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.