Christmas Eve.  

I went over to the Throop's house the eve of Christmas Eve, and fortunately, almost psychically I brought along my guitar. 

A welcome break.  I lead them into Like a Rolling Stone...  it's a good jam.

I remember how my father would handle it, her expositions, her rants, her tirades, her takeover of our peace and happiness, taking us back to the picture of her childhood seen through her childhood mind, now acted out upon us.  I felt so sorry, so sympathetic, when he'd take to the bedroom in the afternoon, to lay on his back and close his eyes, and just let it rest, let it pass away.

And now I find myself doing the very same thing, feeling an exhaustion, even from just spending two hours with her.

That's how I grew up.  Expecting all of that, as normal.

And so when I met a girl in college, who pursued her New York City scorched earth policy against my sensitive benevolence, putting her fireworks and unpredictability, virtual schizophrenic duplicitousness then blaming me, and then when she'd done that marvelously, then she softens... but by then I have enough self awareness and self respect to know that she's evil, no good for me, so I avoid her, to what I would later see as a chance, one that I missed.  Great.

So the whole thing is bogus.

hard for me to be a man anyway, when the burden of mom living off on her own came down squarely on me just as I was going through my senior year at college...  blah blah blah.

Mom's crying out on Route 5, because her car has broken down.  No body else going to help her.

Unwrapping presents, or, rather, cutting open the heavy paper sealing tape on the Amazon Prime boxes, giving gifts, rather, Mom opens her first one, struggling to open first the box, and then the gift bag within.  Over on the couch, I cringe, trying to write off an email to my little yoga group, and I cannot form sentences in my mind as mom continues with her circular rambling talk.  The first gift, or maybe the second, after the body lotion from her grandkids, Kiehl's, is the new book in hardcover, the latest biography on Sylvia Plath.  I might have grumbled my exasperation, and then after enjoying the book and reading off the picture captions, oh, we need to go to Cape Cod, I haven't ever been to Cape Cod..., suddenly her face drops.  Earlier she'd asked me, "did she kill herself," well, yes, mom, it was a cold winter and she was alone with the kids and with the gas ovens back in those days, you could do that, so it was sort of a fluke as much as anything...  But now she's turning on me.  You gave me this book, you want me to commit suicide, she suddenly shouts at.  Mom, I didn't get you that book.  Chris did.  She's a writer, she was married to Ted Hughes, you know, so you can round out your history of him...

Brother calls with family.  That goes well.  Everyone is Covid shy these days.  Everyone has a story, too.

Another Amazon box, and this time it's the biography of Ted Hughes.  I shrug.  Sorry about the theme.  Writers are miserable people in general.  It's like a possession.

(Later she's mumbling on to herself over his pictures like she's talking to him.  Stay out of trouble.  Handsome...)

She calms down later.  We have some chip dip, onion, with small curd cottage and cream cheese, Nana's recipe.  Potato chips. 

I go out for a walk.  Not far, just to get out of the house and let my back straighten and my shoulders going up for a change. 

As far as I see it, the roast, a huge one, sure to give us plenty of leftovers, needs to sit out to come to an even temperature, and I don't feel a lot of happy energy to get the roast going.  I'm just putting it in over the onions I've sliced into the big Lodge iron pan.  Mom comes into the kitchen, looking concerned.  Is dinner ready.   No, I'm sorry mom, I'm not very organized today...  I'm sorry.

I end up making her some soup to calm her, and she goes back into the living room.

She comes back and stares at me...  No, not yet.  How much longer...  Oh, half an hour anyway, then I have to let it rest.

I get her some, and then she's talking to herself in her chair over her books, and I go up for a nap and conk out, then I come down later and do the dishes.

The day after Christmas I wake at 1 in the afternoon feeling empty and hollow, with a tight cough deep in my chest, a pain I've never felt before, and too exhausted and fall back to sleep after taking a pee and drinking some water.  I was up watching Russell Crowe in Noah, and after my Christmas alone with mom, who wonders, "where are the people?"  What people?  We talked to x and y, and Sharon can't do anything...  I see the grey murk clouds of winter sky... don't get up really til after two, but something is up with my lungs, and who knows now, Omicron...  It was a long day, two bottles of pinot noir down in 12 hours...  that's too much.  Why can't I quit, I'd like to...

And Noah was a righteous man, where the rest were wicked, and God sent a great flood to wash away the evils thereof.

Mom comes down.  At least I had the energy to do the dishes last night.

I heat a slice of pizza for her.  What's the plan today?  What's on your agenda?  Did you sleep well?  3 times.  

Again, I make soup for her.  Again she comes down after I've stirred after my nap as I'm doing yet another round of dishes and carving up the remainder of the standing rib roast and putting some of it away in the freezer, well-wrapped up.

I'm getting impatient with her, but she has enough kind words, it's a hard holiday, very tiring.  And after I ask her how the plate of food I've put in front of her, and she says, snootily, "fine..." dismissively, the same thing she did to the apple pie my sister in law cooked from scratch at Christmas dinner at my brother's house a few years ago, and he blew up at her too, just as I want to now, but I let it slide, slide past, just ignore it, Sanskrit chants...  She'll go to bed soon, she's got her pills down, just gotta get her to do her rinses and then brush her teeth, which she always finds a way to resist, and she complies with me and goes off to bed, though she might well stir in the night, as she did last night to the point where I shouted at her.

I found that I needed to remind myself what a woman is.  I looked at things at night I felt a bit ashamed of.  Even then I'm scarred, not finding anyone, to be all that nice, either out there in unfortunate addictive cyber world, or in on line dating.  And I can't blame anyone.   

Mom reminds me, "you hate me."  You hate women, she tells me.  

Oh, what a fine example you are, Mom.  

It takes whole blank hours of the quiet nighttime late hours to relax. Sad, I suppose, but that's how it is.

And finding myself too old to connect as I had been able to for so long with anyone, as if cast out, I thought of Noah, and of God.  I thought as an ineffectual man in a fallen and wicked world, to entertain a fantasy at least, briefly, as I knew not which direction to turn to.

The things the old people in the oldest of tales, they went through things.  Things painful to take.  And so they took to coming up with stories, out of their own experiences, of course, to symbolically express a sense of the deeper things they knew to be going on.  Could all of humanity be wicked, so wicked, evil and violent so that they, we, ruin the whole face of the earth of God's Creation...  Only a great flood could do justice, justice itself.  And one, only one, that's all it takes, along with his family, one family, were enough.

But it's not that bad.  It's just how I am tested, and finally become a man, as they say, an adult.  I see her later, all by herself, the cat at her bed, as she watches television, after I wake from my nap, feeling lousy again.

The pressure had left off a bit, and Christmas was retreating from the calendar.

Okay, she comes down from the bedroom to the kitchen, checking the bathroom, "toilet seat down," as if she does anything to clean here, she takes a bottle of Pepsi from the refrigerator.  And then, thank god, she leaves.  I hear her pulling a couple Kleenex tissues out of the box as she goes, and then her feet, as always, in her Keen hiking shoes, back she goes.