Chev doesnt see it that way. Which makes sense. You take someone who doesnt have something themselves, theyre always gonna put more value on it than the person who does have it. So, sure, I love my mom. But Chev may love her a little more than me. Which is maybe not as fucked up as it sounds like at first.

– Hey Mom.

– Who is it?

– Its me, Mom.

– Web? Is that you?

– Its me, Mom.

– Cool. Thats cool.

There was a pause. A long one. This might mean she was:

A) Waiting for me to tell her why I was calling,

or

B) So stoned she had forgotten I was on the line.

– So, Mom.

– Who is this?

Which was pretty much a dead giveaway that the answer was B.

– Its Web, Mom.

– Heeey Web. How you doing, baby?

– Im cool, Mom, how about you?

– Alright, alright. The blackberries are ripening nicely.

– Thats cool.

– Yeah. I could send you a couple quarts. Or some pies. Should I send you some pies?

Every time I talk to Theodora Goodhue of Wild Blackberry Pie Farms, she offers to send me some of her world-famous, all organic, bush-ripened blackberries. Or some of her equally famous pies. Then she hangs up the phone and, her short-term memory impeded as it is by the intake of her far more famous Wild Blackberry Cannabis Sativa, she promptly forgets.

– No, thats cool. I still have some of the last batch you sent.

– The crops gonna be something special this year.

I never have any illusions about which crop shes talking about. Mom may have dropped out and headed to Oregon to pursue her dream, one in a long line of dreams, to start an organic berry farm, but it was only when she started cultivating some of her land with seedlings supplied by a friend from upper Humboldt County that her operation showed a profit and became self-sufficient. Not that she cares about the profit part of the equation.