Tag: Chaos Theory

Chaos Theory

CHAOS THEORY

From Sourdough to Salem

Making a list and checking things off

By Cassie Bustamante

The Roman god Janus, after whom January was named, had two faces, one that looked to the past and one that looked to the future, symbolizing his domain over beginnings and endings. Last fall, too many endings piled up suddenly. Within the span of one week, a friend’s brother died unexpectedly, we said goodbye to a book club pal’s husband, an integral part of the Greensboro community whose effervescent life was cut much too short by cancer, and another friend tragically lost her beloved dog — all of this a month after my own Aussie-Weimaraner sidekick crossed the rainbow bridge. This perfect storm of grief and loss left me stunned and looking inward, and, frankly, ready to forge my own new beginning.

Plus, I’d just read about Greensboro Public Library’s “One City, One Book” pick, My Father’s List, by Laura Carney. When Carney discovered her late father’s bucket list among his belongings, she decided to honor him by checking off the boxes left incomplete. Instead of pondering how I want to be remembered, hopefully decades from now, I thought about how I want to live.

Inspired by Carney and driven by the mission to make the most of my days, I texted one of my best friends: “It’s a few months away, but next year in January, instead of a big goal for the year, I am going to make a 2026 bucket list and fill it with things I want to do.” No lofty goals of writing my first book or finally having six-pack abs. (At 47, it might be time to toss in the gym towel on that one.)

In December 2024, this particular friend and I had together decided to tap into our creativity in 2025, meeting once a month for a craft night. We managed only a few, but those rare evenings were precious to me. Our young kids would play while we made denim bracelets, pounded flowers — zero stars for that one, a total fail — and caught up on each other’s lives.

Her reply came almost immediately: “Could one of our craft nights be to make a tangible bucket that we put these little notes into?”

A couple hours later, another text came — this time, an image of a Halloween-decorated porch featuring a little cauldron. “Also . . . cauldron for bucket list?”

It was a big ol’ “yes” from me. I love all things witch adjacent. After all, I was named after a witch, Cassandra, on the vampire-themed soap opera of the 1960s, Dark Shadows, and I grew up not far from where the infamous Salem witch trials took place. I’m just accepting my destiny. Crystals sit on my dresser, a manifestation candle on my nightstand. I do not own a Ouija board — that’s a portal too far for me.

In December, I took some time to jot down my very own “cauldron list.” The idea is that, upon completion, I drop the slip of paper featuring the written task into the cauldron:

Write a short piece of fiction. Some people say you should do something that scares you each day and this one definitely makes my knees quake.

Learn to make sourdough bread. Yes, I’m six years late to this trend, but do you know what never goes out of style? Crusty, carby, sourdough bread. In fact, it’s been around for possibly more than 6,000 years. But, in my house, it only sticks around for a day or two.

Get a colonoscopy. Not nearly as appealing as some of my other items, but necessary. To ease my mind around this one, I just googled “what happens during a colonoscopy” and do not recommend you do the same.

Take Wilder on the challenging hike at Stone Mountain State Park. At just 7, he doesn’t know it, but he’s in training to hit up Yosemite, Yellowstone, Acadia and many more national parks with me and my husband, Chris.

Read Just Kids by Patti Smith. I bought this book five years ago and have yet to crack it open. My own editor even asked me recently if I’d read it. “Well, I own it. Does that count for something?” Nope.

Make an autumnal pilgrimage to Salem, Massachusetts. This trip has been on my mental bucket list for years and it’s time to pay homage to the witches who have gone before me.

And the list goes on — but not too much. The point is to embrace my life, not consume what little free time I already have. A year from now, I hope I can tell you that 2026 was the year that I learned to live each day like it was a new adventure, that my cauldron is full of tiny slips of paper. But if that isn’t the case, perhaps one of my own children will one day unearth my unfinished work and set about putting another drop in the bucket — or another slip in the cauldron, as it may be.

Chaos Theory

CHAOS THEORY

Predictably Perfect

A Hallmark moment to remember forever

By Cassie Bustamante

Let’s face it, the market of cheesy holiday romance films — à la Hallmark — is oversaturated. But I recall when just one or two would be released each year, and you had to pay attention to when they aired, even if you recorded them with TiVo. My daughter, Emmy, and I would dive under the plush, down cover of my cozy bed and snuggle together as a string of lights twinkled on the wall above my headboard and a Christmas tree glimmered in the corner of the room. Emmy’s interest in watching holiday films while cuddling with her mom has inevitably declined. Anyhow, this year, she’s away at her first year of college, leaving me on my own while Netflix drops a barrage of Hallmark-adjacent films. And while I know within the first five minutes of viewing how the next 90 or so will unfold, I still adore these movies. The plot line is as comforting as my morning cup of coffee, filling me with a familiar, nostalgic warmth.

Each one goes something like this: Big-city lawyer Holly ventures to a small, snowy town named Hope Falls — with a gazebo in its town center, of course — to visit her newly widowed father for the holidays. There, she inevitably saves the local Christmas tree farm, owned by a flannel-wearing stud named Nick, by setting up a pop-up bake sale where she sells cookies using her late mom’s cherished, handwritten recipe. Naturally, Holly and Nick fall in love and open a bakery named “Pining for Sweets” on the farm property and live happily ever after, selling Christmas trees and confections.

