Tag: Home Grown

Home Grown

HOME GROWN

Susie Baby and Teddy

Long gone but never forgotten

By Cynthia Adams

My elegant friend, Dixie, a former model, once dressed for the office in Ferragamo heels and sleek skirts.

Heads swiveled whenever she glided past, a study in grace. But it was her kindness that drew us to her.

As a native Charlestonian, Dixie remains the closest thing I have known to gentility. Her historic apartment contains finely curated antiques, textiles and books, both inherited and found heirlooms. She calls it “the Nest.”

Now, a health issue keeps her mostly Nest-bound. Still, she spends her days staying current, reading poetry, clipping items from The New Yorker, which she sends to friends, and dispensing small gifts to the postman and neighbors.

Dixie asked me to bring chocolates, her favorite thing in all the world, to enjoy and share as COVID raged. Standing at a careful distance outside on the fire escape, I made the delivery as she shared news about a newborn great-grandaughter.

We were both introspective. Undone by the anxieties of a pandemic, we moved to parenting, especially in such a time, and how easily parents inflict injuries. Moldering injuries too easily retrieved.

Dixie quietly mentioned Susie Baby, her doll. In her child’s mind, Susie Baby was real, beloved.

When Dixie was a small child, her strict parents firmly enforced bedtime. Once tucked in, she was not allowed to get up. During a lashing storm, Dixie searched among the blankets to reassure Susie Baby.

Susie Baby was not there.

Dixie lay abed, remembering that she’d played with Susie Baby outside before dinner, bath and bedtime, before the violent storm struck. She could not go to Susie Baby’s rescue.

At daybreak, she flew outside and found Susie Baby.

“Her face was disfigured, and I think part of it was in fragments.” Dixie recalled, her voice tremulous.

She felt as shattered as her doll. As if it were a death.

A tear glimmered at the memory.

Perhaps a better, more restrained listener than I would have waited, letting Dixie’s story — and its obvious pain — settle there. But my mind had traveled back, too.

Despite myself, I began talking about Teddy, a bear I much preferred to dolls as a child. A bear who had grown smelly and tattered.

To me, though, Teddy was perfect, even more perfect than my shape-shifting, carefree, imaginary friend Pixie. After all, he was tactile, soft and worn.

Whereas Pixie rambled the world seeking adventure, Teddy was a constant. Never far from my side, Teddy was an anchoring source of comfort, especially at night when all manner of monsters lurked. Nor did Teddy judge whenever I had, as actress Catherine O’Hara called it, a nighttime “oopsie daisy.”

My germophobic mother decided the bear was dangerously unhygienic. While I was out playing with a friend, she tossed Teddy in the trash.

Like Dixie’s loss of Susie Baby, I traced the loss of Teddy.

Dixie quietly listened, allowing a second tremulous tear to fall without wiping it away.

Afterward, I waved goodbye to her where she waited on the fire escape, Dixie’s pale, elegant hand raised in farewell.

With the world roiling with the terror of a plague, we had summoned up our oldest friends, our first comforters. Susie Baby. Teddy.

Memoirist Alexandra Fuller writes, “sit still and observe what disturbs you.”

There is remembering, but then there is the harder thing, the only thing left.

Since I can’t summon forgetfulness, could I forgive?

Home Grown

HOME GROWN

Dressed to Depress

A fit about ‘fits

By Cynthia Adams

I’m all for casual wear. Blue jeans outnumber all else in my closet.

My grandmothers would roll over in their graves — probably still in girdles in the afterlife — if they saw me wearing a T-shirt and jeans to a work meeting. Like their friends, they wore dresses daily, unless, say, gardening and sometimes even then. And beneath their simple frocks, torturous girdles held everything firmly in place.

Certainly, until my Mama starved herself to her goal, she wore a girdle anytime she gussied up. Which was almost all the time — because Mama, as she often made clear, had dreams. She dressed for the life she aspired to, a glamorous life like that of the film and soap opera stars she adored.

And she swore up and down they wore girdles.

“Shape wear” is what such undergarments are called now, rebranded as such by reality show celebrities. “Girdle” is an outmoded expression that might just puzzle younger folk. Defined by Merriam-Webster: a woman’s close-fitting undergarment often boned and usually elasticized that extends from the waist to below the hips. A girdle, I will stress, by any other name, be it the cutesy “Spanx” or “Skims,” is still an instrument of torture — and I never intend to wear one.

(Round is a perfect shape, by the way.)

Comfort, certainly among my Southern kin, had no place.

My grandmothers wore hats, too, when they dressed up, which meant no part of their body, not even their head, was comfortable. These were not boho bucket hats. They were as bizarrely shaped as the fascinators beloved by the Brits. Often, they were placed on a perilous angle requiring actual hat pins to hold in place. Getting a flu shot or a root canal might exempt them from hat wearing, but, even then they wore their Sunday best, strictly necessitating girdles, hose and heels.

Flats were for invalids and old age pensioners, I was taught. Suitable only for shuffling to and fro when reduced to shuffling only.

