man, he did a lot.  He was a gift to me, and my own understanding of the world.  And rather than be selfish, oh, yes, I think there's something of that soul to be emulated.  Not copied.  Just bowed to.  Whatever. 

There's a Quequeg in every bar, a Melville too, maybe.  There's people just cavorting and having fun, and that's the way you live life.  

And then there is the Bourdain level.

We go out for the usual errands, me, alone, trying to keep mom entertained.  We go out by Rice Creek and Fallbrook, but it's too hot for any kind of a walk with her, and the pollen has got me anyway, even with a mask.  Then eastward, not bothering to go as far as the lake, into town, for a stop at the health food store, Green Planet Grocery.  Detox tea, aduki beans, some parsley, bone broth.  Anything to help allergies?  Okay, sure, throw that in too.

Swing by the Big M.  And then, let's check out the farmer's market, Thursday afternoons.  I'm just going to a get a few tomatoes, from the Amish, down by Auburn.  Throw in some plums, a zucchini, sure.  Back at the car, mom, would you like a sausage sandwich?  We get one and one shaved steak, no cheese, green peppers and onions.

We sit in a park bench, and I take my N95 mask off, and we eat everything, bun included.  As garbage can bees buzz at our sandwich rolls held carefully anyway in a sheet of wax paper, which is not enough to hold everything, the meats, the onions, the peppers together without spilling.  The aromas are fantastic.

I get mom back, it's still hot out, but she's on top of me in the kitchen, wanting to share how's she's putting away and organizing the additional fruits and vegetables I get goaded into purchasing from the humble famers.  She pushed for the haricot verts, goading me for "always saying no," but now she says its was my choice.  Okay.

Then she's trying to coax the cat back inside.  Mom, I just let him out.  He's been sleeping inside all day.  Minor tantrum, about the cat, pleading me that he doesn't know where he is.

I can't take it anymore, I sneak out the backdoor.  There's live music in town, under the big umbrella thing along the river by the war memorial and underneath the shadow of Saint Luke's apartment building for the elderly, , and you can bring open container, a cooler, a cider in if you want.  The music isn't quite as advertised.  Do a little dance, make a little love, get down tonight.  By the railing along the river I talk to a guy from Hawaii originally, who's smoking a cigarette.  Just lost his wife, eight months ago.  Yes, he pulls fish out of the river, big ones, soaks them coconut milk overnight to get rid of the poisons, the mercury, the metals.  His son is the baker, or maybe, as I remember, the head cook, at Canale's.   Maybe he's the chef.  Mom calls.  What about the people coming over for dinner...  

Over the facebook, my friend Mike is playing guitar, down at Gibby's.  So I end up going down there, drinking ciders.  I hope he'll let me up on stage, and he makes a brief offer, so he can take a break, but I don't jump on it, and then he gets carried away and forgets.  Later, his ex wife joins him, and I keep going back in to get another cider, and forget about wearing my mask.  It's still warm out, my glasses fogging up if I do.  

So I'm there, late.  Always the gentleman I help Mike pack up.  A woman comes by, and he's glad for the help to get him along packed up in his car and out of there.

I get back too late to give mom, sound asleep, her pill, and I eat some meatballs and chunks of sausage, cold out of the pot.  Off to bed.

And then the next day,  I get up to give mom her pills, but that's all that's happening today.  I go back down and fall asleep again.  Dream of having some fantastic photographic place, far away, like Siberia, and I'm lining up shots by a stream and the grasses at dusk, greys and browns and earthy colors, and across the stream, I see mom climb up the bank, and then she falls, back down, over the rocks, not quite into the stream.   I run and check on her, and of course, that's it.

So I chose, over family, drinking, and hanging out with interesting people, as if I had no family, as if I rejected all they had given me, and so I deserve to be where I am, having given myself no goal, but to drink and be creative, and hang out with people, and never did I bother or take the time and effort to focus, to develop a skill.  Beyond the half-assed ones...

Caretaking you demented 82 year old feeble hard of hearing domineering strong willed mother:  every day you just try to survive, you try to keep your sanity.  That statement alone tells you that it's not really working.