And while Emmy’s no longer into the yearly ritual, last Thanksgiving I discovered that I need not watch the 32 Hallmark “Countdown-to-Christmas” films all by my lonesome self.

And so it was that one late November evening, we arrive home from my parents’ house, stuffed and sleepy. Our oldest, Sawyer, heads immediately to his lair to play video games. Emmy retreats to the warmth of her own bed. My husband, Chris, turns the family-room television on to whatever college football game is being played. Our youngest, 6-year-old Wilder, builds a Pokémon puzzle on the coffee table with Chris. Taking inventory of the situation, I decide I could use a quiet, little lie-down myself.

I turn on the Christmas lights already strung over my bed (confession — we keep them up year round because I love their glow), flop myself down and grab the remote. Netflix tells me that Lindsay Lohan’s latest, Our Little Secret, is today’s top film. I love a good comeback story and applaud Lohan for finding her way back to the screen in a healthy, wholesome manner. And, to be fair, this movie is a level up from Hallmark. Kristin Chenoweth, Tim Meadows and Ian Harding, the dude who played Ezra Fitz in Pretty Little Liars, a show that Emmy and I watched together in its entirety? Yes, please.

With 30 minutes left in the movie, Wilder, wearing his Super Mario pajamas and Santa hat that he hasn’t taken off all day, wanders in to ask if I’d like to watch a Peanuts movie with him and Dad.

“Of course, I’d love to,” I say. “But lemme just finish watching this first. OK?”

He peers curiously at the screen and spies glimmering Christmas decorations adorning a large, twinkling, light-covered home. Instead of leaving, he hops on the bed and nestles into me. While the movie is rated PG-13, I decide it’s tame enough for him to stay. Plus, a lot of the inappropriate content will fly right over his Santa-capped head.

As the ending draws close and the love interest makes his grand, sweeping gesture to finally win over Lohan, Wilder says, “This is making me feel like I am going to cry.”

After a moment, Lohan and her beau embrace and seal it with a kiss. “See,” I say to Wilder, “It’s a happy ending.”

He hugs me tighter as he says, “Yes, but it’s just so beautiful that I want to cry.”

So, this year, I’m ready. The lights are twinkling above the bed. Soon I’ll be cuddling up with my new romance-loving partner in crime. And when Emmy comes home for her Christmas break, we’ll just squeeze in tighter and make room for her, too. That is, if she wants to join us.

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Chaos Theory

CHAOS THEORY

Just You Wait

From social to print media

By Cassie Bustamante

As I sit at my dining room table waiting for my Zoom call to begin, I wonder whether it was such a good idea to have planted myself in front of the giant, whimsical sun I painted on the wall behind me. It’s the fall of 2020 and I am interviewing for a job. It’s a local position, but with COVID lingering in the air, most interviews are being conducted online. Ashe Walshe, then editor of O.Henry magazine, pops up on my screen. Even though I can only see the digital manifestation of her, it’s enough to pick up on her earthy, bohemian vibes.

“Why do you want this job?” she asks me, her hazel eyes genuinely curious. The role in question is that of digital content creator. If I land it, I’ll be writing the O.Hey Greensboro email newsletter and handling social media.

“Well, I really feel like the universe pointed me here,” I blurt out without thinking, a usual habit of mine. Immediately, my mind starts whirling: Why did I say that? There’s no way they’re hiring you now! You sound insane!

But when I see Ashe’s face on my screen, something about the tilt of her head, the slight upturn of the corner of her mouth and the bob of her chin-length, dark curls tells me that she’s absolutely tickled by my response.

A few days later, I’m trudging up a big hill in our neighborhood, panting and pushing my 2-year-old, Wilder, in a stroller, when my phone rings.

“Is now a good time?” Ashe asks, hearing my breathiness across the line.

As a mom to a toddler, is there ever really a “good time” for anything? “Yes!” I say with false confidence.

And just like that, a week later in mid-November, I mask up and head to the O.Henry magazine office to meet my new boss and start training, diving headfirst into the weeks of O.Hey’s gift guide, already mapped out. Though I’m now juggling a busier schedule, working when Wilder is at the Childhood Enrichment Center a few mornings a week, something sparks in me. I find complete and utter joy in learning to write in the pun-filled, playful O.Hey voice.

Months into the job, once I’ve gotten to know Ashe better — and I’ve discovered that our spirituality is aligned — I divulge the truth behind my answer that day on Zoom, about how the universe pointed my arrow toward O.Henry.

I had been writing a home decor and DIY blog for over 10 years, eventually creating social media content in order to stay relevant and to drive website traffic. But I’d grown tired of it — the delight it once brought me was gone. Instagram had lost its appeal as a place to connect and instead became a place to keep up. Ready for something new — but what, I did not know — I hired a coach, Chandra Kennett, who I’d actually “met” through Instagram. She asked me what it was that I really wanted to do, deep down.

“Well, I actually love writing Instagram captions, silly poems and personal essays. And I know that I want to make genuine connections with my local Greensboro community,” I answered. “But I don’t even know what I could possibly do with that.”

“You wait,” Chandra responded. She’d done my human design, a holistic, self-knowledge practice that is, admittedly, very woo-woo. “You’re a manifesting generator and your strategy is to respond, so for now, you just wait for what shows up.”

