"clouds" (family, addictions, health)
I was telling a friend of mine yesterday about the first time I smoked marijuana with my mother. I was twenty years old. My mother disappeared when I was six and I didn’t see her again for another twelve years. It was the mid-60’s, and my father managed to get custody of all four of us in the divorce. He must have had something to show in court although from what I have been told, he also did whatever he could to drive my mother off. Or was it to drive her crazy? In any case, that’s a matter for a different post.
I had gone down for the summer to live with her. I had been having various annoying financial setbacks, like care repairs and moving from on-campus to off-campus expenses, etc, and she had been helping me. It logistically made sense and, frankly, I wanted to get to know my mother better. She got me a job in a steel mill. She had already given me her car a year before; she had paid it off and wanted a new one. I was living with her and the son she had out of wedlock right when she disappeared. (He was another reason she probably would not have won custody of us back. She was very briefly married to the boy’s father, but she had changed the little boy’s last name to ours and reclaimed our last name as well when they divorced.) He was about thirteen years old.
She and I were sitting together in the living room, talking. I don’t remember where my little brother was although I think he was somewhere in the apartment. He knew that she smoked marijuana. I’m thinking that I brought up the subject in my conversation with her. I don’t remember the details of how it came up, but I remember it was me. I probably just wanted her to know that I smoked it, because that’s how I am. I have always liked marijuana since the first time I smoked it at age fourteen. It has always been my drug of choice and the only one that one could argue I might have abused in any significant way--except some alcohol in college, of course.
My mother assured me that it was no big deal, that she didn’t care whether or not I smoked. Then she went into her bedroom, not in a dramatic way but after a lull in the conversation stood up from her chair and went into her bedroom. I mean, it wouldn’t have been an unusual thing for her to do. Maybe she had left her glasses in there, her coffee cup, a book, something she wanted to show me.
She came out with an ounce of pure shake. Shake is the little pieces of marijuana leaf that fall from the buds and end up in the bottom of the bag, minus the sticks and seeds, which look a lot like the tobacco you would pull out of a cigarette only green and aromatic. This was back in the days when we bought marijuana by the ounce or half ounce or quarter ounce not to mention by joint, too, twenty-five or so years ago, but an ounce was generally the largest amount of marijuana that a person might have on hand unless they were planning an enormous party. She pulled out one of those small, manual bamboo cigarette rolling machines and rolled a fairly thick and perfectly shaped joint of pure shake.
To me it was not strange or unnatural. She smoked and I smoked, so why wouldn’t we smoke together? To me it was no different than sharing an occasional cigarette or beer with someone I hung around. We continued having our nice conversation. I probably smoked marijuana with my mother another time or two but I can’t recall the specific situations, partly because they were so rare. My mother didn’t spend a lot of time smoking marijuana privately or with anyone else either. She simply smoked it from time to time and so she kept it on hand. She didn’t abuse it; it was no big deal. In any case, the first time you smoke marijuana with your mother would be the most memorable.
A year later my little brother was crossing a state highway with some of his buddies. They had gone onto the other side of the highway, one of those fast-moving, four-lane, and two-lanes-in-each-direction kind of state highways with a large median in the middle. They go through country towns and the suburbs as the suburbs have come to engulf them. They are abutted by a lot of sub-divisions and new developments. The friends had crossed the roadway to buy marijuana, and they were on their way back. A man who had had at least a drink or two came up the incline that was just enough to block a bit of the view until the car was almost upon you, and drove right into them. My little brother pushed a friend of his out of the path of the car and back onto the shoulder, and he took the hit. He died of massive brain damage very early the next morning. As far as I know, my mother has never smoked marijuana since. That would be enough to make you want to stop--or smoke even more.
