Waking Up in Kansas

The upheaval in my personal life notwithstanding, I have excellent timing.

I’m in Wichita for less than a week and my mother, the woman who has been my father’s caregiver for the past three years and who hasn’t really been sick the entire time, tests positive for COVID.

And thus the new routine for my first week in the familiar yet strange confines of living in my folks’s home again for the first time in forty years: wake up in Kansas, coffee from my own pot I brought from Vegas, check on my dad, check on my mom, smoke on the porch, look for work while I peruse the news. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I take pops to his dialysis which is an archaic, medieval thing to do to someone, each four hour session leaving him devastated for a day. His arms look like something out of an 80’s practical effect horror movie—bruised, scarred, fresh poke holes and skin as thin as paper.

I convince mom to stay in bed and isolate from him by enticing her with Ted Lasso. She doesn’t have Apple TV+ but I share mine and she lays in bed and watches for hours. She loves it but can’t quite remember which episode she’s watched which is an indicator that she is ill or that the show is like a bag of chips as each episode resembles the other in salty goodness but are indistinguishable.

I fret about income as I sit at my leaning desk (again, from Vegas, a relic from my bachelor days in Chicago that I kept and we used as a shelving sort of thing). My iMac, my iPad, my iPhone—the keepers of most of my life in emails, iMessages, banking, and photos—all sit within reach. I apply for freelance writing gigs. I apply to substitute teach in Wichita ($119 a day with the flexibility to still take pops to dialysis during the week). I’ll be fine in the long run and in the short, I’m paying no rent or food cost, so I have zero room to bitch.

A few days after I arrived, mom got us a group membership to the local YMCA because I sat for four months hiding from my ex-wife and gaining weight. Time to get back in the gym and drop a bowling ball or so off my ass.

Stasis is a weird place to be.

Aside from helping with my parents, I have no purpose. I miss the wife and friend I had but she was a fantasy in my head for the last couple of years and that’s a bizarre sucking sound I hear in the back of my snake brain. I know there is family here for me and friends I can call but I feel utterly alone. The last time I felt this isolated from humanity was when I headed out to Chicago in 1989 and lived in my truck for four months. The difference is that I’m not actually alone.

I debate whether I want to go buy booze because I’m a bit tight on cash but I’m not asking my parents to fuel that habit. I’m working to lose weight so booze is just a self defeating addition to my diet but I’ll admit, the numb drunk is something I crave. I binge-watch Cobra Kai Season 5 for the same reason I want to slam three big glasses of whiskey.

Seriously, though, I can’t complain. When absent hope, give a man a task. I have plenty of tasks. Taking care of my folks. Getting something part time but economically sustainable so I can also take care of my folks. Unlike most of my time on Earth, I really can’t afford too much planning for the future and perhaps that’s the source of my spin. No grand plans to formulate. No big shows to execute. Lots of writing which will be read by seven people. Do that Garden State thing about coming home after forty years with a killer soundtrack and hooking up with old flames.

And there’s always Cobra Kai.