Wait? Anyone who knows me knows that patience is not one of my strong points. If it is even one of my points at all. But I trusted her and I painstakingly waited. In the meantime, I’d sit on my porch in the dark of the morning and pray: Show me what’s next on the path. I do not need to see the destination, but show me the next step and I will take it.

A month later, as I was out walking my dogs at 5:30 in the morning, I crossed paths with a neighbor I hadn’t yet met: the one and only Jim Dodson.

He stopped me and introduced himself, explaining that he was founding editor of O.Henry magazine. We’d only lived here for a year-and-a-half and I had a little one, a teen and a tween at home. In all honesty, I hadn’t heard of it. But I nodded my head along, pretending I knew all about it.

“We’re thinking of doing a story on children’s pandemic art and I noticed your daughter has done several chalk drawings in your driveway. She’s quite talented. Do you think she’d talk to us?”

Emmy is not the extrovert that I am, so I got his email address and told him I’d look into it as my dogs yanked me along, raring to go.

A few days later, I sent along some photos of Emmy’s handiwork — Baloo from Jungle Book, Homer Simpson, Rapunzel, to name a few — as well as a link to a post on my website, where I’d featured a colorful, cheery piece she’d painted for our pandemic porch. Shortly after that, Jim called me. “I have a job that I think you might be perfect for.”

And that, I tell Ashe, is how I came to be on that Zoom interview with her.

“Well,” she says, “that’s some kind of magic. However it happened, I’m glad you found your way here.”

“Me, too,” I say. Five years later, Ashe and I remain good friends, even though she’s answered the call of the mountains. I no longer write O.Hey — Christi Mackey has seamlessly taken over — but now sit in the editor’s seat of O.Henry, still just as grateful to be here. And, if you asked me now why it is that I want this job still today, I’d tell you that I found everything I was waiting for right here.

2025 Chaos Theory Department

Chaos Theory

CHAOS THEORY

Signs

. . . from the other side

By Cassie Bustamante

Signs are everywhere, if only we pay attention. Too fixated on where we are going and knocking out miles-long to-do lists, we often miss them. But, in my case, sometimes the universe gives me a little auditory nudge — a snap of its fingers, so to speak — before showing me the sign I need. Four years ago, it was a song.

I am driving south on Church Street with my teenage daughter, Emmy, riding shotgun on a clear, crisp day. We’re on our way home from Sunset Market Gardens, where I’ve loaded up on veggies, greens and eggs for the week. One of the perks to running errands with Mom, especially early morning weekend ones? Control of the music. Her playlist of every song ever released by Taylor Swift shuffles through the car speakers. When “Marjorie” comes on, Emmy casts me a sideways glance and offers a gentle smile, knowing that when I hear it, I think of Sarah, my best friend and former business partner who’s just passed away.

If I didn’t know better

I’d think you were still around

What died didn’t stay dead

You’re alive, you’re alive in my head

Just then, in an all-but-blue sky punctuated by a cloud or two, a rainbow appears. No sign of rain anywhere, yet there it is in its vivid ribbons of color. Emmy and I both gasp.

Two years later, I’ve just ended an exhausting month. My husband, Chris, has traveled three out of four weeks, while my kindergartener, Wilder, and I have both been sick. There’s only so much rage-vacuuming my house can take. Of course, with three kids and two dogs, the house isn’t actually clean, but the loud hum of the vacuum drowns out the noise nicely. I’ve heard it said that being an adult is a constant loop of saying “I just have to get through this week.” By that measure, I should be very grown up by now, though the jury’s still out.

Thanks to antibiotics, Wilder heads back to school and I’ve got a day to catch up on writing. Settled in at my favorite writing desk, the kitchen table, I tap away at my keyboard while a cool breeze blows through the open windows. Happy with my progress, I gift myself a little brain-break and mindlessly open up Facebook. A “memory” reminds me that today is the anniversary of Sarahs’s death. Immediately, a wash of shame spreads from my cheeks all the way to my toes. How could I have forgotten?

My eyes dart upward, to a place where I imagine Sarah can hear me. “I’m so sorry,” I whisper.

Not a moment later, before I even have time to pause to await a reply, I hear the familiar jingle of a dog’s collar. My own two pups are safely curled up on our leather sofa, but I peer onto our lawn and spy a dog I don’t recognize moseying around, no owner in sight.

Ugh, I don’t have time for this right now, I think. But I consider how I’d feel if my own dog was out there loose. Plus, I am a bit of a softie. In fact, when I became pregnant with our first child 19 years ago, Chris, worried I might put myself and the baby in danger, had to tell me to stop bringing home strays. But this shaggy, golden-amber dog looks innocent enough.

I step off my porch. “Hi, puppy.”

She saunters over slowly, tongue lagging out the side of her mouth, as I reach down to scratch behind her ears and catch a glimpse of the purple bone-shaped tag engraved with her name.

“Brownie,” I say, “aren’t you a sweet girl?” She rolls gently onto her back, inviting a belly rub.

I locate the tag with the owner’s number, and dial. The phone begins to ring and just before the owner answers, I catch the name on the tag so I know how to address her: Sarah.

I can’t believe it. And yet I can.

Sarah, the dog owner, and Brownie reunite with licks and snuggles on my front lawn as I look to the sky, where I imagine my friend smiling down at me.

