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.