Tag: 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.

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

Home Grown

HOME GROWN

Dial “M” for Modern Inconvenience

Sorry, bad connection

By Cynthia Adams

Remember the shared family phone — with rotary dials and unruly cords? Our phone (green) was in the kitchen, which was the most trafficked room in the house. Phone conversations were about as private as calls placed in a Moscow hotel.

Many things were available in that kitchen. Cold chicken, or even a fruit cobbler, awaited in the (harvest green, according to Good Housekeeping magazine) Frigidaire. A pitcher of sweet tea sweated on the matching avo-green counter.

The one thing never to be found there was privacy.

At least one of my four siblings was always at the fridge, back lit by the harsh fluorescent lights that turned the healthiest skin a sickly pallor, hungrily waiting for something. Cagey as they were, sometimes it was a ruse to gather intel to use against me.

I’ve no idea why that incredibly sturdy phone didn’t pop right out of the wall, given repeated efforts by my teenage self to strain that cord far enough for just a modicum of privacy. Stretched taut as a bungee, the cord would barely allow me to pull the handset into the dining room, where I spoke in the lowest possible register. Barely audible to the person I called, whatever I said was almost certainly overheard.

Weaponizing my secrets, the youngest would use blackmail for rides to school, candy or paying his debt at the school office. (He charged a ridiculous amount of paper, pencils and basics. I’ve no idea what he did with it all — maybe resold them?)

One of my sisters should have been recruited by the CIA, given her skill at parsing out barely audible mumbles. Her sense of hearing was uncanny. She learned to lip read from a school friend whose parents were deaf.

My dilemma worsened when I was bussed to a high school that was a 30-minute drive by car but an hour away by school bus. If I wanted to make Friday night plans with friends, I had to do so by Thursday night via phone or in person at school. Regrettably, most of my friends were close to Charlotte, therefore long distance, meaning my phone calls were easily flagged by our father when the dreaded bill arrived.

Only local calls were “free,” meaning included with monthly service. Then, too, you had to rent your actual phone. Some families had both a parents’ line and a children’s line — but we didn’t.

When Southern Bell’s monthly bill arrived, I wanted to run straight to the charcoal grill and burn it before my father could scrutinize it with the narrowed eyes of a bookie. The damning details! Numbers dialed, location, length in minutes and cost.

Anchored adjacent to the kitchen table, the phone stood in relief against wallpaper printed with tiny copper pots and pans. Dad wanted it close to the head of the table for two reasons: As payor of the phone bill, he strictly dictated the phone’s usage; also, this meant he could take a call while eating.

Whenever it rang, my father would push back from his meat and vegetables to answer. He owned farmland and a small business, rife with problems.

For his offspring, the rule was non-negotiable: no phone calls during the dinner hour, which Southerners still called “supper.” The midday meal was called dinner.

The second phone in a household of seven children and adults was an aqua-colored “Princess” phone that resided on my mother’s bedside table. Mind you, not a separate line, merely a second phone. (Anyone could pick up in the kitchen and eavesdrop on a call made in our parents’ room.)

Both my grandmothers’ phones were on “party lines” (multi-party lines), which they shared with a group of other rural homes — and any household on a party line could eavesdrop on anyone else on their party line. Providers formerly connected multiple homes in rural areas to the same telephone line, saving money when service to more remote areas was costly. It also meant you had to patiently wait your turn to place a call if the line was in use.

This ensured nonstop entertainment for my paternal grandmother, Hallie, who loved eavesdropping and knew pretty much anything about her neighbors — who was selling some land or a horse, or who had sold their soybeans too low. She would phone Pat, my mother’s mom, with the newsiest news.

In 1971, Southern Bell ended party lines in North Carolina, which is probably why our grandmothers’ health plummeted.

While weeding this early morning, I noticed every other passerby staring at their phone, shuffling zombie-like along as their dogs tugged them.

Then I checked my phone straight after walking the dogs. And eating breakfast. And showering. And dressing. And at the stop light en route to work.