Of course, the world changed. Girdles (excepting Spanx, or on those recovering from back surgery or suffering from hernias) grew rare. Even fewer folk wore hats. Or dressed up for anything but an occasion, such as a wedding or funeral.

Even a funeral isn’t a sure thing when it comes to graveside mourners kitted out in veils, hose and heels, looking like prime suspects in a British whodunnit.

It’s disappointing, frankly, that funerals don’t merit sartorial suffering anymore.

As far as root canals or any other medical procedure goes, patients no longer put as much effort — if any — into their appearance as my grandmothers once did. I learned this on morning walks, winding through a medical park, where multitudes arrive for medical appointments.

The scrubs-clad staff arrive dressed for business.

But the patients? They check in wearing jeans, shorts, T-shirts, flip-flops or sneakers — basically, whatever they might wear to wash the dog.

Or less.

One morning, a young woman exiting a suite of eye specialists stepped into view, wearing what appeared to be a skimpy two-piece swimsuit. As in an actual bikini.

What an eye test!

I gawped. Speaking of dogs, when did Southerners decide to just let themselves go?

Mama never went to a doctor’s appointment, the DMV or the A&P without hair and makeup done. Her outfit — heels, purse and, always, clip-on “ear bobs” — carefully chosen. None of it was chosen for comfort. The heels made her bunions throb, and the clip-ons made her ear lobes pulse with pain. But, like Clairee in Steel Magnolias, Mama firmly believed “the only thing that separates us from the animals is our ability to accessorize.”

As I tugged a garbage can to the street Sunday afternoon, a woman and her daughter walked past with a Collie. The middle-aged mother wore a skimpy nylon sports bra and even skimpier shorts. No top.

The dog was the most modestly dressed of the three.

Mama wouldn’t have gone to her own back porch wearing her underwear with a pair of shorts. Not even if the only creatures in sight were raccoons.

My mind screamed. “God’s nightgown! That woman’s walking down the street in a bra!”

Comfort is a peculiar thing. I get comfort, especially when it comes to shoes, I truly do. And, dear readers, I get body positivity. That mother is comfortable with herself in a way I can never be.

Having never understood Madonna’s embrace of underwear as outwear, bralettes as tops or lacy, colorful bra straps deliberately revealed, it seems I have officially entered the Age of Concealment.

I personally prefer to have all my bits fully covered as my age accelerates past all legal speed limits.

That makes me comfortable.

But to the consternation of my elders, I, too, once rebelled against being trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey in underwire bras and infuriating pantyhose.

“But, Honey,” my Daddy would say as he frowned at my low-slung bell bottoms. “Look at your Mama. Dress like you own the bank, not like you need a loan.”

He groaned as I strutted away on Pee-wee Herman-style platforms: “What on God’s Earth have we come to?”

2025 Department Home Grown

Home Grown

HOME GROWN

You Are What You Wear

Like it or not

By Cynthia Adams

My father never had to be asked twice to go shopping, especially for groceries. What he didn’t like was being hurried. Choosing the best rib eye might require a solid 10 minutes.

“Marbling,” he’d murmur, scrutinizing the fat flecks of a steak with surgical interest as the butcher waited.

Clothes shopping was no different. He often joined my mother, egging her on to try dress after dress, evaluating each frock. Was it too short? Too frumpy? Did it overpower her small frame? Mama, an impulsive shopper, had little patience for long deliberations.

She liked flash and bling as much as Dad liked fat-streaked T-bones. Whether a pork chop or a pant suit, he analyzed purchases with a strange dedication.

Dad earnestly believed he could save Mama from fashion crimes. He steered her towards classics, well-tailored and simple, long before the quiet luxury trend. But Mama leaned into flamboyant femininity — heels, furs and cocktail wear in the daytime. Liz Taylor and Joan Collins were lifestyle icons.

Mama wore a cocktail ring and negligee while rolling out biscuit dough at breakfast. Come evening, she never missed a Dallas or Dynasty episode. Afterward, she took long baths, emerging dewy-skinned in something diaphanous, trailing cologne de nuit.

She reminisced about starring in Fairview High School’s play, imagining a career on stage. If not for the traditional life she chose, including five children and an annoyingly opinionated husband, she might have lived the life of Liz.

At the very least, she planned to look the part.

Their shopping forays were certainly like watching Liz and Burton spar.

In answer to “What do you think Warren?” as she pivoted, he would artlessly offer his first reaction: “Shug, that dress is wearing you.”

Mama would purse her lips, burnished red with Revlon’s Cherries in the Snow, and shoot him a withering look.

Nonetheless, Dad wanted his opinions sought when it came to dressing what he considered “his” women. When I needed a prom dress, he volunteered to take me shopping. Inwardly, I dreaded the inevitable critique before we drew up outside the Belk store in Monroe.

He zeroed in on the most chaste dress in the junior department — a ballerina-pink dress prettily embroidered with rosebuds. I emerged from the dressing room looking like a cupcake. This was not what I was aiming for, but he practically cheered with approval.