The days skip ahead, as if on their own, each one of them full of a peculiar blinding pain.  Too heavy the mind at the end of them to recount.  A Friday evening dinner at The Press Box, mom turning away from me when I look into my phone, a text from my oldest best DC friend, who is busy, and who's wife has taken an issue with, so I don't get a clear chance to talk to him, all of which is far too tedious to repeat to mom, to repeat myself, again.  "I'll just walk out now."  I gesture with my hand, open palm, go right ahead.  So it's getting to be a scene even every time we go the old easy place.  Not wanting to drink, I immediately order us both wine as we get sat.  I order the fried fish, mom gets a chicken fajita, so I can make a sort of fish taco without the tortillas.  

I'm so tired of her by the time we're done I was just going to drive straight home, but I take her by the park by the lake, and there's a small polite musical group playing gentle songs on a platform overlooking the marina.  More time I don't want to be outside, with the ragweed pollen, and I'm tired of walking alongside her, but I deal with it.  We walk down and find a bench, easily enough.  I've come to just not walk with her best I can, without her falling over, it's just to irritating.  I'm trying to stop listening to her.  We look down from the park bench on the trio, seeing their backs.  "Are you ready for a thing called love," the lady, singing, sings, sounding pretty much like the real thing.  The guitar player, playing a Taylor, is very organized and crisp.  They do a Squeeze song, "tempted by the fruit of another," with the other guy adding conga drums, and it works.  Crisp.  A lot of acts were rained out down to the south in Syracuse, the vocalist tells the crowd.  Thank you, Oswego.  I can't remember now, the first song they were playing when we came, but I could hear they were good, even as exasperated as I am.

About a half an hour after we get in, I start feeling heavy, and I'm down in the basement hiding anyway in corpse pose anyway.  Then I wake up, putter around for a while.  I got her her around 10, after I'd woken up from my nap.   

I'm up late, I get up late.  But I rally, take mom down to the old fort, Fort Ontario, where they have a reenactment of the British abandonment, along with other activities.  Every time she sees a British soldier, she says, "the British are coming, the British are coming."  We get through the musket firing, with a loud pleasantly surprising bang, and smoke, then some other wanderings, and finally back through the tunnel and outside the old stone walls onto the golden light and green grass and white canvas tents set up under the big trees by the old light keeper's stone cabin.

I propose getting some cooked sausage pepper and onion sandwiches from Garofola's Importing Co., since we're on the east side of town, but she says, no, shaking her head, let's go out to lunch, somewhere cheap.  But there's no other option than where we went last night, and when I say that, she turns to me and screams, "you're trying to destroy me," in such an aggressive way that I can see her teeth.  Geez, I say.  Okay.  Vitriolic.  "Why don't you just kill me!!"  After all that effort, getting her in and out.

And over our table, after several, "have we ordered yet," yes, mom, we ordered, she says, look, if you're so unhappy, get rid of me, go.  And she throws in a hint of "there's the door," just for extra.  Several choruses of "you hate me, you hate me."  Mom, that doesn't make this any easier, that doesn't help matters.

And I see it.  She has to be on top of every single thing, wants to be, demands on knowing.  

"Look, mom.  I don't really have a job right now.  I need to find a career."  But you have a job, she replies. Mom, what did I do for work, for the last thirty years.  Blank.  Where did I work?  Blank.  Restaurant? she comes up with finally.    "I worked in the restaurant.  My mother made me when I was young."  (Mom, were you even a waitress?  I doubt it.  Maybe you worked the ice cream counter at Howard Johnson's, not that that was easy, but...

"You don't realize, everybody likes you, everybody respects you.  No one says a bad word about you," she says.   Yeah, mom, but what good does that really do me now...

She can sense, by the time the waitress server comes by--she tended bar last night--to check on us, I ask her for a to-go box for mom's salad, and maybe a little lid for the salad dressing, and I surrender my plate without really wanting to, as far as the laws of good service go, but hey, this is a sports bar, about free hands on a Saturday night, mom can sense how utterly tired I am of her, how the last few minutes of this is getting hard to bear for me, given my own psyche, my own personal circumstances, things she can make little effort to understand or empathize with beyond what it might mean directly for her, and a new wave of anger comes up.  "We used to have fun.  We could have had fun at this nice place, but it's ruined."  Mom, I was just letting you know that I have a box for what you don't want to finish.  She's already been telling me how full she is, "I'm stuffed."  But for me to press her, even to suggest the asking of "are you finished with that?" offends her.

