Drivel.  As in, what stupid drivel to fill up the page today.

Feeling better.  No walks outside, yesterday.  Kept the windows of the car up when I took mom out for her drive.  No yoga, at least outdoors, which has its downsides.  The trip, taking mom to Lee, has been thankfully postponed, after the groundwork for it was laid, negotiations, the finding of the cat sitter.

The stands of ragweed, the chenopods, are a bumper crop of nature and along all the roadsides everywhere, taller than I've ever seen them.  New forests of a new geological age, a vengeance against our digging up the carbon of ancient swamp litter.    The pollen is just a taste now, and it's virulent to me, and there's going to be a lot of it, for a long time.

Stancy, a real angel, comes to visit.  Mom's former department secretary and friend and sitter of cats previous, I hesitate to bug her.  I sent her a text last week, about how we might need a cat sitter, might she know of anyone.  Don't want to impose.  I get a text back from her.  She'd be happy to drop by.  She's back working part-time at her old role.  She could swing by easily.  "How about I come by in a few minutes," the text I get.  Shock.  "Sure, that would be fantastic."  I tell mom, who's anxious about any sort of thing.  Mom, Stancy is coming by, check if she has the right key.

Another person coming to help, just like that, I could almost weep.  

I kept myself, at four in the morning, to two glasses of wine.  Waking up wasn't perfectly smooth, but the anxieties of anticipation of the day and what it might bring, the big decision of when to take mom out on the road, abated with a little bit of effort.  It's hard to communicate your wants, needs and desires to people when such are not quite clear, even to you.  At this point a good portion of anything comes with misery.  Pick a flavor.  "We might be going out of town this weekend," doesn't have the decisiveness that lets other people process their own responsibilities into the equation.  

But nice people, you don't have to feel so bad about yourself, at least in a friendly town, where it matters more to connect with old friends.  Sure, I'm happy to come and check on the cat.   But I'm not going to let him out when you are gone, I would feel terrible if anything happened to him.

Okay, cool.  Sigh of relief.  And I learn that dry food is good for a cat's teeth, keeps them clean.  (The last vet we saw made mention of our boy's teeth.). 

Mom is curt with me after our angel of the cat sitting and feeding departs.  I took over the conversation, she tells me.  

I stopped counting how many times mom asked Stancy, "so how is Pam doing?"  Mom, Pam is retired.  

But I notice, I feel a measure less anxious today, now that I've got the ball rolling.  Less fearful.  Less of a pile on me, the immediate need to pack for a four day trip tomorrow.  

This gets ironed out when I call my aunt, to tell her we're figuring things out here on our end.  I was under the impression that for her part this would be the good weekend, but, since they have things going on, tired from taking friend to hospital, the need for a pain shot in the shoulder, the weather too, better to postpone it a week.  Aunt keeps a calendar. 

Mom comes to the back door and stares at me as I pace, talking on the phone.  Yes, mom, the soup is on the stove, I'll be in shortly for lunch.  

And somehow I find myself being on top of things, a capable person dealing with the variables of a visit. 

The things I lost when I became a drinker…

Stancy tells us a story, mom asking her about her health, as I come back from the kitchen with a glass of soda water with lime for our guest.  “I was sitting at my desk one day, and a voice said, call for a mammogram appointment.  I heard a voice.”  The good angel of Oswego visiting with us.

But afterwards I fall into a hard dreaming nap, dreaming of driving on roads through the flat farmland back up from the south to the old home.  Straight roads, good for speed, but need for slow caution, coming right along side the large livestock.

It’s the allergies again, and I was barely outside today.

Yes, now I remember.  Nicole, my friend from Monday and Wednesday...  Meals on Wheels.  I hear her knock on the door as my day starts in the usual paranoia here. I was about to hide on the cellar stairs, hearing mom upstairs, but here she is, and then there’s a problem with the storm screen door, the lower pane coming out of its hinges.  The mower team has come, and as she hands me the package, two meals on cardboard trays, and we chat over the sound of the weedwhacker, the industrial leaf blower and the gang mower noise.  She’s taking her son on a trip to Lexington, Massachusetts and beyond, maybe the Maine Coast.  She sounds pretty busy, her husband’s father in and out of the hospital, dementia cases… I ask her about the burden of her volunteer job.  No, no, she enjoys it.  Gets to talk to people.  Loves it.

And she takes the time, as I walk her back to her heavy four door pickup truck, with all the noise and the grass clippings and the blower, to tell me, “and the drinking, doesn’t do you any good…. I used to drink,” she tells me.  Yeah, I admit.  You see me in the mornings sometimes… She does.  