And it struck me why Americans seem less intelligent today: We were smarter when we only had land lines.

Even with the advent of early cellular phones, given the high cost and high call rates they commanded, our time and that of others were still considered more valuable.

Phones did not dictate the parameters of our lives then.

We hung up the phone and simply walked away.

2025 Department Home Grown

Home Grown

HOME GROWN

You Can’t Drive Miss Daisy Crazy

An AI granny has all the time in the world, dear

By Cynthia Adams

Deliberating between pillows on Etsy that read “Monday. Ce N’est Pas Mon Day” (“Monday. That’s not my day”) versus “Ce n’est pas mon jour de chance, j’imagine” (“Not my lucky day, I guess”), a radio segment put an end to my shopping.

The NPR segment was not about Mondays, the descending chill, nor the brooding mood of our nation. None of that. Certainly nothing about feathering the nest with needlepoint.

It was a tale about Daisy, the geriatric British robot.

Meet Daisy, an “AI granny” and clever creation of Virgin Media O2. With a voice imbued with grandmotherly kindness — and loneliness — she is designed to drive phone scammers insane.

The creative project headed by Sir Richard Branson’s company comes to the aid of an estimated seven in 10 Brits victimized by elaborate and costly scams. To the delight of the citizens of the Realm, Daisy also wreaks satisfying revenge.

Wearing sweaters and pearls (and the occasional rubber glove with a homey kitchen behind her), Daisy has a deceitful purpose, posing as “an AI pensioner specifically designed to waste the scammer’s time so we don’t have to.”

Virgin Media’s logic? While scammers are entangled in Daisy’s good-natured, seemingly dimwitted patter, they cannot simultaneously scam innocents. She is a perfect diversion.

The grandmotherly image — of a woman in her 80s — addresses scammers, saying with a smile, “I’m your worst nightmare.” One exasperated scammer huffs, “I think your profession is trying to bother people,” to which Daisy sweetly replies, “I’m just trying to have a little chat.”

To another who shouts that she has wasted “nearly an hour!” (her record for tying a would-be scammer in knots is 40-plus minutes), Daisy replies affably, “Gosh, how time flies!”

She spends it prattling on, pretending not to understand the scammer’s questions and instead speaking fondly of Fluffy, her cat. When an indignant scammer drops any pretense of goodwill and says, “Stop calling me ‘dear,’ you stupid &**#,” an unflappable Daisy responds, “Got it, dear.”

The AI pensioner possesses inhuman patience and can wear her opponent down. “Let’s face it, dears, I’ve got all the time in the world.”

Daisy is a technological wonder who arrived too late to help my Mama. At 85, Mama was scammed by a young man posing as her much-loved grandson, a mountain-climbing, river-rafting, adventure-seeking fella. The scammer purportedly called from a Mexican jail, where he posed as my nephew. He claimed to have been set up along with his young fellow travelers, falsely accused of marijuana possession.

Without a word to anyone, Mama drove straight to Walmart with intentions to wire a contact $1,200 in bail money. As she completed the forms, a kindly Western Union clerk gently counseled her to reconsider and first call his family to confirm what she had been told.

Naturally, the scammer had warned her not to tell anyone, or there would be retaliation. “But how would they know?” the clerk gently asked.

Mama was so undone she wept, but agreed to phone her daughter-in-law and have a conversation. Immediately, she learned it was a scam. She had been duped. Her grandson was not in Mexico, nor had he been. He was safely at home.

Afterward, Mama was devastated at her gullibility. I made a point of returning to thank the Western Union clerk. She said it played out so frequently it was predictable.

Come to think of it, Mama’s phone scam played out on a Monday before a kindly intervention stopped the scammer cold. Proving Monday was Mama’s lucky day after all! Shaking my head at the memory I returned to Etsy, placing the pillow in my cart.

Now if only a clever someone would offer a needlepoint of deliciously duplicitous Daisy . . .