It’s been four years since her death. Like waves of grief, the signs don’t stop coming, but have lessened, more time passing between each. And now, when I notice them, I don’t cry anymore. I smile, grateful in the knowledge that Sarah is still around.

2025 Chaos Theory Department

Chaos Theory

CHAOS THEORY

Forever Home

Turns out, you can’t stay forever

By Cassie Bustamante

When my only daughter, Emmy, was born 18-and-a-half years ago, I was immediately overwhelmed. With love, sure, but mostly with life. I already had a 17-month-old toddler, Sawyer, at home. My husband, Chris, traveled a lot for work. How on Earth was I going to survive with two little ones in diapers by myself? Now, it’s been just a couple of weeks since we sent Emmy off to her first year of college at Penn State, and I don’t know how I will manage without her here.

While Sawyer was a busy, on-the-move preschooler, Emmy, from a very early age, could sit and color contentedly for hours. I remember leaving her once, just 2 at the time, in our playroom so I could tend to Sawyer upstairs in our little split-foyer home. I felt panicky during the minutes I was away from her, but, when I returned, she sat in the same chair, still happily doodling with crayons in an array of bright colors. Before taking my seat next to her, I stared in wonder. Who was this calm, creative child?

Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t all Crayola rainbows and tissue-paper butterflies. With that artistic spirit comes a bit of environmental chaos. In fact, numerous studies have linked messiness with creativity. I can confirm that the spot where I sit in my home writing for this very magazine is surrounded by an impending avalanche of books, magazines, pens and papers threatening to send a half-drunk cup of room-temperature coffee flying onto the rug. Emmy’s space was her bedroom and, boy, did she express herself within its walls. For my own sanity, I usually just kept the door shut. Out of sight, out of mind. And, yes, I know this is rich coming from someone who’s just declared her space a wreck too.

But, on occasion, I’d spend the better part of my day giving her bedroom a thorough cleaning while she was in school, blissfully unaware of my intrusion. Armed with trash bags to stuff with garbage and donations, I’d sift through every nook and cranny. It was a challenge, to say the least, but the reward was worth it: little glimpses into her sparkling soul. In her desk drawers, I’d discover illustrated fairy tales she’d written. On the walls of her closet, she’d hung pictures of hearts and stars with motivational sayings, things like “You were meant to shine bright.”

She’s always used a mix of words and colors to communicate; it’s no wonder she ended up working on her Grimsley High School yearbook and plans to study journalism. Once, when she was 8 and had gotten in trouble, she left me a note on our kitchen island: “I am sorry for the way I acted. I was being a total jerk. It’s just that a lot of people have been mean to me. Love, Emmy. P.S. I hope you understand.” How can you stay mad at that?

Generally, she shied away from reading her own writing aloud, but, every once in a while, she couldn’t resist. Two weeks after leaving me that heartbreaking note, she penned a tune she titled “Forever Home.” Thankfully, 37-year-old me had the foresight to capture the moment she sang it to me, her crystal-blue eyes twinkling as she smiled proudly.

Now, a decade later, I’m back at home after loading all of her worldly belongings into our SUV and dropping her off in State College, Penn. My finger hovers for a moment and then I hit play on that video. Her squeaky little voice fills my ears as tears fill my eyes:

Forever home, you’re never alone

You’re always with someone,

Say hello, say goodbye,

Say hello, change your mind,

’Cause you’re with someone,

And even if you’re not,

You’ll still have us.

Once again, I feel overwhelmed. Somehow, I managed to get through those years of having two little ones in diapers. So much, in fact, that a decade later, we even decided to add a third, Wilder, who is almost as old as Emmy was when she wrote that song. And no, I don’t know how to keep going without her here every day, but I know I will. And I hope that she knows that no matter where life leads her over the next four years and beyond, we are always with her and we remain her steadfast “Forever Home.”

2025 Chaos Theory Department

Chaos Theory

CHAOS THEORY

The Game of the Name

An homage to Mark Twain, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Laura Ingalls Wilder

By Cassie Bustamante

When my daughter, Emmy, met her first-year Penn State roommate, Taylor, online this summer, the young women exchanged full names for their roommate request forms.

“Emerson is your full name?” Taylor texted. “It’s really pretty! My mom thought so, too.”

“Yeah,” Emmy replied. “My mom gave us all literary names. I’m named after Ralph Waldo Emerson. My older brother, Sawyer, is named after Tom Sawyer, and my little brother, Wilder, after Laura Ingalls Wilder.”

“That is actually so badass,” messaged Taylor. “I aspire to name my kids after literary legends like your mom.”

As for my own first name, it did not come from literature. Nor did it come from Greek mythology. You know the story — the ill-fated Cassandra, able to see the future with utter clarity but cursed by Apollo to be believed by no one. So many times, I had to explain that wasn’t even close to what my mother had in mind. She’d been just 13 when she heard it on the original vampire soap opera, Dark Shadows, swearing that if she one day had a daughter, she would name her Cassandra, just like the show’s witch. Nine years later, I was born.