My father adored a dress that made me look like a Nutcracker extra.

When I tried on a less modest number more like what my friends were wearing, he dropped a truth bomb.

“Honey, you don’t have the bustline to pull that off,” he observed. My face flamed with heat.

This was the kind of feedback Mama loathed.

Dad thrust the rosebud dress into the clerk’s hands, despite my fallen face. Come prom night, the virginal dress paired with my slumped posture read more Patty Duke than the sultry Daisy Duke I’d hoped for.

Cheerleaders and majorettes swanned past me in spaghetti straps and push-up bras as I spent the night loitering by the punch bowl with a completely tongue-tied date. My main activity was ruing my reflection during nervous restroom treks.

Mama would never have worn that dress. She’d have fought him on that. After all, she fought him all the way to divorce court.

Afterwards, she went full-tilt glam without Dad there to inhibit her impulses. Mama’s hairdo grew so high no one but her hairdresser could say where her scalp ended and hair began. She wore the highest heels even when her bunions screamed.

On a trip to Florida, she bought a door-knocker of a cocktail ring with a purported connection to the Super Bowl. The governor was off the accelerator and Mama swiftly blew through her divorce settlement.

Nearly broke, she took a job at a new consignment shop.

Wealthy women with nearby lake homes consigned their finery there and Mama got first dibs. While she had seldom dressed better, she loathed wearing “second-hand” fashion, even while enjoying more wardrobe changes than Cher.

None of that mattered.

When I praised a chic Chanel dupe she wore to a family dinner, she hissed at me, annoyed, “It isn’t real!”

As soon as she left that job, she resumed her preferred buying habit of new only.

I turned out to be quite the opposite, thrilled whenever I score a good knockoff, vintage find or a designer hand-me-down.

Nonetheless, while Mama may not have inspired thrift, she modeled individuality, conformity be damned.

Recently, a young friend met me for a drink sporting turquoise-colored hair. How could I not comment? I complimented her, privately thinking I have never been so free, nor so brave. She replied, “You can be ruled by all of the things that everyone else wants from you, or you can just have fun with your life.”

And just like that, I imagined Mama, radiating approval.

2025 Department Home Grown

Home Grown

HOME GROWN

If Life is a Highway, Where’s the Off Ramp?

Tales of peril on the open road

By Cynthia Adams

Recent legislature forbidding distracted driving briefly flickered in the news. Its marketing featured a driver speeding along with a shaggy dog, its head hanging out the window.

Plenty of us recall a time when children or pets could pretty much ride anywhere they would fit inside a vehicle. Heck, even plopped on open-air truck beds. Which is actually still legal for farmers going to and from market.

The 1950s and ’60s ushered in a new era for family travels, and plenty of us couldn’t wait to hit the road. My imaginary friend, Pixie, and I had no trouble squeezing into the family sedan or Dad’s old pickup at any opportunity — I loved riding standing up beside my father with my left arm looped around his neck. There was always room for Pixie beside me, of course.

A nation newly traversed by interstates, thanks to initiatives by President Eisenhower, made a journey a heckuva lot easier. (My Great Uncle Miles regaled us with stories about him and his brother John navigating a trek westward in a “Tin Lizzie,” an atlas their only guide. Upon reaching the Rockies, Uncle Miles said the Model T ended their crossing by rolling backwards down the mountain, having insufficient engine power.

But now the road was open and calling, and rural folk were catching the travel bug.

A friend recalled squeezing above the back seat into the rear window niche of a two-toned, yellow-and-white ’56 Chevy destined for the nation’s capital. (He, too, grew up in a time before children’s safety car seats, seatbelts or any safety constraints.)

“You’d be arrested now,” he chuckled, recalling napping in that window nook as the family vehicle set off. His grandmother, along with his mother, and great uncle and aunt “piled into one car and drove seven hours.”

He woke as they rolled to a stop when they neared D.C., his aunt seeking directions to the closest dime store. He was ordered to remain in the car with his uncle, forestalling the inevitable begging for a toy.

His Aunt Nettie huffed back after leaving the dime store, “We’re going home!”

His crestfallen mother entreated, “But why?”

“You can tell all you need to know about a town by the quality of their dime store,” she answered scornfully. “We haven’t lost anything here.”

His Uncle Elmer turned the Chevy around, driving straight back to Burlington.

Whatever happened in the dime store was not discussed. Did they fail to stock her favorite snuff? “Aunt Nettie was a closet snuff dipper. Beehive [brand].”

I remembered a misadventure of my own in my aunt’s drab-green, ungainly Plymouth she’d named Zesta.

One summer’s morning, my aunt and my mother packed the car for a husband-free trip to Cherry Grove, a family beach, suitcases strapped to the roof.

There was ample room for 5-year-old me to stand on the Naugahyde rear seat and watch the road retreating behind us as morning dissolved into afternoon. Pixie, my compact friend who looked exactly like Speedy in the Alka-Seltzer ads, was not along for the adventure.