There was a time, in the winter, she's cute, I just wanted to lay my eyes on a woman, and she is one.  A beauty of Southern Italy, or Sicily, crossroads, some Africa in her, Northern, maybe.  She prefers the cold to the heat.  

And then we have to go our separate ways.  Part of me regrets having to end the conversation, my nerves acting up with all the noise and the trip preparation looming… She was sketching the people she meets on her route, some encouraging her to go the their church, and she takes it all in.

Mom is in the kitchen when I come in.  Busted.  Fuck.  I go over the lemon and ginger water I made the night before.  "Where the animals," she asks.  He's sleeping on the couch, mom.  (It's always, "the animals."  It's really just one cat.)  Anything I can get you?  I get her a slice of turkey, sliced provolone.  She asks for a couple of Saltines.  

By the time I awake at six in the afternoon from the troubled afternoon nap, mom has expectations of dinner.  I've worn out the ground turkey leftovers.  The meatball sausage ragu ended up vulcanized by the misbehaving electric burner, overheating at low, why is another mystery.  I got nothing.  Okay, see if she'll go for Chinese.  Press Box?

Press Box is closed.  Darn.  The safe option is shot.  Now I'll have to negotiate with her.  Ugh.  Where do you want to go?  Where do You want to go, she asks me back.  Shoot me.  Canale's?  The Mexican place? All I wanted was a burger.  

We end up at Alex's On the Water, in the big hotel along the river upstream from the port.  They have a lobster entree.  Seasonal restaurant.  Service is a bunch of kids.  The manager picks up the glassware from a vacated table with her fingers inside the glass rims.   I can figure out what mom wants for a drink, easily enough.  "Do you have any fun?  You need to have some fun..."  I look back at her.  Right.  Okay, fine, I'll try a glass of $6 Finger Lakes red, just out of former professional curiosity.  Finally the drinks come.  I don't blame anyone in this situation, just the way it is.  Wine's been open too long.  Or maybe that's just the way they made it;  could be.  I pour it over the ice cubes left when I drain my water glass.  There's music playing outside, country pop.  Too loud for mom.  And I don't want to sit outside with the Chenopod pollen killing me, bad enough there's a wide open doorway for the servers and runners to come through.  

And the taste of that one lousy glass of wine perturbs the surface of my being enough to leave me little option, once we get home, with mom babbling on about how fresh the night air is, as she’s been into the wine, for me to, after hiding in the basement for a while to go and open the bottle, telling myself, I’ll just have a glass, maybe two, just to get rid of the yucky feeling, and then I get the guitar out, and there I go, telling myself I need to rehearse the next open mic night.  And of course I open the full bottle, after drinking the half of one…  the pattern of my lone cut-off life at mom’s.

Wake up the next day with the feeling internalized, with a desperation to escape it, and all my related sins…  anxiety, sensing the need for a great detox.  Wanting to hide from mom.  

She wants her ride.  Okay, I’ll take you for a ride, if you take a shower.  And I press her on it.  Anyway.  After she takes her shower, she’s wearing the same violet polo long sleeve… Who cares! she says.  Mom, it’s dirty, look.

We go for our ride.  I almost feel like my nerves are too hyped for traffic.  A guilty mission to get to the music store to replace the guitar strap before they close up shop at four.  It’s rush hour.  Groceries at Bosco's & Geer, but they don’t have any rotisserie and the deli turkey is the same brand as Big M.

But I don’t feel like cooking, and even though I realize I’ll get into the wine if we do go to the open mic, I need to do something with mom to keep her entertained… so…  I sheepishly pack up the guitar, don’t even want to, the new strap doesn’t fit over the knob well at all, but we go.

We drive over there, to Curtis Manor, the big barn…  I get mom in, a glass of wine for her, a bottle of Finger Lakes Cabernet Franc for me.  You left me sitting alone, mom says, as I come back to the table.

Our chicken tenders and hamburger dinner arrives, onion rings, and then my phone is ringing.  Simon.  our old friend Joan is dying…

I take the phone outside so I can hear what he’s saying. It won’t be long, but the timeline isn’t clear.  Her heart is pumping out at twenty percent, not enough to sustain the vital organs.  Ultimately it will be uremic poisoning, when the kidneys fail.

I go back to the table, tears in my eyes.  I explain, over the music.  Yes, here we are having our lark…  Simon has told me to call, late morning tomorrow.  With hope we can pay them a visit next week.

We finish our meal, get a to go box.

She is in her final hours, Simon tells us.  I sit with mom at the table in the kitchen, the phone on speaker.

I no longer want to relate to people in the way I have done all these years… or that’s what my horoscope is saying.

Simon is a man.  He played his role.  He controlled the finances.  He was frugal.  