“But she was just so beautiful,” my mom said, telling me, in her defense, about how my name had a dark side. Never mind that she was not a good witch by any stretch of the imagination.As a teenager myself, I’d landed on the name Hadley if I ever had a girl. Ah, Hemingway’s wife, right? Alas, that’s not my source. You see, I grew up in a small town in Western Massachusetts. We weren’t far from charming places you may have heard of, like Northampton and Amherst. Nestled between them is the quaint village of Hadley and below that, naturally, is South Hadley, home to my favorite woodsy escape during my high school years: Skinner Mountain. I took countless hikes there with my dad or with friends, sometimes both.

Nearby was a café called the Thirsty Mind, still there today. After a fall hike, we’d reward ourselves with giant chocolate chip cookies and steaming cups of hot cocoa. Or my pals and I would venture there at night, sipping tea and playing Chinese checkers or one of the many other well-loved games the shop had lying around. All that to say, South Hadley holds a special place in my New England-loving heart.

So, when my husband, Chris, and I found ourselves preparing for our first child in 2005, I was sure I was carrying little miss Hadley. That is, until the doctor pointed out that I may want to consider Hudson versus Hadley because there on the ultrasound were very clear boy parts. I spent the next couple of months agonizing over names. As an Enneagram type four (the personality-type system’s “individualist”), I wanted a name I’d never heard on another person before. The English major in me thought perhaps literature could inspire me and I recalled the collections of novels my brother and I had on our shelves as children. One stood out: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

“Sawyer,” I said aloud to Chris.

It was a good, strong name, he agreed. What he didn’t dare tell me was that there was a character named Sawyer on his current favorite television show, Lost, which began airing just a few months before I found out I was pregnant. By the time someone mentioned it to me, I was already calling the growing baby in my belly Sawyer. It was a done deal.

When Sawyer was 9 months old, we found out his little sister was on the way. And while I still loved the name Hadley, its time had passed.

“What about Emilia?” I asked Chris. “Emilia Bustamante. Doesn’t that sound pretty? And we could call her Emmy.”

“Sounds too Spanish,” he replied dryly.

“Um, you are Cuban,” I said.

“I do like Emmy, though,” he said.

With that in mind, I continued to ponder names. What else could I shorten to Emmy?

Emma? Too common.

Emmet? All I could picture was a washtub-bass-playing Muppet otter.

Emerson, as in Ralph Waldo Emerson, poet, writer, philosopher? Sign this literary-lover up!

Years later, when the last of our gaggle of children was due to arrive, I decided he had to follow the precedent we set with his siblings — a name inspired by a writer or literary character. I was not a Thornton Wilder fan, so apologies to those who think the baby of our family, Wilder, was named for him. But Laura Ingalls Wilder? Yes, indeed. I’ll take Little House over Our Town any day. So infatuated was I as a child that my mother sewed me a floral dress, apron and bonnet so that I could not only appreciate Laura, but I could channel her, too.

And now Wilder will have to go through life probably explaining to people, “No, no. My mom’s a big book nerd, but it’s not that playwright Thornton dude or even the kid from the novel White Noise. Nope — I’m named after some little girl who lived in some little house on some great big prairie.”

“But she was a brilliant writer,” I’ll tell him! And I’ll remind him of the quote of hers I had over his crib when he was a baby: “Some old-fashioned things like fresh air and sunshine are hard to beat. In our mad rush for progress and modern improvements let’s be sure we take along with us all the old-fashioned things worth while.” Like a good name.

2025 Chaos Theory Department

Chaos Theory

CHAOS THEORY

Frozen in Time

A good-to-the-last-melted-drop tour of area ice cream shops

By Cassie Bustamante

If you could only eat one thing for the rest of your life, what would it be? It’s one of those questions that pops up as an ice breaker in awkward social settings. My answer is always at the ready: ice cream! And in a recent and not-quite-scientific study, 80% of participants (four out of five people in my nuclear family) agreed, sharing my unmelting devotion. Sawyer, my 19-year-old outlier, would take a baked good over a chilled sweet treat any day (and every day). But my youngest, Wilder? Well, the scoop doesn’t fall far from the cone.

At the very beginning of last summer as I looked ahead to hectic weeks of juggling Wilder’s camp schedule with my own work schedule, I felt overwhelmed — and a tad bit guilty that he’d be shuffling from camp to camp. I decided to give us something to look forward to every Friday afternoon, ending the week on a sweet note.

“What if we spend the summer taking an ice cream tour of Greensboro?” I ask 6-year-old Wilder one June afternoon. “Every Friday, we could chill at a new spot in town?”

“Yes!” he emphatically answers. “I love ice cream!” Not that I thought I’d have to twist his arm.

While I am a Leo who lives in typical creative chaos, my rising sign is a Virgo — meaning, I love a good spreadsheet. I get to work right away making a Google Sheet listing all of the local ice cream shops I can think of; plus, I hit up friends for recommendations and, of course, ask the all-knowing internet.

We begin our journey with a brand-new shop we’ve never been to on Battleground called Ice Cream Factory. Wilder orders a scoop of superman — a swirl of bright red, yellow and blue. If I told him it was entirely fruit flavored, including strawberry and banana, he’d never eat it. But, marketed as a comic book hero, he’s all in. Meanwhile, I pair key lime with raspberry roadrunner — a heavenly combination that tingles my palate. A shelf in the back is piled high with all sorts of games and puzzles. Long after our spoons have scraped the last of our treats from our cups, we spend an hour-and-a-half playing Trouble, Connect Four and cards.

In the car on the ride home, I ask, “What did you think of that place?”