The clouds of her anger clear for a moment, as I don't react, just suck it up within, good god, what a disaster this is all turning about to be, and I deflect by getting the hell out of there from the table, to go the use the rest room, a quick pee, wash my hands again, look in the mirror at my wild hair, oh, boy, at least I'm authentic in this.  But I cannot wipe the guilty feeling away of how we might be making it unpleasant for other customers, no matter how polite we might be to the service, for our raised voice and the bitterness.  I come back to the table.  "I have a little bit of wine left."  Yes, mom, take your time.  But it's probably fairly obvious even to the blind that I'm dying, miserable, just please, can't this end, get her home, no, no grocery shopping, no wine shop, just get her off my hands, drop her off, maybe use the bathroom, but get away, get away, get away while you still can.

She still has plenty of drama and arguments and points to make, I can tell.  It's my fault, for one, she can say, for being depressed, sick of dealing with her, sick of looking at her, sick of being near her physical presence.  There's a seed of that I must admit, unfortunately goes back a long way, me, the younger son being the only one get close enough out of some pity, so he thought, to calm her.  

I get her to the car.  First out the door, a thank you quick goodbye to Marisa, the owner's daughter, to tell her I like the area down below on street level for Covid dining having been turned into a sort of gaming area, bean bag toss, stackable wood you then try to pull out fingers of wood where you can until it topples over on the loser of the game.  "Yes, an outdoor drinking area," she says.  Cool.  Makes sense.  I get mom through the dining crowd, and she insists on talking to whatever children might be hear her, and I move on ahead, please, please, please, just come, and finally she's at the ramp, nice and slow.  Yes, mom I know you like the ramp.  It gets very slippery in the wintertime, yes.   She wants to stop now and hang onto someone's car.  

I'm a gentleman enough to not make a show of going straight home, pull the car up, open the door, still her where to go and drive off.  We go by the lake.  It's all new to her.  The students used to fill that park up, she says, which makes little sense.  Okay, mom.  Focus, focus, don't get us into an accident, easy at intersections, don't listen to her, just take it slow and easy.

I feel my own anger, and all the emotions I could have used in a healthy way, imploding my being into an angry bitter core, almost.  

This is why I've staked a fair amount of my energies on cooking, to have an agreeable meal ready to go.  

I've got shaved rib eye steak, ground beef 85/15, ground turkey, kale, spinach, parsley, I've got aduki beans in cans, tomato sauce, diced tomato, tomato paste in cans, soup in cans, stock and bone broth in cartons...  onions ready to go, fresh mozzarella, plastic sealed cold cuts good for a month, a carton of eggs, almond butter, cans of tuna, fruit, citrus, dried white Turkish figs, dried prunes.  I'd like to get some liverwurst, but reading the package leaves me cold every time.

When I wake up, I find the open cans of cat food left out on the counter, sometimes covered with the evil little sharp lid, sometimes just left open to the air.  I tend to save them, put a peanut butter jar lid over them, put them in the fridge.  And I often say to myself, "you stupid bitch, stupid fucking bitch," when I see them, have to put them away, and then later wash six of the little monkey dish dishes for the cat.   

And it's all my fault, I didn't push on ahead, couldn't make one simple stupid good decision, to do one thing or another, couldn't even take the GREs, my head clouded by "things."

 

Sunday, same thing.  I get up late, anxious with a hangover from the bottle and a glass of the Beaujolais, not eating enough, a hot dog, and then later as I prepare for the next day by chopping onions and green and red peppers half a can of adzuki beans.  I feel like hell when I wake at noon.  I forgot to shower, as I should have at some point last night after being outside for so long.

I want to get us there, but am unable, with the massive headache, to get up before 2:30, and I know we will both need to eat something, so I whip up the shaved rib eye onion pepper treatment, throwing on sliced provolone as the meat finishes in the iron pan.  We get out the door as soon as we can, no shower, but it is obvious by the time we are walking up to the gray cut stone ramparts that the party is over.  They're packing up the simple white canvas tents, and the men who were dressed in their period gear have changed, ready to drive away.  

The day is saved when we run into the nice young man who just handed in his Masters in Literacy Education over at the college, who's gone from volunteer status here at the fort to being an employee.  He tells us about the women who came along, as settlers, who tended to the soldiers here, cooked meals for a modest price.   We spoke with him back in May, during the anniversary of the battle associated with the War of 1812.  History is a special thing.