Suddenly, the green Samsonite cases the two sisters had lashed to the roof broke free and I delightedly watched them bounce along the highway in our wake. Out spilled pajamas, clothing, toiletries and unmentionables. I giggled as motorists did their best to avoid them, veering wildly behind us.

My mother swiveled around. “What is so funny?”

I pointed to the scene behind us. “Our clothes! In the highway!”

My mother screamed.

My aunt screeched to the side of the road, Zesta’s white-wall tires kicking up a dust cyclone.

“What in the world?” my mother shouted at me. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

Our aunt was a striking woman, leggy, tanned and outdoorsy. More than one driver slowed just to get a better look at the blonde wearing beige Bermuda shorts, a halter top and white Keds. I myself couldn’t take my eyes off my aunt as she gathered up our belongings as best she could, darting in and out of traffic. Passing cars tooted.

My mother, the prissy one, shouted at her older sister to be careful as she stood cautiously by in a sundress, her hair and makeup just so.

My aunt rescued some pieces from the ditches and roadside, all of it soiled. We continued on our way, the sisters sobered and quiet. “I had a brand-new bottle of Tweed cologne,” my aunt sighed.

“Did ya’ll get new clothes,” asked my friend as we laughed about our road trips gone sideways.

“Of course not,” I answered.

Once at Cherry Grove, we would sit in the sand and eat grape popsicles, plus I rode the surf in an inflatable float.

I still had my blue bathing suit, which I called my “bathing soup.” And my Teddy, too, which I was wise enough to know could not have survived being stuffed into the airless suitcase.

Pixie was away on an Alaskan adventure, which was just as well, I decided. There would be much to tell him when we both returned.

2025 Department Home Grown

Home Grown

HOME GROWN

The Long Game

Sticking our necks out to see African wildlife

By Cynthia Adams

My first trip to meet my new husband’s South African friends and family included days spent in Kruger National Park. “Park” sounds inadequate. It’s the size of Israel.

Upon arrival, park rangers handled admissions. Today, the 7,576-square-mile park’s entry fees translate to about $28. I can’t recall costs at the time, but it was easily half of that price. Tours are self- or ranger-guided, but we opted for self-guided, which fit our paltry budget.

The map, along with the ranger’s terse warnings, was free:

Enter at your own peril.

Stay in your car with the windows up.

If you ignore that advice, beware: There are a number of wild, hungry creatures roaming freely within the park that would enjoy dining on you.

Be assured, you are on your own.

With that, we drove right in. On our own. Car windows, barely cracked open, turned us into a pre-warmed hors d’oeuvre for the ravenous beasties lurking about.

Unlike most public attractions in the U.S. with a slew of warning signs and legal disclaimers, South Africans treated park-goers like adults, assuring you that you alone bear the consequences of your choices.

True fact: More than 12,000 warning and safety signs are posted at attraction entrances in Disney parks and resorts. Litigious Americans apparently require them.

We were to remain on our own until reaching one of the park’s intermittent compounds, where we could either camp in a tent or, with a reservation, stay in a small, thatched-roof bungalow (called a rondavel) available for reasonable cost.

The famous game park was home to all “big five” — lion, elephant, buffalo, rhino and leopard. And, of course, giraffes. We proceeded to find a watering hole where we hoped to spot a big beastie.

Speaking of water: Yes, you are warned at entry not to leave your car, but a day in a car without a potty break is impossible. And, at the time we visited, there were NO easily available restrooms. Just miles and miles of dirt roads. You seldom encountered humans along the way. But you just might find the road blocked by an elephant.

Possessing the bladder of a small child, eventually, I had to stop. Urgently, I summoned my husband to stand guard as I scanned the landscape, vitally aware that the greater number of the wild animals calling Kruger home were not altogether friendly.

Just after I dropped my shorts, he began waving wildly. Meanwhile, I heard nothing — no snapping of a twig, nor the padding of a paw. Thankfully, no snarling.

NOTHING but my own noisy flow.

My husband waved more frantically.

My heart stopped. But I was helpless in that moment.

He pointed madly behind me, mouthing something, and I was sure the lions we had been hoping to see since morning had instead found my white, shiny backside and were about to pounce on the snack I had witlessly offered up.

What an end, I thought, heart thundering. I’ll never live this down, which, actually, would have been true had I been eaten while relieving myself in a public game park.

Imagine the TV reports. Imagine the stern faces of the park rangers, wagging a finger.

Shakily turning, still crouching, I observed that there was no big cat behind me — but two giraffes. Their impossibly slender necks were turned, their lash-rimmed eyes fixated. On me.

Know this: These are enormous animals. It was hard to breathe, given two competing thoughts: relief, given they were not aggressive beasties, and fear they would bolt. But the giraffes stood noiselessly, observing me as if amused, before they pivoted, moving away. Let me re-emphasize this: soundlessly.

In a later trip to another South African public game park, we were again on the lookout for big cats when a group of giraffes came into view.

We stopped the car, admiring their balletic movements.

Then, without any ado, a female dropped her baby, giving birth where she stood, the calf dangling by the umbilical cord.