2025 Department Home Grown

Home Grown

HOME GROWN

Squirreling Away the Worst Christmas Ever

A ghostly green trail recalls the dispirits of Christmas past

By Cynthia Adams

One of the things we must navigate in our marriage is different perspectives on Christmas. My husband does not feel the same joy I do. For him, it’s more about acceptance. Losing his father when he was a boy left him painfully marked. Even now, the holiday is simply too much for him — the gifts, the preparations, the decorating, the meal planning. It overloads his pleasure circuits, which blow out as predictably as tree lights.

I gamely ignored him until the most horrible, awful year hit, when Lady Luck turned on me. But that year didn’t stand out solely because of an unfortunate Christmas. The whole year had slid progressively downhill, like butter off a hot corncob, leading to its concluding wreckage, resulting in a hot, slippery mess around New Year’s.

The year of disappointments was ushered in by a family death, which was already a lot to handle. But then I came home for lunch one workday to discover everything on our front porch — the charming front porch with freshly restored Chinese Chippendale railings — was stripped bare apart from the mailbox. Someone had backed into the drive we shared with our Westerwood neighbor and loaded up a wicker sofa, two wicker chairs, a large antique ceramic vat that held our sneakers and an antique-pine room divider, leaving behind a single chair cushion. And our sneakers.

I wept.

This was before exterior cameras and Ring wireless doorbells captured every package delivery and any porch pirate. These criminals practically had carte blanche. If they’d had more time, I imagine they would have taken the porch swing I’d recently repainted to match the house trim and removed the window box.

The police were sympathetic, but seemed to have nothing to offer beyond suggesting we speak to the neighbors to suss out any intel. Our neighbors, a bit elderly, had heard nary a peep.

By the holidays, I’d been in a yearlong funk. My husband attempted to cheer me up. “Let’s go Christmas shopping and get you a Christmas tree!” he announced one Friday night with enthusiasm. I looked up, startled. “Really?” I stammered.

“Let’s go!” he said, suggesting we carry cash to shop more efficiently. Both of us had a few Benjamins in our wallets. We went to the mall, splitting up for various errands, and my heart lifted at joining the bustle of shoppers. As I stood with an armful of toys, a nicely dressed woman bumped me. “I can’t make this line go any faster,” I reproached, arching my brow when she did it a second time.

By the time I reached the register and deposited my gifts, I noticed something odd. The leather gloves on top of my bucket-style bag were gone. Heart thundering, I realized the wallet beneath was, too.

I stammered to the clerk that someone had taken my expensive wallet, a gift from my best friend, and she summoned mall security.

As I waited for them outside, my husband arrived, frowning. I kept it together until we got to the car.

“I had nearly $500 in cash,” I moaned, tears streaming. My husband patted me, looking miserable.

“Honey, let’s go buy a Christmas tree and salvage this night.”

I took my hands down from my face and blew my nose. “I don’t think I can,” I sputtered.

“We’re getting a Christmas tree!” he insisted heartily.

It was late. Many of the tree lots were closing. We cruised along High Point Road until we got to the former Hechinger’s, which had a tree lot out front.

“Here!” my husband soothed, parking. I protested. I was tired. Dispirited. “You can decorate it tomorrow!” he said, hoping to jolly me along. The odd fluorescence of mercury-vapor pole lights made all the trees unappealing and I stood listlessly.

“I’m picking one out,” he said, insistent.

He chose a tree, noting it seemed to shed a bit while dragging it to the car. I kept my mouth shut.

“We’ll put it in a bucket of water till morning,” I suggested lamely.

After spending Saturday morning verifying that credit cards were stopped and reporting the stolen checks, I pulled decorations out of the attic to redeem the day. In the glare of sunlight, the tree looked strangely green. Unnaturally green. And still droopy.

We dragged it in, strung lights and swept up dropped needles. By the time it was decorated, it seemed to have shed at least a fourth of the needles. I didn’t much care. “Why aren’t these needles brown?” I asked my husband, cupping them in my hand.

“I . . . think they spray painted a dying tree green,” he said, avoiding my eyes.