It’s not technically a factory, he informs me in a tone of total authority, “but I guess they liked the name Ice Cream Factory. If it was a factory they would have machines that made the ice cream there and they would have robot arms that gave you the ice cream.” I stifle a giggle.

“OK, so, on a scale of one to five stars, how many stars would you give it?”

He pauses in serious contemplation. “Five stars.” Turns out, there’s no point deduction for the lack of robots.

At Yum Yum, a Greensboro staple since 1906, Wilder orders birthday-cake-flavored ice cream. After he’s finished every last melted drop, he announces, “I like superman better.” We’d committed to trying new-to-us flavors at each spot and it isn’t lost on Wilder that Yum Yum has its own superman flavor on the menu, which, clearly, he wishes he’d been able to order. Yum Yum, in Wilder’s highly calculated opinion also earns a five-star rating “because the place is pretty cool and it has a good name.”

At Maple View in Gibsonville, lured by its vibrant rainbow colors, Wilder orders a sherbet. It’s too sour for his tongue, he tells me. Funny, that doesn’t stop him from eating it all and awarding the shop five stars. Why? “It’s a really great place,” he says, “but not good ice cream.” I think he was also a big fan of the huge chocolate ice cream cone in the window.

Our summer Fridays continue on like this, visiting Ozzie’s, Homeland Creamery and everywhere in between, Wilder doling out five stars to almost every institution. Well, except for Cook-Out, where he ordered a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup shake and discovered he didn’t like big chunks of anything — even milk chocolate and sugar-laden peanut butter — interfering with the uninterrupted delivery of ice cream through the straw into his mouth. “Three stars,” he pronounces gravely. I explain that Cook-Out shakes are meant to be eaten with a spoon sometimes, but he’s not having it. Meanwhile, my 18-year-old, Emmy, and I gleefully gorge ourselves on our mint Oreo shakes, while my husband, Chris, gulps down his Butterfinger.

Turns out, if you do your research, there are enough five-star ice cream shops in the area to fill an entire summer’s worth of Fridays — and then some.

While we aren’t repeating the tour this summer, two new shops have since opened, plus we’re always up to sprinkling in repeat stops. And the cherry on top is that, this time, I don’t give a lick what he orders and how many stars he doles out. Because, as it turns out, it’s not about the ice cream at all. It never was. It’s about freezing a moment in time between a mom and her son.

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Chaos Theory

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You Must Be Tripping

A whirlwind weekend of misadventures

By Cassie Bustamante

Our oldest, 19-year-old Sawyer, does not ask for much: a roof over his head, a hand-me-down clunker of a car and a lifetime supply of Eggo waffles. So, when he comes to me with a request, I listen, knowing I’ll do what I can to grant his wish.

“Mom, wanna go to Boston with me?” he asks, knowing how I, a born-and-raised Bay Stater, am always up for a pilgrimage to my home state. “The Six Invitational is there, but,” he sheepishly adds, “it’s Valentine’s weekend.”

If you’re thinking, “The what?” right now, you’re not alone.

“It’s a tournament for my favorite video game, Rainbow Six Siege,” he says, his blue eyes hopeful while my own glaze over.

Forget what I said about making his dreams come true. “Uh, no. But maybe Dad will go? Ask him.”

A few days later, my husband, Chris, approaches me. This time his blue eyes glimmer as he tries to persuade me to join them. “We can have a Valentine’s getaway while he is at his tournament.”

Sounds lovely, right? Except he’s forgotten one thing — our other two kids. “And who will watch Wilder?” I ask. Right away, he suggests Emmy, our 18-year-old. “So, you’re saying we just leave Emmy behind to watch her little brother, who has been begging to fly on an airplane for two years, while the three of us galavant around a city she adores?”

“Uh, yeah,” he says.

“Not gonna happen. You take Sawyer,” I say. “Or, we all go.”

And so, at 6 a.m. on Valentine’s Day, we set off to make Sawyer’s dream come true and have a little family fun in the meantime.

Since it’s a rather quick trip, we don’t waste a second. We eat our way across Boston’s North End, aka Little Italy, tour Paul Revere’s home, touch stingrays at the New England Aquarium, and shop up and down Newbury Street. By Sunday morning, even the kids are zonked and ready to return home.

And that’s when Sawyer’s dream trip turns into a nightmare for us. Overnight snowfall has transformed into a mix of sleet and rain, leaving slushy puddles at every street corner. Chris and I brave the elements alone, trudging the half mile to Dunkin’ Donuts with the kids’ breakfast orders in hand.

A true New Englander, I’ve packed waterproof Timberlands, but Chris, born and raised in Miami, is wearing sneakers. By the time we return to the hotel schlepping soggy paper bags, his feet are chilled to the bone and his mood, well, dampened. Wilder takes one look at his breakfast choice —an untoasted bagel, just as he prefers at home — and whines that his bagel is cold.

Frustrated, Chris escapes into a hot shower. Ten minutes later, he emerges from the steaming bathroom, phone in hand, and says flatly, “Our flight’s been cancelled.” And, to make matters worse, the airline can’t get us back to North Carolina until Tuesday night.