I imagine it is rare to witness the birth of a giraffe, but the mother seemed nonplussed. Within minutes, the calf seemed to find its wobbly footing and walked.

Inspired by this, we staked out another watering hole for hours, determined this was a harbinger; this time we might glimpse a big cat. Instead, what we encountered was a roving pack of peculiar wild canines also known as painted dogs.

The mangy-looking, elusive mongrels turned out to be an endangered species and highly protected for their rarity.

And rarely seen.

So help me.

“Tell us about the big game!” friends invariably asked when we returned. We raved about watching rhino. Elephants. Wildebeests. Impala. Springbok. Giraffe. And even unnerving encounters with green-and-black mambas. OK. So what if we didn’t see any lions? (Not then, nor on subsequent game park visits, FYI.)

And as their eyes widened, we dropped our biggest brag: wild dogs.

Like my trousers on that fateful day, their faces promptly fell.

2025 Department Home Grown

Home Grown

HOME GROWN

On the Pontoon

Life on the disquiet waters

By Cynthia Adams

The pontoon boat, bearing coolers of food and drink plus sweaty bathing-suit clad adults and children munching on chips, slid across the brown-gray waters of Lake Lookout. The boat slipped into a shoal, a barely-there sandbar where the children jumped off into the waist-high water as adults waded over to unload the coolers for a communal Fourth of July cookout.

Oppressively hot when still, the boat, thankfully, moved back into the lake and resumed a meandering tour.

Life on a major holiday on Lake Lookout, about halfway between Hickory and Statesville, was comatose by comparison to the buzz-sawing jet skis and power boats thrashing the waters of nearby Lake Norman. There were no water skiers, and little noise broke the quiet. Lookout also lacked Norman’s NASCAR mansions, replete with elevators.

A woman aboard pointed, murmuring approval of a new A-frame, clad in stained cedar, that could have been a mountain chalet. “That’s nice,” she affirmed. It reminded her of the understated family places on lakes she and her family knew in upstate New York.

Others nodded.

Such places, where working people could get a toe — or a fishing line, or a pontoon boat — in the water — are the holy grail of vacationers.

Her neighbor, a retired community college instructor, had spent several years fixing up his Lookout cottage. “He’s at it all the time,” she said. “Works hard. It’s his kid’s inheritance.” She had bought her own place, a rustic fisherman’s cabin, before things “got so crazy.”

Little by little, she was working to make it a home. Adapting to a one-bedroom, one-bath place. “The water is why I’m here.”

The boat owner had bought-in a decade before the market pushed it out of reach. He’d since invested as much as it cost, but his children loved it. They talked about how much they liked the simplicity and quiet, and bemoaned certain sections, where the affluent were building bigger, fancier homes.

“I don’t want it to change,” the woman said quietly.

As the pontoon continued, the boat owner suddenly slowed to a stop. In one of the busiest channels and the most developed section of the lake, another pontoon boat passed and, nearby, a few fishermen cast lines from a Jon boat. He pointed to the very top of a power line.

The New York woman lowered her voice. “The eagles.”

And there they were. One suddenly swooped down into a nest.

Nobody spoke; nobody needed to mention the symbolism: Fourth of July. Bald eagles in the wild.

Opposite their nest, someone had stacked three pallets of fireworks, enough for a commercial fireworks show. More fireworks than anyone on board had ever seen.

“Here?” the woman suddenly said. “So many. That’ll make an awful racket.”

Her face fell. “I worry about my dogs. They are petrified of fireworks.”

Somebody ventured, “You could commit the perfect crime during a racket like that.”

All eyes returned to the eagles’ nest.

Eagles soon to be subjected to a violent blast of fireworks.

The woman exhaled. The soaring of wings, the exhilarating sensation of only moments earlier, seemed ruined.

“I hope they come back next year,” someone muttered.

The boat bobbed over a gentle wake as the boat owner navigated back to drop us before returning to the sand bar. The eagles grew smaller and smaller until invisible.

Silence swallowed the boat. Sweat trickled down faces. Collectively, we struggled to shake off a disquieting mood.

Nearing the woman’s dock, only the sound of waves gently slapping the pier beneath the silent, sheltering pines. “I have cold drinks,” she said, as an old, shaggy dog lumbered down to greet us, his tongue hanging, panting.

“Fireworks got real bad last year,” she added, staring sadly as she disembarked before opening her arms to give him a hug. “I’ll stay with him.”

Sharp reverberations would pierce the night across this and other lakes, across parklands and the most remote of places. Refracting off the rooftops of the hamlets, towns and cities of a fitful nation.

As contrails of explosives still lit the sky, a gibbous waning moon rose at midnight.

It is said that those born under such a moon are attuned to the natural world, yet feel as if they never quite belong.

2025 Department Home Grown

Home Grown

HOME GROWN

Max

The making — and unmaking — of a miscreant

By Cynthia Adams

Our rescue — let’s call him Max — has a record. I worry he might be sent to juvenile hall. Or reform school for troubled terriers.