I look at my mom.  Where has all her “feminist” line led us, but serve as an excuse for her tirades, her stubbornness, her volatility, her loudness…  where had it all led me, but to be abused, beaten, walking on eggshells.

Simon doesn’t drink.  Faces things head on.  Joan was a woman.

I'm left without goals.  Having stood for none.  I'm like Colonel Chabert in a French novel, Balzac.

I come up the cellar stairs, hearing her in distress.  Hello, hello.

Every now and again, one has the sense of the amount of suffering in the life of Jesus.  We all know He realizes the fate hanging over Him.  Then add to that, any number of things, Lazarus, the pain of encountering in an up close and personal way, the leper, the crippled, the sick…

He put away all the lost years talents.  They weren’t serving him as well, a distraction from his main talents…. Why go to open mic night and fuss with guitar, if it's not in the purpose of something greater.

No last phone call with Joan.  I got distracted, mom on my back every day...  "What are we doing for fun today..."  Me trying not to shout at her.

I rise up the cellar stairs finally, greeted by mom shouting "hello, hello, is that the Boston Strangler, please help, I haven’t had anyone to talk to all day, please come talk to me…"

I put cold chicken tenders into the toaster oven to reheat.  And my aunt is calling.  She asks, how are you doing, you sound a bit down.  So I tell her how, what unfolded, the finality of death.

Meanwhile mom is getting louder, "alright, I've had it, I’m just going to kill myself…"

The call cheers me up, as I am prone to being down in myself and here I am hungover again.  My aunt reminds me of what I'm going through, of how little time I have to play with here, the heroic quality of care taking that only people who do it will understand.

I put a modest lunch on the table.

Sheepishly, now what…

Okay, she wants a ride.  A half-hearted trip for groceries at Big M.  The pretty check out young woman, pale, dark hair, who is studying physics isn't there.  She has a nice aura, a presence you don't find in the cities, somehow.  She was doing an internship studying crystalline structure on-line, Nebraska.  

We end up at Canale’s.  

It’s hard not to be an amateur in all this, bobbing in the sea with her madness.  If I don’t exercise control of course it all gets out of control.  She orders a second glass.  I have a third. The nice guy, obviously a professional is a Canale, and indeed, he worked in restaurants eight years out in Las Vegas.  You can tell.  Incredibly kind.  He shows us pictures of his four boxers and a smaller dog rescued from the pound.

But everything, maybe especially dinner, is a battle of political will.  My energy to cook or not.  You have to admit this is a strange day, the day after mom's longest closest friend passing away.  I forgot I shouldn't mention it directly, pulling out of the Big M parking lot onto First in front of the new Dunkin Donuts this side of the old railroad bridge over the river.   But it slipped out.  I mentioned something and then she pressed me on it.

Dinner, she gets a veggie pizza, I get the veal parm.  

It all goes south, accusatory, by the time we get to the car.  I forget why.  

You hate me, you hate me...

 In the hard car ride home:  You ruined your own life.  I had nothing to do wit that.  You’ll come to a bad end, she says, barely acknowledging my humanity here.  Maybe I was telling her about how her supposed Feminism, her fear of her father, an aggressive hatred of his ways, ruined my life, as she abandoned any attempt to follow God's plan of femininity...  being a little harsh.  "I cooked for twenty years," she says, proud that she doesn't cook anymore, too important to do the dishes even, or lift a finger to organize anything but in her own messy way, newspapers, books.  Forget folding laundry, organizing anything in her bedroom, anything, leaving everything, dirty plates, a steak knife smeared with almond butter, open cans of cat food there out on the counter.  

"Bad Claire, bad Claire," she says, pounding on herself, over something I said about her.  I slap her lightly on the head.  Stop it!

I'll call the Police! she yells.  

Getting her to the front door, damn, I left the front door key in the car, so the quickest thing is to go round and open the kitchen door and come through.  I open the door and she's yelling, her pants down, squatting to pee.  I need to pee, you bastard.  I grasp her by her armpits and get her inside.  She's shouting Help, help, and I cup my hand over her mouth.

Last time she gets a second glass of wine.

Don’t expect sympathy.  Don’t expect gratitude.  This is all regarded as all your own fault anyway.

And if I hadn't spent as much energy on her, and pressed her, maybe she would have found a boyfriend, a man in her life.  But it didn't happen.