“Per-fect,” I said, biting off the second syllable

But as the days passed, I learned things. Our insurance agent suggested we file an official police report, versus the mall security report, in order to take a tax loss. Familiar faces came to the house to take my statement. They remembered me, too.

“Tough year,” the officer murmured. “Thanks,” I managed.

The officers reached out after Christmas with an update. Asking if I could identify my robber, they produced a sizable album of mug shots. Having pointedly ask her to stop bumping me I knew I could. Thumbing through pages, I found her: polished-looking and business-like.

She could have been a school principal, or bank exec.

“That’s her!” The pickpocket was known to hit busy shopping areas. The bump-and-lift move was a classic technique.

“She’s a professional,” they said.

My emptied wallet was found among others discarded in a Durham hotel trash can.

When they left, I sank down before the Charlie Brown-pitiful Christmas tree. I wanted it gone. The strings of lights practically slid off, taking more of the determinedly green needles with them. I stripped off the ornaments and dragged the very dead tree out to the curb.

In coming months, ground squirrels would quickly scamper over the nuclear green tree needles. Even after we moved two years later, a stubborn ghost trail remained from the front porch to the sidewalk.

Embedded. Evergreen. Impervious.

2024 Department Home Grown

Home Grown

12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS

Helping Mrs. Davis

The sunset days of an elderly neighbor

By Cynthia Adams

Ethel Davis questioned my pen and note-taking.

“I’m a retired English teacher,” she said, eyes sharp. “Mrs. Davis.” Pause. “And you are?”

So began a friendship lasting well beyond a community project that brought me to her door. A year later, she asked that I help with ending her life.

Mrs. Davis lived near the 1911 house we were reviving. Her own home was in a death rattle. Leaves idled on a rickety porch. Inside, paint peeled from the ceilings, surrendering to the tropical heat she preferred. Rugs, curtains, and upholstery dry rotted.

Mrs. Davis and her house were aging in sync. Her bony elbows jutted through a sweater which she pulled closer as I shucked mine off.

When I brought clothing, she protested. “But, my dear, I have so many beautiful clothes!” I brought food, too, which she accepted protesting, “Oh, Mary could prepare something.”

“Mary?”

“My housekeeper.” Having never seen another soul in the house, day nor night, Mary was either a ruse or imagined helpmate. My heart twisted at her fierce pride.

I grew increasingly anxious for the feisty 95-year-old. The mysterious “Mary” had just left or was late, according to Mrs. Davis, who subsisted upon Campbell’s soup. A sleeve of Ritz crackers sat alongside crossword puzzles, pencil stubs, paper clips, rubber bands and an ancient flash light.

If I brought treats, she insisted, “I’ve plenty, my dear.” Mrs. Davis had a well-supplied imagination.

“My sweet Herman visited last night! He stood right there!” She mentioned nocturnal visits from a long dead sister, too. These apparitions comforted her while alarming me. Was the membrane between life and death dissolving?

Reciting Tennyson’s “Crossing the Bar,” she taped it to her headboard, warbling, “Sunset and evening star, and one clear call for me!”

Whenever she didn’t answer, I circled outside, calling her name. One autumn afternoon, colorful leaves fluttering onto her porch, Mrs. Davis peered from a cloudy window as I arrived unannounced.

“My dear,” she asked in her mannered way, “could you possibly take me banking?” Donning an ancient wool coat and dishwater gray scarf, she carried a clutch purse dated to the Eisenhower administration.

Entering the bank, she trilled “Hello, Helpers!” pulling out a passbook wrapped by 10 rubber bands.

An eager banker bounded up. “Let’s go to my office!”

Discombobulated, I mumbled, “I’ll wait.” She reemerged, regal, like the aristocrat she was.

We crisscrossed Friendly Shopping Center, where banks safeguarded the widow’s wealth. “My Herman always said, ‘Count the pennies and the dollars take care of themselves.’” She patted the purse filled with passbooks. “My daughter wants her hands on his money.”

Mrs. Davis had a daughter?

At the drugstore counter she ordered soup and water, inquiring if crackers were complimentary.