With jobs to get back to and a 13-hour drive in front of us, Chris starts dialing rental car companies, juggling both of our phones, desperate for a vehicle with three rows to accommodate us comfortably. No luck. We book what we can. At the rental car counter, however, a small — mini, to be exact — miracle happens. “They have a minivan!” Chris exclaims triumphantly a moment later. At last, we’re hightailing it out of Beantown, wind blowing against the vehicle. For the next several hours, Chris stares straight ahead, navigating us through gusts up to 40 m.p.h., rain, sleet and side-blowing snow. It’s treacherous, but he’s a man on a mission. My job? Keep an eye on the radar and find a restaurant everyone will like. As soon as we are through the last of the weather map’s aqua-blue blob, I select a 4.3-Google starred spot close to Scranton, Pa., touted for pizza, pasta and sandwiches.

We’re all famished when the restaurant finally appears in the distance and its lights are out. “Closed,” a sign reads.

“Well,” I say to Chris, “I saw a Waffle House right off the exit.” And it more than does the job — everyone’s happy. Wilder, who’s up until this moment existed on a made-in-the-car peanut butter sandwich and some gummies, scarfs down his first warm meal of the day without complaint.

Carl, our friendly and chatty waiter, is bald with dark, thick eyebrows, reminding me of Food Network’s Duff Goldman. Despite our dining in several Boston tony (and pricey) eateries, he’s the best waiter we’ve had all weekend, tucked away at the most northern Pennsylvania Waffle House. According to Carl, people drive all the way from Maine just to experience the all-night diner, but we’d drive back just for Carl. We’re all overtired, perhaps a little cranky, but his kindness softens us.

Bellies full, we hit the road once again, stopping a couple hours later to check into a hotel.

We say goodnight to Sawyer and Emmy, who have the room next to us. Chris gives Wilder a quick bath and reads him Dog Man while I wash my face, brush my teeth and try to avoid thinking about how we have to wake up and do it all over again tomorrow.

I take my turn to tuck Wilder in and kiss him goodnight. “Thanks for being such a trooper, kiddo,” I say.

His little face looks happily up at me and he says, “Today was a fun day!”

His sleepy eyes close and he drifts off to dreamland. “Fun” feels like a stretch, but, only a few months later, the kids are already turning what seemed, at the time, like a huge ordeal into an adventure-filled odyssey back home. One thing I know is that our next family vacation destination will be a short road trip away.

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Chaos Theory

CHAOS THEORY

Pirou-what?

Toeing my way into ballet

By Cassie Bustamante

For the last year and a half, my youngest, Wilder, has been learning how to bop with the beat in a weekly dance class. I signed him up for Dance Project’s “Little Rhythms” after a friend casually mentioned that her son had been going and enjoyed it. My own glory days of ballet and tap, which I took until I hit middle school, twirled around in my head. No, I wasn’t the most graceful, but dance is about so much more than that. Plus, to be honest, when I learned that there was no commitment to a recital — you could opt in or opt out — I was stoked. I’d sashayed down that path once before with my daughter and had zero desire to be a “Dance Mom.”

And yet, here I am among other parents, sitting on a bench just outside a mirrored studio while our kiddos move and groove, doing their best to follow their instructor’s lead. Occasionally, I peer in and catch a glimpse of my kindergartener. Is he doing the correct moves? No. But is he having fun? One hundred percent, yes. His cobalt Nikes are flying off the beat and he’s struggling to get the steps right, but his blue eyes reflect the absolute joy he’s finding in movement.

As class progresses week after week and the recital approaches, the question of the performance arrises.

“I just want to watch,” he replies assuredly.

Then, with just a couple of weeks until curtain call, costumes arrive. I haven’t ordered one for Wilder, but, as it turns out, one happens to be there with his name on it.

It could be, perhaps, that he just wants the thrill of dressing up in something fun, but I can see a thought flicker across his little face — he is reconsidering. If we are going to commit to this show, I want utter certainty.

“You know, it means you’ll be dancing on stage in front of the audience. I’ve seen your moves and I know you are a fantastic dancer,” I say, “but I want you to do it because you want to. Are you sure?” He is.

The day arrives and he seems to have absolutely zero pre-show jitters. Frankly, I am in awe. My own heart races as I recall my own dance recital nerves.

Backstage, I kiss him good-bye and leave him in the capable hands of a dance parent volunteer. I take my seat in the audience, surrounded by my parents, my husband, Chris, and my daughter, Emmy.

Finally, Wilder’s class enters from stage right as the backdrop glows in Aladdin-blue. A beat drops as the song starts: You know it’s Will Smith and DJ Khaled! With a little guidance from their teacher, the kids spend the next minute and 20 seconds strutting their stuff to “Friend Like Me.” As the crowd erupts in cheers, I wipe a tear from my eye because seeing my child doing something he loves has made me so uncontainably happy.

As the show comes to an end and all performers return to stage for their final bows, Wilder leads his class out and continues to freestyle until the very end. I know, with certainty, that we’ll be back for dance class in the fall.

So once again, I find myself on that bench, peering in the window of that studio space. Just next to it is a blackboard with neon chalk writing that catches my eye: “Sign up for adult classes!” I glance back through the window. Wilder’s elbows and feet are all over, but his smile stays put. And I think, Why not me?

