Written and illustrated by Kelly O’Grady

Recently, Mom and I took an Amtrak sleeper car up to Eugene, Oregon, to go to a wool festival called “The Black Sheep Gathering” (which sounds more like a Black Metal music festival than a gathering of wool enthusiasts).

My mom is a self-identified “loom lady”; she has three of them, and miles of Angora fur she uses to make mittens and hats. I was joining her because I could use a vacation, and also, recreational marijuana had just become legalized in Oregon. The ride up was beautiful, and my mom kept herself entertained with her romance novels.

We arrived in Eugene and took a cab over to the fairgrounds where the Black Sheep Gathering was taking place. It reminded me of Burning Man, except fewer drugs and more wine and spinning wheels.

There were RVs and tents for miles. I was one of maybe a handful of men at the event. I saw someone’s husband being tied to a post to wait quietly while his wife went to wool-dying seminar.

My mom was in her element: she was spinning wool and drinking (her beverage of choice is Vodka 7s) and talking about her bunnies back home (Spaghetti and Meatball) to the other Loom Ladies.

Mom’s Angora rabbits.

There was a big to-do because a famous Loom Lady and mystery novel writer Nora Flanora was teaching a seminar on how to make purple dye out of urine and crushed up bugs. It was four hours long; I was dragged along because I had nothing much better to do. I confess it was pretty interesting actually.

On the second day, I brought up, half jokingly, that we should go to a marijuana dispensary since it was now legal in Oregon. To my surprise she seemed game.

“You know, I’ve always wanted to try one of those ‘marijuana brownies,’” mom said.

My mom bought enough pot brownie mix and marijuana chocolates to feed an entire Ween concert three times over.

In Eugene, Oregon, there’s a marijuana dispensary on every block. There are dispensaries within dispensaries like Russian nesting dolls; you can’t throw a rock without hitting eight marijuana shops. The goal was to find one that was my mom’s speed.

I found the one shop that didn’t have Rasta colors or Grateful Dead cartoons all over it, which was hard. The one we settled on was clean and discreet; it was called “Herbal Solutions” or something semi-vague like that. My mom and I walked in, and I explained to the clerk that my mom was new to the whole “getting-high” thing and we were looking to purchase some pot brownies. To our disappointment, they had just ran out of pot brownies (because of the Wool fest) but they did have a giant bag of pot brownie mix.

My mom bought enough pot brownie mix and marijuana chocolates to feed an entire Ween concert three times over. I made sure to explain to her how potent brownies can be.

“Okay, mom, you only want to eat a corner or so, because brownies can be really potent, so make sure that you don’t eat too much. If you don’t feel it hitting you just wait.”

“Oh, will I have a bad trip if I eat too much?”

“Yes.”

When we got back to the fairground campsite, my mom tried one of the weed chocolates she had bought.

“Oh, these taste just like regular chocolate, I can’t wait to share these with my boyfriend when we camp in the backyard,” she said. I pretended not hear that, and then we watched “Call the Midwife” on her iPad. It didn’t take the chocolates long to work their magic, and almost immediately she fell asleep in her camping chair.

The next day she was well-rested and springy. My mom usually has difficulty getting to sleep, so the chocolates really worked wonders for her.

After another day we took the Amtrak back to California, and I parted ways with my mom in Oakland. Before I got off the train, my mom gave me one of her chocolates. I got home waaay too high and forgot how front doors worked.

When I visited my mom for Thanksgiving, she had a freezer full of pot brownies and three different vaporizer pens. She even started growing marijuana in her garden alongside her squash and pumpkins. Of course she had named the plants.

“This is one I named Mr. Ferguson and he is a sativa, and this one over here is Lady Canterburry and she is a Indica,” she told me. “I can’t wait to harvest them — me and my boyfriend will go to a drive in theatre and light up a doobie and….”

“MOM! Too much information!”