Studying a flier, she brightened. “A treat for us! Danish cookies are on sale for $1.99! Or, would you prefer an alarm clock?”

“My dear,” she ventured mid-spoonful, “I’ve decided I’m ready to join Mr. Davis.”

My pulse swooshed in my ears — Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark!

“Will you help me?”

“How?”

“I don’t know yet. But, my dear, will you?”

Over dinner, my husband’s jaw tightened. “What does she want exactly? Look, you cannot kill Mrs. Davis!”

“Of course not,” I agreed.

Days later, I banged on her door. Silence. I circled the house. Nothing. Mrs. Davis finally answered her ancient rotary phone, murmuring, “Sorry, dear, I was in the back talking to Mary.”

Soon, her hearing dimmed. She grew even thinner. She recited Tennyson, discussed her ghostly visitors — never again mentioning euthanasia.

One afternoon she failed to answer the doorbell or my phone calls. After a sleepless night, I went to a neighbor. Her daughter had arrived the prior morning in a U-Haul, collecting a visibly upset Mrs. Davis and some furniture.

No number. No forwarding address.

And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark.

Leaves, darkening with mildew, cluttered her porch alongside fliers advertising Danish cookies and alarm clocks. I paused there on walks as dinner smells wafted through the neighborhood and stars blinked on.

Sunset and evening star, I mouthed softly.

Winter deepened. And mysteries, too, of life or its absence.

2024 Department Home Grown

Home Grown

HOME GROWN

Mama Macabre

My secret weapon

By Cynthia Adams

When I gave my mother a pillow needlepointed with “Drama Queen,” she cast me a look before promptly sticking it in a closet — where it remained.

Mama always had a penchant for drama, whether emblazoned on a pillow or not. Her Katherine Hepburn-like older sister was a stark contrast. Our cool-as-a-cucumber aunt made us invariably wonder even more: Why all the drama?

Was it the advent of high-drama television when Mama was young? However exciting 1940s-era radio programs (a staple of her youth) were, televised dramatizations enacted in real time were a leap forward.

From her mother, an otherwise no-nonsense lady who knew her way around any situation (from cooking and baking for a crowd to tilling the garden and growing her own veggies), Mama had inherited a curious thing: a passionate devotion for daytime soaps.

Their very names trembled with dramatic tension: The Edge of Night, Guiding Light, The Secret Storm — Mama and her mother, Mama Patty, eagerly followed each one.

Complete fiction, they both agreed. Outlandish storylines, they assented. They even recognized that the actors were just too perfect-looking. Even so, they were totally, passionately glued to the tube, Monday–Friday, from after lunchtime (then called “dinner”) to near suppertime (now called dinner.)

These detergent-sponsored dramas unfolded along a consistent trajectory — usually as follows: a. rags to riches, b. riches to rags, or c., the most convoluted, a fall, a rise, then a fall again.

Later in life, another passion usurped Mama’s attachment to soap operas. True crime reflected many of the same dramatic ingredients.

This fascination solidified during the O.J. Simpson trial.

My mother never lost interest, from June 17, 1994, the night of the televised white Bronco chase. She watched each development thereon, and knew each and every gory detail, from the infamous glove manufacturer (Aris) to alleged assignations with a lover, to the most obscure points.

Yet I had underestimated just how invested Mama had become.

So, when I took my mother to L.A. following bypass surgery, she had clear requests. First and foremost, she wanted to drive past the Beverly Hills homes of her favorite television and movie stars. Also, she wanted to visit the infamous Simpson site. That site.

She actually knew Nicole Brown Simpson’s Brentwood address.

With great misgivings, I drove Mama to Brentwood. She practically knew the way without aid of GPS.

When I slowed near the apartments briefly and sped on, Mama insisted I turn around and pass by again, but slower this time.

Gritting my teeth and gripping the steering wheel, I was deeply conflicted and yet did as she asked — she was a cardiac patient!

Mama’s disappointment was evident. Too many things (fences, trees, pedestrians) obstructed a clear view. What did she expect anyway? A historical marker? Plus, she complained, I was still driving far too fast.

