I Bought My Husband Ecstasy for Christmas

Moving to the Big City Changed Us

On New Year’s Eve, 2009, our family left our small town Eastern Oregon existence to move to the city of Mount Vernon, Washington, just north of Seattle. There are countless funny stories from that short time we spent in “the city”, but this one truly epitomizes the trope of the small town girl in the big, big city.

Early one morning, after my husband left for work, I was picking up the living room a little when I discovered a round, white pill on the floor near the entryway. Upon examination, I found that it had a tulip design stamped into both sides and it was about the size of an M&M. I wondered if it had just gotten tracked in as my husband works in a big mall and it could have got caught in the tread of his work shoes. But then again, I thought, his shoes are flat on the bottom. Then I remembered a few months ago when a co-worker had sent him home with some sort of calcium-citrus tablets that were supposed to be helpful for alleviating cold symptoms. “Perhaps it’s just something he got from a co-worker,” I reasoned, “for headaches or something”. I was trying to get started on the kids’ school work for the day so I just set it up on the bookshelf to ask him about it later.

Later that afternoon, I was waiting to start dinner and had a few minutes to do a little…