I’ve changed our wire-haired fox terrier’s name to protect his identity should an overzealous public servant decide to pursue any of his perceived crimes.

Max has never gained a firm grasp on boundaries. Now, skittering around on the margins of civil society, he is a wanted canine. Why? He bit the hand that feeds him.

But first, a little background: Max, a “high-energy” dog, was foisted off on me in the paint department of a Lowe’s at the North Carolina coast. His owner, a bedraggled looking mom of children of various ages, said he stole the little ones’ rubber ducks. He had been banished to a pen in their backyard, where he had been confined for four years. She produced a picture on her cellphone: Max, a tan-and-white beauty, looked straight at me from the photo with the saddest of eyes.

From another picture, he pants breathlessly out of a passenger window, beckoning me with a “please” look in his eyes.

I later learned that two large labs lived indoors while little Max, just 14 pounds, was penned alone in the backyard. Was he underfed, too?

When we brought him home Max was so jubilant, given his newfound freedom — a dog door and fenced yard to roam — it took him weeks to settle down even a little. As forewarned, he was petrified of storms after years of suffering through them alone. Is it possible for a dog to be phobic about rain yet adore water if it doesn’t fall from the sky? Inscrutably, he loves to splash and play in water but dashes in through the dog door at even the gentlest rain.

Max was not only jealous of our smaller, younger dog, he was a thief, stealing any toys from man or beast.

But with time, effort, consistency and affection, Max possessed moments of calm that gave us a glimpse of his future self. He gained a few pounds, showing a taste for carrots and fresh apple.

Even so, five years later, he remains neurotic to the point of terror with the slightest threat of a storm, near or far. Soft jazz helps. Medication doesn’t. He tunnels underneath the sofa, shivering until the storm passes. And yet, the mere glimpse of a water hose sends Max into a rapturous, manic, playful frenzy.

He is a creature of the morning; by evening, he prefers to be left alone in his bed, more curmudgeonly.

Yet he is exceedingly smart, able to reason and anticipate. When Max sees me sorting glass, he anticipates a car ride to the recycling center and is sent straight into a an ecstatic, hyper state.

One late afternoon when Don and I were walking him, he suddenly lunged for something on the ground. “That could be a chicken bone!” I cried, given fast-food remnants littered the area.

Don pulled Max’s leash in, hurrying to open his mouth and fish out the foreign object; Max clamped down firmly on the soft tissue between his thumb and forefinger.

When Don shouted in pain, Max clamped harder in resistance. He was not surrendering his prize.

By morning, Don’s hand was purply and swollen. Our physician was away, so he visited a clinic. The attending physician shook his head, returning with a clipboard. An official dog bite report was made to Animal Control even though Don’s injury only required precautionary antibiotics, a cursory look and rebandaging. No stitches.

State law requires that a dog who has bitten a human — even their owner — quarantine for 10 days for rabies observation. (This includes fully vaccinated canines.) Guidelines require the animal sequester at a veterinary hospital, animal control facility, or, possibly, the owner’s property. There is no exception for first-time offenders like Max.

I gasped: How would Max survive should they order confinement at the shelter? Or the vet? This was a dog whose spirit had only been restored after years of effort. He had suffered banishment once. He might not have the resilience to handle such isolation again.

Home confinement looked wonderful by comparison.

We chewed our nails, waiting for Animal Control to knock at our door. In desperation, I displayed a published article I’d written for this magazine about Max’s first year with us. In it, he was sitting happily at his master’s side, flashing a cheery doggy smile.

We eventually resumed walking him, strictly on a shorter leash. We reasoned it was a bad idea to come between food and Max, who had possibly been underfed those many years of confinement.

Weeks, then months passed. We exhaled. Thankfully, Mad Max got the third chance he deserved.

2025 Department Home Grown

Home Grown

HOME GROWN

Absolutely Fabulous

Friends who feel like Miami sunshine

By Cynthia Adams

Irene, a food writer pal, called to dish about a posh party thrown by a friend, as the French say, of a certain age in Miami.

In a story worthy of Netflix, the hostess invited a group of 24 accomplished women, doyennes all, to a birthday gathering featuring the best of everything. No expense was spared on the food, wine or glamour.

Not much impresses Irene, a former New Yorker and Miami transplant, who routinely reviews upscale restaurants, gaining insider knowledge of the city’s competitive food-and-wine scene. She has spent years developing the Miami chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier, the culinary organization created by Julia Child.

But this event was something special.

The stellar food her friend, Karen Escalera, served was the work of the late Joël Robuchon’s restaurant, Le Jardinier. The famous Frenchman’s restaurants on three continents earned a total of 31 stars, more than any other chef.

But what moved Irene most about the party was not the exquisite spread nor the haute couture nor the bejeweled, high-profile guests. It was how many friends Karen had.

“I don’t think I have 24 friends,” she confesses.

We discuss the dynamic of friendships, old and new. We know that the lack of friends curtails longevity and worsens health. And we are a little obsessed with the epidemic of loneliness that hasn’t lifted despite COVID’s decline.

