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.