Let's Get Lost

This is what it SHOULD have looked like, anyway, but the 250th July 4th celebrations around the country were marred by atrocious weather and events.  

Or so I heard.  

Other than a few moments in the afternoon, I was home with mother.  She is not doing well.  The antibiotics are ravaging her gut and the UTI is making her insane.  Do any of you now truly believe the Times isn't tracking my blog?

When I went to the grocers in the afternoon, though, the city was like a ghost town.  No traffic. Empty streets.  The parking lot at the supermarket was nearly empty.  Inside, there was no one.  

Then, just as I got back to her house came the deluge.  True monsoon stuff.  

"Good.  There will be no fireworks tonight.  The dogs will be happy."

But it was still early, and I was wrong.  The fireworks began at sundown and went on in an orgy of Patriotic Gore well after bedtime.  I stepped outside for a brief moment to see what all the commotion was, and Holy Moses, the entire neighborhood was lit up in every direction with magnificent frontyard displays of pyrotechnics.  Not sparklers and firecrackers but the kind of stuff you see in city parks, high in the sky exploding with "rockets red glare and bombs bursting in air" super expensive things.  The night was hot and wet and gunpowder smoke hung thick in the humid air.  

As impressive as it was coming from maybe ten different neighborhood yards, the night air was too uncomfortable for me to stand it very long, so I went back into the house and closed everything up for the night.  

I had watched soccer before, during, and after dinner.  I made hotdogs and mac and cheese and baked beans which my mother said she didn't want but ate pretty hardily.  

"Do you feel better after eating?"

"No."

She sat half the evening with her head on her hands on the kitchen table.  I have no light or happy moments in my mother's house anymore.  It is simply unmitigated misery now, and there is nothing I can do to alleviate the suffering but give her her meds and cook and clean and sit in the room with her.  There is no use talking now.  She doesn't hear me.  If I ask or tell her something, she says, "What?" and I have to repeat it again, then usually once more at top volume.  My throat is shot.  And if she answers, I can't make it out as she simply mumbles to herself.  Then before bed, she will tall me, "I'm sorry I'm such a bother."

"It is what it is."

After soccer, I put on a movie.  Wow.  It is was an Italian film that seemed a marriage between Fellini and David Lynch.  

The trailer doesn't do the movie justice.  I dislike reading subtitles, but this one is well worth the effort.  It takes a moment for the movie to grip you, but it does.  Or, it did me.  However, it got late and I had been drinking.  But wait, don't go yet. . . you have to hear this one.  

The other day at the grocery store, I saw a case of Topo Chico.  I've been drinking Pellegrino flavored waters after eight, but they are pretty sweet.  I thought I'd give these a try.  And boy. . . they quickly became my favorite.  I love them.  So every night, I'll drink two or three of them watching television to get hydrated.  

Ahem.  

Last night, I looked at the can and saw that each drink had 100 calories.  A hundred calories?  From what?  They aren't very sweet.  

Yea.  Alcohol.  They are not just water.  They are an alcoholic beverage.  I've been "hydrating" with ranch water, as they say.  No wonder I liked them so much.  I'm an idiot.  

Suddenly sleepy, I turned the movie off halfway through and went to bed.  

Somewhere in the night, waking me from a dead sleep, my mother burst in.  

"Did you call me?"

Sleep doesn't come easy after such disruptions, and I struggled the rest of the night.  

It is Sunday.  I will get out for a walk in the noonday sun.  Mad dogs and Englishmen, they used to say.  And me, intent on heat stroke.  But such is my life.  

Oh. . . I hear the creaking of the walker.  My mother is up now and I must attend.   

"It is what it is."