Friendly unicorn in search of an —er

During my time living in Vermont, I was always looking for ways to meaningfully contribute. I would look around at my neighbors who were teachers, farmers, welders, homesteaders, and —ers of all kinds. I didn’t really have (m)any practical skills of which to speak. This phenomena was a real challenge to my sense of belonging and purpose there. I would often say to Collin that I felt like I was a unicorn on a farm. In this metaphor, all the other animals on a farm are there for at least one functional and pragmatic reason, yet I lacked one. I’d imagine the farmer coming into the barn looking through the stalls. He’d tend to the pigs, chickens, cows, draft horses, and then he’d see me and be like…what’s this colorful frivolity? “What do you do?” He’d wonder. I’d probably prattle on about dreams and magic and happiness. He’d move along while wondering aloud if unicorn burgers are a thing.

I desperately wanted to find my —er so I could contribute. And if I couldn’t become an —er, then at least I’d be the best, most contributing unicorn I could be.

So, imagine my interest and delight when in January of 2021 I stumbled upon a piece of news in the Vermont Digger that announced that select boards (town governments) would be voting on whether to legalize the sale of marijuana for recreational use in their town in the upcoming weeks—but—this vote would only happen in towns where the residents had put it on the agenda. Usually, getting an item on the agenda required a minimum of 50 signatures, but due to covid restrictions, they were waiving this prerequisite. So, all it took was a written request and someone willing to make a case for the agenda item to the select board at their monthly meeting. Finally, I could do something useful for my community!

Like many of my great ideas, I thought, this is a perfect thing for Collin to do. So, I wrote to the select board and requested that the item be added so that Collin could present on the many benefits of marijuana and the benefits of voting to legalize selling it for recreational use. Collin was like, “wait, what?” But like many of my great ideas, I was like, “what could possibly go wrong?”

“All my neighbors will be so happy!” I thought. It was already legal to use it for recreational use, but it wasn’t yet legal to sell it for recreational use. So, think of all the economic opportunities that the farmers will have with the legalization of growing and selling marijuana for recreational use. I saw all silver linings.

But then, it occurred to us: maybe we should actually have tried weed at least once before we present a case for this. You know, just to be authentic about it. So, we purchased some from a local grower, and we made a very responsible plan to have only one of us try it at a time on different days.

I went first one night after the kids went to bed. I went outside under the clear, winter sky which was brilliantly studded with stars. There under the glory of the Milky Way, I smoked a little joint of Indica, the variety of marijuana that is calming. It made me very relaxed and extremely spacey. I’m very used to having mental acuity and always being at the helm of my own thoughts. It was a bizarre experience for me to have my mind so relaxed that thoughts were happening more passively and without urgency. I took a hot bubble bath and my mind told me a whole story about two immortal souls who were in love in an eternal dimension. They lived freely and happily as two ethereal spirits in what was essentially paradise. The physical world—earth as we know it—was beginning to lose hope that love was real, so these beings were sent to earth to see if they could find each other throughout many different lifetimes and many different reincarnations and still love each other in the imperfect world. In one reincarnation they were just the hardware on the bathtub. That was when I realized I was high and probably needed to just go to sleep.

The next day, I woke up feeling entirely normal and refreshed after a deep, restorative sleep. This was the day that Collin was going to try smoking weed. “I’ve got lots of projects I want to get done around the property, so I’m going to try the Sativa variety.” This is the variety that is more energizing rather than calming. So, I got the kids settled into the rec room of our guest house, and Collin decided to smoke a little bit before beginning his projects for the day. I came back over to the main house, and from upstairs I heard a loud thud. “Col, are you okay?” I called up the stairs. “THIS IS NOT FUNNY!!” he yelled. I later learned he was trying to say, “This is not FUN” but couldn’t quite get the right words out. I came running up the stairs and opened the doors. He yelled the same statement again, and I was in total agreement that this situation was not funny (or fun). He flipped over the solid, oak coffee table like it was a cardboard box. Apparently, as it turns out, Collin turns into the Incredible Hulk when he smokes weed. That’s what we found out that day. Long story shortened into a slightly abridged version: turns out he had a bit of an allergic reaction/psychotic break when he ingested the THC. As we later learned, there is a rare gene in males of Austrian descent that creates this effect.