Later, we smile at a Japanese couple with a baby.  We saw them at the bookstore.  I was up on the grassy heights of the fort, then down into the chambers where the cannon and guns would be pointed out the casement windows, finding her where I left her, and she berates me for not being faster on my toes, going over to talk to them.  "You're always so morose."  We drive over to look at the lake, and the couple is walking out to go sit on a bench, and so I make awkward amends by dragging her over there to meet them.  I mention I watch NHK, Japanese public television, and they chuckle, and brighten.  We chat a bit and then mom and I go sit at the next bench, until mom tells me her intestines are roiled, so we get up and slowly walk back past them. 

Later as we drive away, she remarks that it I sad to meet people who you will probably never run into again.  He's a doctor in the first year of his residency down in Syracuse, interning in family medicine.

I get mom home.  I get dinner going, again with the peppers and the onions, now working up a turkey American chop suey and we call mom's friend Sharon after I get out of the shower.

Dinner goes okay until it doesn't.  But by that time I'm finished anyway, and the dishes that are can be easily rinsed off and then done later.  I don't even remember now if it was one of those "you're always putting me down" sort of things, and anyway, I hit the ejector seat button and promptly went down the cellar stairs closing the door behind me, and falling into another two hour heavy pollen hits immune system sleep.  

I'm up later, and I remember how I ended up not feeling so bad about missing the events earlier today, the reenactments at the fort on the high ground over looking the lake.  It seems better to me that it's just as good to commune with the spirits, to look at things as they might have seen them, the vibrations put into places where people were once upon a time.

I've got my laptop out running The Chosen, the life of Jesus in episodes along with those who came into contact with him. And sure enough I hear mom upstairs, stirring, the bathroom, and then down she comes. She sits at the table, as if expecting something, and with her heavy thick legs and short stature and her matted hair, reminding me of a troll-like figure.  "Are you hungry, mom."  Yes.  Okay.  I'd turned on the oven anyway to 425, expecting her anyway, so I get the Paul Newman cauliflower thin crust pizza out of the freezer, rip off the frosted wrapping with a frustrated tearing motion, get it out of the plastic, and I add some thinly sliced red onion and some thin slices of the little red peppers from the Amish at the farmer's market, tear some sliced fresh mozzarella, some tired fresh basil, a slice of salami I've cut up into strips and then halved, and then into the oven.  But it's a long twelve minutes and mom, her chair at some distance from the table peers at the screen, where Jesus and Nicodemus meet privately at night.  You're not going to get it, mom.  She too is a scholar, and thus has difficulty believing in anything, just like Jesus is saying.  It irritates me, her sitting here, as if there were an evil spirit in the room, a stubborn one, somehow very self-centered, offering nothing.  I get a creepy feeling, I don't know why.  Is it a dimness scholars and intellectuals have when they lose their marbles, and have nothing of faith that they've cultivated in their precise skeptical practice of a body of knowledge.  Not fair, I know.  She enjoyed the bookstore at the fort, like a kid does.  And after using the rest room--I had to stop her from going into the men's room--she went back and asked the volunteer, a large barrel of a man with large arms and one tattoo on his upper arm, a former member of the military I would guess, easy going, she asks about how to become a supporting member.  We've just spent $60 for two books, one being nautical paintings of the War of 1812, and the other a maritime history of the locality.

I come over to the laptop as the timer ticks away.  I switch the YouTube by typing in Fort Ontario and something pops up, a tour.  It starts rolling.  "Who's that?" asks mom about the narrator.  "I don't know mom.  But do you recognize where we are?"  She doesn't seem to get it.  Okay.  Why bother.  She leans forward to look.  Okay.  Next up is a collection of the haunted places of Oswego, and it's a mistake to having opened it, and I cut it off soon after it gets through number 2, the fort's hauntings.

Well, I'm waiting.  I thought you said you had some food coming.  That was an hour ago.

Okay, mom.  If I can just keep my mouth shut, It'll be okay.  She'll go back up to bed.

The phone goes off, and I peer into the oven, not having cooked one of these before, and it looks about right, so I get a wooden spoon and nudge it onto the large bamboo cutting board, then over on a counter where I just fed the cat from, and it's easy to slice it with the chef's knife into halves and then quarters.  

Mmm, this is good, she says.  And I have a piece too, and yes, it's addictive.

She finishes her slice.  I feel I'm taking more than I should.  No, mom, that's for you.

Do you want to rinse with mouthwash before going to bed, Mom?  No, I'm going to bed.