Our reactions to the scene were radically different.

She expressed how shockingly modest the apartment complex was. I pointed out this was an actual crime scene, not a stage set.

Digesting how appalling it was that a horrific landmark was now a tourist destination, we returned to the hotel at my insistence. She didn’t appreciate the irony when I later booked us on a Grave Line Tour of celebrity homes. To Mama’s mortification, the guide pulled up before our hotel driving a gray hearse, no less. (The company’s website is priceless. Its tagline, “We put death on the map,” is truth in advertising. Now, you can stipulate if you prefer a “limousine ride through the City of Fallen Angels” over the hearse.)

But her interest in the dark side of the human psyche steadily intensified as she grew older. In the fall of 1994, when Susan Smith murdered her children in Union, S.C., Mama again absorbed every broadcast interview, each sordid detail.

Had she, I ventured jokingly, harbored a secret desire to drive me and some of her more vexing children into a lake? Of course not, she snapped.

Mama had a paralyzing fear of water and could not swim.

Otherwise, who could say? I wondered aloud. Mama didn’t laugh.

She even went with me to Union (along with hordes of other media folk) in pursuit of a story about the murder’s impact on a small town thrust into an intense media glare. Mama’s retention of minutiae actually proved helpful.

She quickly recalled the spot where Susan and her boss had occasionally met for drinks. There, a bartender talked on record, thanks to Mama, who innocently plied him with questions, murmuring sympathetically while nursing her favorite cocktail, a Bloody Mary. (Naturally.) He winced when I pulled out a notebook, yet Mama somehow put him at ease — a feat I couldn’t have managed alone.

It turned out the bartender was an old school friend of Susan’s. He shared details of her troubled adolescence and abuse, something he wouldn’t have done without Mama’s coaxing.

Till her end, Mama was helplessly hooked whenever a dark story broke.

Recently, I could not help but think of her as the Murdaugh murders and trials unfolded, horrifying and stupefying in their violent scope and retelling.

It’s a story that would have no doubt necessitated a return to South Carolina, Mama in tow, ready to ply a possible source.

Bloody Mary, indeed.

2024 Department Home Grown

Home Grown

Cut the Kiwi

The real reason Pan Am reached its final destination

By Cynthia Adams

As Pan Am approached its final destination in December 1991, it offered heavily discounted airfares, beginning that summer.

Monitoring deals, I noticed a $300 Pan Am offer from New York to Nice. At the height of travel season!

My elegant friend, Dixie, who loved travel, was immediately interested. We grabbed tickets and spent weeks excitedly planning. We’d enjoy the South of France, proceeding to Italy, where her friends were renting a place. Then I’d return solo from Genoa via Nice.

Consulting Frommer’s, my go-to guide, I circled budget hotels, pensiones and cafés.

Better-heeled travel friends offered advice. “Always request the airline’s vegetarian meal,” said Tom, who had studied at the Sorbonne. “It’s fresher, better.” Noted, I phoned the airline requesting special meals for both of us.

Meanwhile, Dixie was packing a rolling duffel dubbed “the beached whale.” She was still stuffing the Whale when we picked her up for departure. It was aptly named (no weight limits then), especially as she dressed to kill versus as a whale harpooner.

She was decked out in crisp linen and a hat for departure. I wore something comfortable.

We were in coach and I had the middle seat, but who cared?

The Riviera awaited! Once airborne, Dixie produced a small bottle of wine from her capacious hand luggage. “To celebrate!”

We surreptitiously toasted.

Aisle Seat shot us a look that said, “Couldn’t you wait?” — which we ignored. I produced Mrs. Field’s cookies purchased at the airport, which she refused. “I’m saving myself for our special meal,” she murmured.

Soon we heard our names called; the special meals! The hostess brought ours, ignoring the contraband wine. Aisle Seat stared as we excitedly opened them to find: A congealed lump of rice, black beans . . . and a whole kiwi, rolling manically around.

