When my father's liver was shutting down, the chemicals released made him feel like there were bugs under his skin - an exquisite kind of torture on top of the insult that was cancer. Marijuana is not legal in Indiana, but it was near Christmas, and...well, Santa apparently knows a guy.
Stoned Santa?
My father was not a pot-smoking kind of man. In fact, he claimed to have made it all the way through the Vietnam War having never tried it, although I suspect he may have been lying. He had pretty strict notions of what was appropriate for a daughter to know about her father.
And my family had a lot of rituals around Christmas Eve. Church. PIzza. White Christmas. An early present. Very wholesome. It was nice.
So, as the holy time approached, and as Dad became more and more uncomfortable, someone (me) may have written a letter to Santa asking him to deliver something that might help take away the bug-crawls. And he did!
This story, then, is really about how my proper father and I very improperly got high together over the kitchen sink on Christmas Eve. It's funny because neither of us really knew what we were doing. It's funny because me, the novice, had to teach my Dad how to use a one-hitter. It's funny because it's a bit of a familial taboo, and because it's Christmas Eve and it's almost like my friend who watches Silence of the Lambs with her family while opening presents. Pot and the Baby Jesus just don't go together in my world.
But I have yet to tell this story in a way that makes people feel the joy inherent in that brief moment. The humor, and the love, and the unexpected intimacy.
Tonight I tried again. And failed again.
It may be that this story is many things, but funny, it just ain't.