Month: February 2026

When we were newly married and living in a small college town, Mark and I did our share of smoking illegal crops. I had more access to it after getting to know several car dealers (who took a wide assortment of drugs) that called their loan applications into the bank where I was working. It wasn’t hard for me to get it from one of them and since Mark was a grad student and had more at stake than me I became the designated buyer. Through those years I avoided arrest, stopped when we were trying to get pregnant, and thereafter went on a long hiatus.

What could get you thrown in jail for a night is no longer the case as more and more states have legalized marijuana. I didn’t know much about how that worked until we went to my nephew’s wedding in Colorado which was the first state to lead the charge. Management somehow kept the lobby fresh and smelling legit but the minute you stepped out of the elevator on any floor the essence of the Devil’s Lettuce could knock you out. Signs posted throughout forbid the smoking of it in rooms which was universally ignored.

The state I live in has not legalized marijuana but just over the state line is a different story. It has been three years since they made it legal and overnight it seemed that cannabis shops popped up everywhere. The local tv stations reported on it like it was the grand opening of a Disney resort right here in the Midwest, and for a solid week an assortment of old, gimpy hippies were happy to be on camera to tout the benefits of it.

Shortly thereafter I went to a happy hour with my coworkers at an upscale new restaurant in town. A large sign posted near the entrance stated their dress code – no ball caps, no offensive sayings on tshirts, no flip flops, and no excessive odors. Turns out they very much saw what was coming and didn’t want their fine dining establishment reeking of weed.

Nearby is a shopping center that I frequent often with a Trader Joe’s, Homegoods, Target, and a wide assortment of other shops. Retail suburbia at its finest and a designated rest area for those who just visited the weed shop and test drove their buy in the car before hopping out to get some Two Buck Chuck. You could get high tailing these people with your cart and I have never cared about any of that until now because GOOD LORD it’s everywhere. Why are these people smoking dope in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon? Don’t they have jobs, kids to pick up from school, taxes to file? Shouldn’t getting high be reserved for Friday night like respectable potheads did back in the day?

I was doing my regular run to TJ Maxx because, yippe-ki-aye, there’s something new there every day. I was flipping through the racks and minding my own maxxinista business, focused on my hunt for something to wear to January. Two younger women came in, and like the smokey skies from a Canadian wildfire, we seasonally depressed shoppers were enveloped in the smell of Mary Jane. I stopped mid Nicole Miller jeans with the patented booty lift and tummy control and looked up. There they were loudly laughing in The Sacred Heart of Consumerism Cathedral. I tsk tsked and wanted to say, “Girls, girls, girls. Do you see what is happening here? Do you see this assortment of middle-aged women who appear to be worn out by everything? We’re here being respectable adults buying shit we do not need which is The American Way and now we’re going home smelling like we’ve been in Joey’s basement all night smoking pot while his mom upstairs doesn’t suspect a thing because she’s polishing off a bottle of wine. We can’t afford this! Are you paying any attention to what’s happening outside these doors? These times require us to be on high alert, not high high alert.”

The girls partied their way through the Maxx but didn’t last long. You’ve got be in the zone for shopping there and they got a bad case of the giggles in the underwear section when they held up massive pairs of briefs that would easily fit most of the rest of us pushing our cartloads of crap. I watched them as they and their smelly cloud wafted out the door and let out a sigh. Was it relief from the intrusion? Or was it envy for my younger years that were so long ago it often feels like I dreamt the whole thing?

There are many routes I can take to work but the one I use most often borders two states. On both sides are upscale neighborhoods – so much so that prior to his moving I passed by Patrick Mahomes house twice a day. As I was driving to work one morning I saw a man who appeared to be dead or unconscious lying in a bed of ivy in someone’s side yard. There was steady traffic on both sides of the road and I looked in every direction to see if anyone had stopped. It didn’t seem so and after driving a few more blocks I turned around and headed back to where I had seen him.

I had to park on a side street, and in a dress and shoes not suited for balancing on a curb alongside cars that were too close for comfort, I made my way towards him. Other than nudging him to see if he was okay I had no other plan except to call 9-1-1 if he was dead. As I got closer I heard the siren of a police car coming from the opposite direction and was only a few feet away when I saw an empty whiskey bottle. He was sleeping off a bender so I turned around and let the police do what they are far more trained to do than me.

When you find out your husband is dead at a police department, your life instantly becomes before and after. I have vivid recall of sitting at a white table in a white room, two detectives across from me telling me what I never imagined to be true, my hand flying to my mouth to stifle the screams. In the aftermath I was constantly asked, “How are you?” I had no idea how I was other than not fine. When someone instead asked, “Are you okay,” the door to how I was creaked opened – the question an acknowledgment that there were a multitude of reasons why I wouldn’t be and a safety net was there to catch me if I started to fall.

Last weekend we were home due to snow and freezing temperatures. I was under a blanket reading and decided to turn on the tv to check the news. Minutes earlier a nurse from the VA had just been shot dead after a woman near him had been thrown to the ground by ICE agents. He went to her aid and seconds later was riddled with bullets while a woman in a pink jacket recorded it on her phone and screamed through every terrifying second. The news was on for hours afterwards as I tried to make sense of what I was seeing.

Before I turned my car around that summer day to check on a stranger along the road, I told myself that it was a bad idea and I needed to let it go. I am not a good samaritan but rather someone who has been traumatized by a violent death and alone and on the ground will haunt me the rest of my life. For my own sake I needed to know whether the person I passed was okay or not.

On a frigid Saturday morning in a city eight hours from my own, a man whose job was taking care of others fittingly asked a stranger, “Are you okay?” Later two police officers would pull up to a house, knock on the door, and confirm to the people inside that their son was dead. Everything in their world would go dark while yellow tape marked his last minutes on earth – soon to be filled with flowers, condolences, a city paying their respects.

We watch this nightmare unfolding in our country and ask one another, “Are you okay,” already knowing that the answer is no, we are not okay. We weep for what we are witnessing while desperately trying to gather the most vulnerable into safety nets, our hands to our mouth to stifle the screams of grief.