Aisle Seat gawped at our trays before smiling at his: beef tips on rice with steamed veggies, roll and cake.

Leaning over, Aisle Seat whispered, “Do you mind my asking what is wrong with you that you have to eat that?”

We wept with laughter. Giving up on the inedible, unseasoned food I vigorously attempted cutting the kiwi with my plastic knife. It escaped each attempt. “I’m hungry enough to just gnaw it,” I confessed.

More misadventure lay ahead.

Once in France, the Beached Whale proved challenging for coming travels, especially using trains along the Côte d’Azur. It was beastly navigating hilly destinations. Reaching our inn, I would arrive panting; me in jeans, Dixie in beautifully rumpled linen.

Controlling the Whale’s wonky wheels and heft left me perpetually famished. We found reasonable fare and delicious jug wine. That is, apart from my one order for fruits de mer, which in my terrible French, arrived raw.

Still, more tears of laughter.

Dixie, a former model, wafted along with aristocratic grace.

Men trailed in her wake.

Once in Genoa, noisily chattering women encircled and jostled Dixie as she stood perfectly quiet. A few blocks later she discovered she was robbed. She quoted Tennessee Williams’ last line in Streetcar: “I’ve always depended upon the kindness of strangers.”

Her wallet, relieved of cash, was kindly returned to the train station.

But, at her friend’s rental, I broke the Italian washing machine. A Candy washing machine. That required negotiations with the Candy Man for repairs. And an emptying of my cash.

Yet it was my solo return to Nice where the greatest travails awaited. I was pulled out of the boarding line by officials demanding a full body search. “But I’m an American citizen!” I protested. “I have rights!”

“Not here in France,” they replied, strangers to Tennessee’s dictum, wheeling a contraption like a portable shower for privacy as they proceeded with the search. They studied my luggage, sternly questioning hair dryer repairs during my travels. (As if any American, ever, repairs a hair dryer.)

“Nope. Only a Candy washing machine,” I answered.

Upon boarding, all eyes were upon the woman detainee who made the flight late. I kept my eyes forward, flush with embarrassment.

Soon after departure came a flurry of announcements. Lunch would soon be served.

“Special meal for Ms. Adams!” chirped a Frenchwoman.

I kept my face averted, studying the disappearing coastline.

When the hostess approached my seat bearing what was probably another congealed mass of starch, I feigned ignorance of any such request. “I’ve no dietary restrictions,” I replied stonily. “Perhaps there was a mistake.”

The hostess looked knowingly. Was that a wink?

“Perhaps so,” she said, mercifully retreating, holding the damnable meal aloft.

When the headline announcing the final Pan Am flight ran later that year, it was the end of a once grand airline. I folded the paper. “It was the gawdawful vegetarian meals,” I muttered.

If only I had told them before it was too late.

2024 Department Home Grown

Home Grown

HOME GROWN

By Cynthia Adams

There were warning signs before Dad finished packing Mama’s pea-green-colored Samsonite luggage set into the new-to-us station wagon. In the days before soft-sided luggage, such cases were hardshell, hideous and unyielding. Her clothing and makeup cases alone claimed most of the cargo space.

Our Great Canadian Trek was so auspicious Dad had passed over the usual Yank tanks — huge Caddies and stinkin’ Lincolns — for a second-hand forest-green station wagon with faux-wood accents. My brothers were excited. My sister and I less so.

And then I saw my father surreptitiously stuffing in wholesale-sized boxes of Almond Joys, Baby Ruths, Tootsie Rolls, Fireballs and Butterfingers. It dawned on me: He planned to fill us up on sweets so he wouldn’t have to spend money eating out on the road.

Arguing commenced about who would sit where. My youngest brother wanted to wedge himself in the rear beside the candy boxes.

Before we’d left the driveway, our wheel man was fuming. “Shut the ‘H’ up!” he commanded, soon adding the puzzling: “Don’t make me stop this car!” He hadn’t actually even started it.