The rest of the story goes: he eventually passed out and was in a catatonic state for 6 hours, during which time I was scared for him. So I called 911 to ask for an ambulance. Because I mentioned that he flipped over the coffee table, they sent a police officer ahead of the ambulance. The ambulance got stuck in the snow on our mile-long, dirt, mountain road leading to the house. The police car, unfortunately, made it. I told him it wasn’t really necessary for him to be there, and he told me he had to make sure the situation was safe before allowing the ambulance medics to come inside. That was when I noticed the gun in his holster, and my stomach dropped. I was afraid that Collin was going to get agitated again and realized that this could end very badly with a gun in the mix. “Listen, I don’t really think you need that; and also he’s a really kind and gentle person who is just having a bad reaction to weed.” He told me, “well, if he starts swinging at me, I’m not going to just stand there.” Suddenly my bright idea did not seem so lined with silver. My unicorn mission was failing. I can’t even be a functional unicorn. Fortunately I kept this thought to myself, as I’m pretty sure this police officer already thought we were nuts.

I ran up ahead of the cop (after asking him if I could go tell Collin that the cop was there before he just went into the room where he was) to try to communicate with my catatonic pal and let him know the lay of the land.

“Soooo, bad news” I whispered. “They sent a cop, and he’s not very nice.” Immediately after hours of being nonresponsive, Collin blinked, turned his head and said, “Oh, nooooo.”

“Listen, just be cool; don’t freak out.”

I went back downstairs to tell the cop that he could come upstairs, and we headed up the stair to where Collin was. I took a deep breath and opened the door; to my great relief there was quite a transformation from mere minutes before. I mean, like Grandpa Joe from the original Willy Wonka movie upon Charlie finding the golden ticket level transformation. He was standing up and alert and probably seemed normal(ish) to someone who didn’t know him. I could tell he was high as a kite, but he held it together. He wasn’t psychotic any more, so that was definitely a tally in the points column for team Hulk and Unicorn.

Then the medics finally arrived, so I went downstairs to let them inside. They were so kind and very sympathetic. They showed me pictures of their dogs on their phones shortly after arriving and meeting my dog. And then they broke the hard news, “We will have to admit him to the pysch ward based on what you’re saying happened unless he can sign a waiver indicating that he denied care.”

Oh, brother. How did my plan go so awry? I just wanted to do a good thing for the community and now Collin is going to the pysch ward? Could Grandpa Joe handle reading a legal waiver and signing it? We would see. Again, I ran upstairs and tried to explain the situation to him ahead of time, and he was extremely motivated to not get admitted to the psych ward. So he did his best to walk down the stairs and greet the medics. Then he sat down on the sofa and tried his best to focus his eyes and look normal. The medics handed him the waiver, and he looked at me and asked for one last confirmation, “should I sign this?” I encouraged him to do so, and within 5 minutes from that point the cop drove back down the mountain with the ambulance full of medics following.

Well, that was a real doozy of an experience, but we are not quitters. I mean, Collin definitely quit ever trying weed again. But we weren’t going to quit on our first political foray. So, a couple days later, Collin still attended the select board zoom meeting (with mild and well-concealed PTSD from the experience). He presented his powerpoint on the many merits of legalizing the recreational sale of marijuana. And it passed! I don’t know if this ended up making a positive difference for anyone, but I hope so. I do know that the following summer the smell of weed growing in all the fields was so strong that I would get a little spacey just driving from our house to town, so someone gave it a shot I guess.

4 years later, I live 3,000 miles away from our old mountain homestead in a different climate, culture, and phase of life. And here I am again faced with a variation of the unicorn feeling—more now than ever since I stopped homeschooling. The —ers here are a bit different—many are writers, actors, creators, performers…and teachers still (everyone everywhere needs teachers). I find myself again feeling superfluous and without a functional contribution or purpose. I still try to use my magic to make the best unicorn experiences—hosting potlucks, bringing people together for crazy ideas like designing bike-powered parade floats, volunteering at the kids’ school as the friendly room rep, writing this blog, even. But at the end of the day, I know I need more. I tried to be a farmer, remember? That was supposed to be my new path once the kids were in school.

When my farmer dreams were dashed, I decided I still wanted to do something with plants. So, when our plans to return to Vermont failed, I enrolled in an herbalism program. It’s been an amazing beginning, but it is more of an experiential introduction to herbalism. I’m ready to really dive into a more rigorous program—one that prepares me academically so I gain a mastery of knowledge but also one that will allow me to graduate with a skill set. So, in August, I applied to another herbalism program based in Vermont (it’s hybrid-remote), and I’ll hear back whether I’m accepted in the upcoming weeks. That program is a three year family and clinical program that educates, trains, and equips students to become herbalist clinicians; practitioners of herbal medicine. This is the first program (even though I have a BA in social and cultural anthropology and a MS in Health Promotion) that will end with me having plant medicine skills (which would have been helpful on that fateful January day back on the mountain). But it’s also one that allows for a lot of self-expression and a personal flare.

So, if all goes according to plan, in three years I’ll finally have earned an —er as a practitioner of herbalism.

But I also hope to still give magical unicorn vibes as well.