Back at home, I log onto my computer and register for “Absolute Beginner Adult Ballet.” Sure, I’ve got experience, but that was 40 years ago. At my very first class, I slide peachy-pink ballet slippers onto my feet and find my place along the barre with several other women of all ages. At 46, I still lack grace and coordination, but, as I’ve learned from Wilder, talent is not a prerequisite for enjoyment. The music starts — a piano cover of ABBA’s “Super Trouper” — and I plié, tendu and jeté. Turns out, I am not a dance mom. I am a dancing mom.

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Partners in Grime

A bit of a fixer-upper

By Cassie Bustamante

The summer I turned 7, my family moved from small-town Upstate New York to Wilbraham, a small-town in Western Massachusetts. Picture quaint, 200-year-old homes, churches surrounded by old, stone walls and even a very old, red schoolhouse-turned abode. Everywhere you looked, the streets bubbled over with New England charm. But our new house? Not so much. It bubbled over with ick.

My mother and I made the trek across states together, leaving my father behind to cheer on my older brother, Dana, who was playing in a little league tournament. I hadn’t yet seen any photos of the new digs, but I’ve always thrived on change and the opportunity to meet new people. And, this time, we were moving to be closer to family. We’d be in the same town as both sets of grandparents and close to all sorts of cousins, aunts and uncles.

In fact, Wilbraham was the town where my parents met as high school students with backyards abutting one another. Back then, my dad wore his white-blonde hair in a 1970s swoop that cascaded in front of his eyes, suiting his shy personality. My mom, a petite brunette with a Farrah Fawcett ’do, was gregarious and often teacher’s pet. Come to think of it, a lot like me. It wasn’t until they both enrolled at Springfield College in the fall of 1974 that sparks flew.

All along the drive, I chattered away excitedly, driving Mom bonkers. The anticipation came to a jarring halt when we pulled into a driveway. This could not be it. I prayed that this was some kind of joke and, surely, Mom was about to shout, “Gotcha!” In front of me stood a dilapidated, brown 1964 Colonial with red shutters — the worst color combination known to man — and an attached two-car garage. The paint was blistered and peeling, rot everywhere. This was it? I wept.

When my brother arrived a week later, he had the same reaction. In fact, he packed a suitcase and said he was going to ride his bike back to New York and live with friends. I wondered how he’d manage the suitcase while pedaling, but I never witnessed that level of stunt mastery because he stayed.

Beyond the front door, the family room featured the inevitable ’60s faux-bois paneled walls and linoleum flooring that vaguely resembled bricks. The tacky residue left behind by a rug adhesive attracted the fur of our golden retriever, Butterscotch. In fact, every surface seemed sticky and dirty.

But it was as if Mom and Dad could see into a crystal ball, which magically showed them something I couldn’t see — the spark of potential underneath all that grime. They rolled up their sleeves and got to work. In sections, they replaced wooden siding along with rotten windows. They repainted the exterior a soft gray and gave it new barn-red shutters, a color combo that still remains in place today, according to my Google search, almost 40 years later. I recall many days spent outside, flipping over rocks in search of salamanders, while Dad sat atop the house with his cousins, hammering down a new roof.

Grampa, Dad’s dad, was a self-made entrepreneur who owned a wholesale hardware company, and thus understood the world of home renovation. He’d appear from time to time to “help” Dad with weekend warrior projects. But not until he’d sat on the porch munching on a donut and sipping coffee, followed by playing basketball with me and my brother in the driveway. And then, “Oh, would you look at that? I’ve got to go if I am going to make my tee time!” Maybe he took it too easy, but we all look back on those moments with laughter. Cancer took his life way too soon just a couple years later when he was just 59.

On weekends when repairs weren’t being made, Bob Vila’s voice rang through the kitchen while I ate my grilled peanut butter sandwich, This Old House playing on our wooden console television set in the nearby family room. YouTube and TikTok were still decades away from being created, kids. My parents had to learn about DIY through reading books and checking the Sunday paper’s TV schedule to make sure they didn’t miss their favorite DIY shows.

Mom, an avid gardener who knew just what would thrive where, planted flowers aplenty to create a lush and vibrant yard. Lilac bushes lined our white picket fence. Just outside the back door, an herb garden’s fragrance wafted through our kitchen window all summer long. We teasingly called it the “Herb”— with a hard “H” — garden, naming it after the endearing, out-of-shape man in one of Mom’s Jane Fonda exercise videos.

My parents poured everything — blood, sweat, tears and what little money they had — into making that hideous monstrosity a jewel of the neighborhood. As a 6-year-old, I hadn’t understood the possibility, but as a 46-year-old I’ve learned something about compromise and seeking out hidden potential.

Over the 21 years that my husband, Chris, and I have been married, we’ve bought a few well-worn homes. And every one, we’ve made our own with paint and — like my parents — blood, sweat, tears and all the money we could muster. When we arrived in Greensboro in January 2019, the 1960s Starmount Forest ranch home we moved into was far from a looker, but it ticked the boxes for a family of five. Though our new house was not nearly as neglected as my childhood home in New England, my own kids felt a little like I had the day I arrived in Wilbraham with my mom. The magic simply wasn’t there. But, thanks to my parents, I’ve realized that magic is something you create through a combination of creativity, hard work and collaboration that includes the kids. And as the months have turned into years, we’ve turned a house into a home, one that our two older kiddos will look forward to returning to next fall when they’re both away at college. That is, until they have their own fixer upper to make their own.

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