Irene remains stuck on the number 24.

I begin inventorying my own circle of friends. And decide to seek some expert advice on how many friends are just right. Pew Research would agree that 24 is a big number of friends to have.

The majority (53%) in their survey reported having between one and four close friends. Only 38% report having five or more. I start counting how many I have, but get stuck in deciding what, exactly, constitutes a friend? And what’s the difference between a friend and a close friend. I think about my own circle, which includes college pals, lunch buddies, book club friends and neighbors. Friends we share drinks and laughs with, or take on a road trip. Friends who always know the best restaurants or movies, or will tell you if a dress makes you look like an episode of What Not to Wear? I’ve got a lot of friends, I decide.

But then there are friends you call when misfortune falls, or heartbreak comes — friends you can count on when life is hardest. I decide I don’t have 24 for sure, nor would I want them. Friendships like that require a lot of time and hard work.

In a city of nearly a half million people, where friends aren’t easily made, Irene says she was moved by the deep generosity of their hostess. She jokes she was pleased to be included as the hostess’s newest friend at the birthday bash. “I’ve only known her a decade,” she quips.

But what really demonstrated Karen’s true friendship took place at the party. It was how she showed her deep reverence for her circle of friends.

“I’ve seen her increasing warmth,” Irene says about Karen. Maybe it comes with age and an increasing appreciation of how much true friends mean, she says. “You see down the road you won’t have this friend forever. It will end.”

This was made clear when their hostess read from profiles she had written about each of her 24 guests, declared “top-notch friends.” Among them were CEOs and top achievers in fashion, business and hospitality.

“The party was for us,” Irene says in wonderment. “Not for her.” No gifts were to be brought.

And so, Karen, who has lived well and long, ordered herself a great cake. (“It was chocolate, seven layers, with chocolate beads around the outside . . . I cheated on my diet big time for that cake,” says Irene). She offered her circle what she knew and valued: a fabulous fête — and her articulate and heartfelt appreciation for them and who they were and what good friends they are. After the candles were blown out and the profiles were read, 24 friends filed out of Le Jardinière knowing exactly how they felt on Karen’s birthday: They felt absolutely fabulous.

2025 Department Home Grown

Home Grown

HOME GROWN

Who really holds the power?

By Cynthia Adams

My friend, Pratt, is laid up with woes: a serious illness that has taken a number of medical tests to diagnose and more pain pills than he cares to swallow.

But this week just takes the cake, he tells me. A favorite Toby jug slipped from his hands and shattered. His microwave won’t cook beyond seven minutes before halting. “Is it protesting, or just broken?” I ask. I suggested what my tech-savvy husband always tells me: power off and restart.

Then his smart TV died.

“I’m reduced to using my old, stupid TV,” he mutters.

From my experience, smart TVs are just as stupid.

Ours regularly seems to freeze up — much like I used to do before a Toastmaster’s speech. It goes into sputtering spasms mid-streaming, just before the second to last episode of a compelling Netflix drama.

Our so-called smart TV doesn’t especially like being told what to do by Roku and regularly strikes until rebooting.

Rebooting heretofore sounded like something you’d have a cobbler do, versus a tech fix.

Sadly, even if my TV is getting smarter, I am not. The mechanisms of technology mystify me as much as ever. When my bank’s online bill-paying function abruptly stopped working this past weekend, I developed hives, fearing I’d been hacked.

Nope.

The banking IT pros were the guilty party behind this sabotage, all due to an update. Post said improvement, nothing functioned properly for days. Trying to resolve this over the phone — during which I was asked such things as “have you cleared your cache?” — I shuddered and felt mildly sick.

Actually, no, I had not even touched my cache.

“What about your VPN?” Before I embarrassed myself by blurting out something about my VCR (long ago consigned to recycling), I answered honestly. “VP what?”

The customer service representative sighed. “Try logging in via a search engine other than your usual.” Flustered and fumbling as she stayed on the phone with me, I faced another hurdle. I could not read my own scribbled passwords.

My head throbbed. Meantime, Citibank hit me with a $28 late fee for a balance of $18 I couldn’t manage logging on to pay.

By day five of this technological marathon, I had a low-tech solution. Maybe I’d move elsewhere. But I was soon notified of a national data breach. My response? To freeze my credit and change all auto payments, and google distant archipelagos where no one uses the word “breach.”

My cell phone immediately began doing a curious thing, cutting out calls as quickly as I could answer them, perversely trying to connect to my headphones each time.

I took the same advice I’d rattled off to Pratt and gave it the ol’ power off and reboot.

It worked!

Seems you don’t have to have the smarts to hold the power. But before I clear my cache, I’m doing a juice fast, pulling olive oil and visual meditation.

Then I’m powering my entire self completely down.

2025 Department Home Grown

Home Grown

HOME GROWN

Putting the Pieces Back Together . . .

With resilience, grace and wit

By Cynthia Adams

One evening as I am chopping vegetables, my young friend, Jamie, calls me.