After a defeated nap, anticipating nothing of much good happening, my heart pounding, I rise and take a slice of the veggie pizza, so good, so tasty, why is it that dough puts a belly on me instantly, and decide I need to get out of the house, even with the ragweed forest releasing its pollen, down to the little pub where I meet musicians sometimes.  But inside the music is blaring, and outside is just dead, so, I should have just left, but I have one cider, and then another.  What am I doing there anyway.  A woman from the wine shop over at the Five Points by the university recognizes me and comes up and gives me a gentle high five, though it's too loud to talk with the juke box playing songs the girls are dancing to, happy with their own considerable attractiveness and good looks, songs I've never heard, and I'm in a completely perfect gloom, as the women of Brazil and the United States play for the gold on the flat screen TVs.  I've flirted with her a bit, I mean, just of out the discovery of our mutual small town kindness.  I've become friends with her husband, a talented guitar player.    But I have nothing tonight.  And the death hasn't been confirmed, and nor is there any mention of any funeral plants, and we're supposed to go down and visit with my aunt near there anyway, toward the end of the week, another week speeding by without getting anything done, without making any choices, just stuck, the brunt of it all, and with, making it more maddening, nothing to fall back on.  

When I get home, after taking a shower, I go back down to the basement, and the acid catches up with me, and I vomit into a plastic trash can, burning my throat, making my teeth feel funny.

I'm doing the dishes from earlier in the day when I hear her stir.  I go up and get her to take her pill, and she remembers nothing of the craziness from earlier.

I light a stick of incense, after the tea is made and put away in the fridge.  Disconcerting, to hear it from your own mother.  It spooks you.  "Bad things coming your way," from your own mom.  And you're the only one helping her, and got sucked into it years ago.  

And she's right, perfectly, from a societal point of view.  I'm not doing a god damn thing, not getting my ass off the ground, to help fellow humanity and serve, nothing.  I'm not planting orchards of plum trees, I'm not working, I don't have a job anymore, I don't have a direction, I'm not toiling in a Testament Vineyard, I can't get anything together, not even anything.  Lie down with dogs, you'll get fleas.  Don't even know where to fit in anymore, where to even start, with age sixty looming over me, soon enough, at which point, forget looking for a job, you're toast, buddy.

Floating, tossed around the waves, things beyond basic control.  The only decision I seem to be able to make is whether to go for a walk, or do yoga, if I have the time without her pressing me, or something fallen further into neglect.

I get up and face it, the Sunday after Friday's news.  I'll just chip away at it, I say to myself, as she sits and eats the piece of last night's pizza pie.  I've got the kettle on for lemon water.  "Oh, your tea," she says, with a light scoff to it.  Why don't you come sit at the table... What's new?  Anything new?  Are we going somewhere interesting today?  It's cold in here.  I get her dark little jacket.  This used to be my fancy jacket.  But no one ever takes me anywhere nice. 

Mom, I took you to Canale's last night. 

All my classmates are dying.

Are you going to take me for a ride later?

Mom, I've got some work to do.  I can't just drive the Queen of Sheba around all day.

What's this pill? Mom, it's good for you.  It helps with your memory.  I don't know what you're trying to do to me...  MOM!  Please!  Take your pills!

Do you have any siblings?  

Yes, mom.  I show her the picture, off a printer, from my brother's wedding, a man who knows what he wants. 

"I'm just going to sit here and rot," I hear her say, after I feed her, get her the pills, get her to brush her teeth.  She gets up and stands in the bathroom, frustrated by something, as she comes in from the living room.  I'd hoped she was taking a nap, with Freakonomics from NPR softly in the background, as the Mary Walker, the local doctor heroine from the 19th Century book sits in her lap.  The cat is sprawled across the couch.  

She goes out the back door and slams the door on me.  

What are we going to do today...  

The easiest thing is to go get the Sunday New York Times at the Stewart Shop, an ice cream.  Then drive west, just to keep her quiet.  Look there, mom, that's all the ragweed.  The Nature Center.  We walk to the lake overlook from the high eroding bluff.  Then up to the old farmhouse with the taxidermy in it, and I'd like to get a new hat.  Mom uses the port o potty, I get her sat under the pavilion, go inside the building, but they're only taking cash today, so no fresh hat for me.

An hour later, we're home, and I'm feeling tired, on top of being down, and then, yes, it kicks in, the reaction to all the pollen I've sucked in keeping mom entertained.

And she remembers nothing of the slamming of doors, the calling of attention to herself, the misery she causes to herself, doesn't remember her bitter self talk, "I guess we're just going to sit here and rot..."  I didn't say that.  I didn't slam any doors.  I didn't stand at the bathroom door staring at you as you tried to write in some form of concentration there after you fed us, making noises, sighing, burping.

And I will inherit all this from her.  

They, who could deal with her, and be entertaining, of course, equipped to deal with her, they are not here, but far away.

And in the Western World, if you come without any plan, no goal, come at it as a vague sort of Buddhist Christian, it's interesting, and sad, to see the way things go down.