You had one of those Days? I have one of those Lives......

I was raised in San Francisco.
When I was growing up, my parents had cocktail hour , they passed around joints and listened to Brazil 66.
My dad dropped an occasional hit of acid and hung a posters that said fuck the draft.

Before I was born, he painted every room in our first house a different color while flying on LSD.
He also had a perm and wore hawaiin shirts with thongs.
He drove a lime green 1969 porshe.

My mom had long dark hair parted down the middle and rich brown eyes, she liked to drink vodka with soda and a twist of lime, and she smoked benson and hedges lights 100's.
She wrapped my dad's porshe around a tree one night.

When we were teenagers,
My mom told us to drink at home if we were going to drink at all......I mean why take the chance?
My brother grew pot in my closet with tinfoil and hallogen lights.
Never mind that my high school uniform reeked of skunk.

He was an  innovative guy. He used to microwave the leaves from  the pot plants and we rolled joints and  smoked them in the kitchen on friday nights.
"waste not, want not!" my  mom would say.

My mom would sometimes pick me up from the 10pm movie with wine on her breath, or even a "traveler" in the car.

Needless to say, I grew up in an environment where drinking was accepted, not rejected.
Meanwhile, my curfew was 11pm until I turned 18, but I could smoke and drink at home.
Mixed messages sent me to therapy for a long time.....

We had a french exchange student named Christian who lived with us for a while.
He helped me with my french homework and made good crepes.

We also had a long lost cousin who lived with us, Bruce.
He was from Alaska and he had a ten foot boa.
We used to feed the boa live mice.
They would squeal and then sit like golf balls, slowly sliding down his throat.
Discovery channel shit.

I had a pet rat named Egg Nog and I loved her.
One night, my brother blew an enormous cloud of pot smoke in her face and killed her.
He blamed it on our dog.
I cried and cried.
My mom helped me bury her the next day.
I wrapped her  in my pink Benetton sweater and put her in a shoe box.
We dug a small hole in the back yard, and buried her next to a tree.
I cried more.

We also had 2 dogs, black labs, Tasha and Stormy .
Tasha was blind in her left eye, it had blue specks in it  and she ran around in circles a lot.
Tasha had a brother, Hawkins, but he was totally blind, and got hit by a car.
Stormy was our other dog, she was so sweet, she couldn't have hurt a fly, much less my pet rat.

We  also had a  green parrot named Daffy.
My brother taught him how to talk .
He would sit on my mom's shoulder and occasionally say "Hello.", or "Fuck You."
My mom sat at the oak wood kitchen table with a vodka soda every evening at about 6pm to  chat with her best friend.
There would be bird shit all over her shoulders by the end of her converstaion.

My mom drove a station wagon, the kind with the wooden panels, even in the 80's.
It had the kind of radio with knobs and plastic squares that you punched with your middle finger to change the station.
There were white t-shirts on the driver and passenger seat.
It smelled like dogs, cigarettes, and  an occasional christmas tree.

She had a bumper sticker that said, "you had one of those days? I have one of those lives."
And she really did have One of those lives.

Her mom died in a fire while smoking and drinking milk with whiskey.
She fell asleep and her mattress combusted.
We lived down the block from her, so the night it happened, we were just a dozen houses away.
My dad was a fireman at the time, he went to save her and she was already dead.

So many tragedies, perhaps not appropriate even for this blog.
Oh, not to worry, I'll end up sharing them with you.


I have written some haiku poetry about  my experiences as a child, so I thought this would be a good time to share one with you.

DAD, IM TRYING TO LOVE YOU

Cocaine up his nose
bottle under the front seat
dad you passed our house