She occasionally texts, but never phones. Most weeks, we chat at Brown-Gardiner’s fountain, where she is a popular server — animated, engaged — the primary reason for my going so often.

Answering, I strain to understand Jamie’s garbled speech. The only words fully discernible are “this is Jamie.” She struggles, stuttering, until falling silent.

Her friend, Lexi, takes the phone. Lexi’s words are crisply clear: Jamie has suffered a stroke. She goes on to say that she has just been released from the hospital following days of unconsciousness and lifesaving surgery. Lexi pauses.

“Jamie wanted you to know.”

Jamie is in her early 30s. A stroke? My knees wobble.

Jamie is the sort who brings life and vivacity into a room, as she has done at the lunch counter. The sandwiches, salads and dishes are standard lunch-counter fare, but nothing special. Jamie is. Often, she’d spot me approaching and open the door in greeting.

In a few days’ time, after much texting back and forth, Jamie indicates she would like a visit. I take silly gifts: A bath bomb that resembles a doughnut with pastel sprinkles. A satin sleep mask emblazoned, “Shit Could Be Worse.”

Just like her old self, Jamie howls with laughter.

She has miraculously survived the catastrophic stroke without losing her motor skills. There is no facial paralysis nor limp. No overt paralysis of any kind. Yet Jamie’s brain scans reveal damage to areas controlling speech. She struggles with aphasia and speech challenges.

Jamie chats normally and suddenly goes silent, freezing, searching for a word. This is something I had previously seen when another friend — a woman five decades older than Jamie — had a stroke.

More than once, rather than asking, “Where’s my phone?” Jamie instead says, “Where’s my brick?” Or, maybe block. Determined to show no reaction as my intelligent and chatty friend struggles to summon words, I still feel my heart sink for her.

But Jamie’s wit and intelligence are fully intact. She gamely laughs during a terrifying time. “My brain is def broken,” she texts a few months later.

Attempting jokes about the surgery, the hospital stays, the worry she reads in her friends’ faces, Jamie finds her way through her own terror with humor.

Showing the blackened bruising at her femoral artery after carotid angioplasty and stenting, she declares, “But I’m still pretty!”

Everyone reassures Jamie she will soon be well. Better than new. Even so, Jamie cannot drive, or resume college classes nor work for six months minimum.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah!” she will mutter, not cynically, but with convincing force, intent upon powering back to health.

One day, I mention that a collection jar for her benefit has been placed at Brown-Gardiner. Jamie texts back, asking if the picture chosen “makes me look pretty.” I report back that, in fact, it does. Her smile — her face — beams from the jar. Faithful patrons contribute small change and bills.

One day, $1,000 is dropped in the jar by a single group of customers. Jamie reports as best she can that it was from guys she always served on the Saturday morning shift. While she struggles to fully convey who “the guys” are, I try to guess if they are part of a golf team or a tennis league.

Jamie isn’t quite sure, but she is sure of one thing: “They love me.”

As her megawatt smile beams brighter, she adds, “and I love them.”

Since her saga began, Jamie has learned a preexisting congenital defect triggered her stroke, something called arteriovenous malformation, or AVM. In her case, it was located in the carotid artery. Much like aneurysms, it’s difficult for an AVM to be diagnosed until it’s too late.

Strangely, this hasn’t discouraged her. Learning the cause of the stroke has had the opposite effect. With a name, however strange, AVM is an anomaly that she can wrap her mind around, Jamie explains.

The condition is quite rare: Only 1.34 per 100,000 people have AVM.

Somehow, this statistic cracks Jamie up.

“Of course,” she says, articulating slowly. With a wry smile that says, “it couldn’t possibly be anything commonplace,” she throws her hands up in the air. Since her stroke, in rapid succession, Jamie has been scrutinized and scanned from top to bottom in MRI machines.

“Now I know the deal,” she adds.

Jamie has learned, to her relief, that she is not a walking time bomb.

“That was scary. Would I just drop dead?” This was her first thought upon emerging from days of unconsciousness after the stroke.

Jamie’s July birthday week draws together a young group of friends who take her for a celebratory steak dinner. She shares funny moments, reporting that she kept a journal “for my up-and-coming stroke comedy tour.”

Her speech is, against all odds, normal. Yet, the stroke is a bomb that fell onto her old life, segmenting it into before and after.

In the interim, another stent was needed. Weeks of speech therapy and recovery, scans and consultations have become months, now years. Two Christmases have passed.

Jamie has suffered medical setbacks, forcing her to temporarily abandon online studies begun since the stroke to complete her undergraduate degree. Even so, she will still graduate this year.

Jamie’s wrestled with red tape in order to get financial assistance. To cope with insurance claims. To get to medical appointments.

Simply to survive.

Yet Jamie’s resolve remains intact. In her first year of the event, she sent a revealing picture of herself at a game table with pieces before her.

“I’m gonna be sitting here trying to figure this stupid puzzle out . . . making my brain work . . . This is harder than it looks.”

In over two years of struggle, it is the only complaint Jamie has ever texted.

2025 Department Home Grown