My thoughts turned to the Donner party and other god-awful, doomed expeditions. There were 1,500 miles yawning ahead between Hell’s Half Acre and Nova Scotia. Ironically, Dad promised Prince Edward Island, the inspiration for my beloved Anne of Green Gables, would make it all worthwhile.

The AC spluttered then died as we rolled through northern Virginia on new Michelins Dad couldn’t stop bragging about. He was not much on getting repairs even as he mumbled about having the Freon checked. Fanning herself, my mother muttered, “So much for driving in comfort.”

Dad, gray eyes narrowing, accelerated onto the interstate and shouted to the hesitating driver in front of us, “The sign says ‘YIELD,’ for God sakes, not ‘give up’!”

I sulked, too, wondering if my new crush would even remember me weeks later.

Dad barked at me to toss some candy to the youngest ones as soon as they began hinting about hamburgers. They devoured sweets, grew antic, then complained about the heat, which increased as we approached the Chesapeake area.

Mom suddenly shrieked. “The sign says there’s a tunnel ahead!”

She was completely petrified of tunnels and long bridges.

Dad commenced reassuring her that she would be OK. I looked forward to the tunnel, assuming it was cool inside. I hissed, “If we drown, we drown.” Dad looked back and shot me a murderous look. Mom paled.

Things did not improve as we skirted New York. In fact, the northward journey became a blur of heat/exhaustion/sugar comas and quibbling. The days (and chocolate candies) melted as everyone’s tempers shortened.

Memorably, we found cooler temps as we hit New England, stopping off in Lincoln, Maine, to visit Dad’s friends, the Lloyds. We learned they were putting us up, but in separate houses. My younger sister and I stayed with Miss Lillian in a Victorian greatly resembling the Addams Family home.

That night, my sister pressed a button near the antique headboard. The kindly widow knocked gently at the door. “Yes, dears?” she asked.

The button had once been used to summon servants.

“My sweet Herman used that to call me when he was ill,” she explained sweetly. As soon as the door closed, I said Herman likely died in our bed. My youngest sister, age 11, was terrified but tried to hide it. Instead, she refused to share the same bed, taking her pillow and our blanket to lay on the rug, where she remained until morning.

At breakfast, I insisted the pot of full cream on Miss Lillian’s table was “northern milk” and watched as my gullible sister poured a glass and took a huge swig. Meantime, our mother discovered bears feasting on wild blueberries in the Lloyd’s backyard, terrifying her.

By the time we lumbered into Canada, we were thoroughly sick of each other. By the first Canadian sunrise, Dad — ever eager to buy property — met with a Realtor. The innkeeper knocked at my door, saying Dad had arranged for me and my sister to help out with housekeeping in exchange for lower room rates.

We grudgingly complied because, well, we’re Southerners. Dad also rejected driving to the Green Gables heritage site. Instead, we returned via Moncton, experiencing the much-ballyhooed Magnetic Hill. As Dad and my brothers exclaimed, I sighed dramatically.

As we continued homeward, nerves shot, Mom overruled Dad and chose a white-tablecloth restaurant, where we (inscrutably) ordered six tomato juice cocktails while he was in the bathroom. Seeing the waiter place juices on a little saucer before all of us, he exploded, “Do you think I’m made of money?” All eyes followed as we noisily scraped our chairs away from the table and departed.

There were more proverbial straws soon to break the camel’s fractured back. Naturally, the car threw a fan belt before we made it to the Mason Dixon Line. The radiator blew, too, prompting me to dub the wagon “Moby Dick.”

We dressed in shorts and T-shirts, seeking relief from the heat, but my sweat-damp thighs stuck to the brown Naugahyde seats. Each shift of my posture produced embarrassing fart-like noises, delighting my siblings. My youngest brother imitated this, producing a gross symphony of sounds to accompany the miles southward — an obscene vacation soundtrack.

Despite Moby Dick’s many ills, and our laments and complaints, Dad finally docked him in our driveway.

I leaped out, pirouetted in the gravel, and raced inside to claim the aqua-colored Princess phone by my parents’ bed.

Later, my father and brothers remembered the trip positively. They would extol New England’s abundant beauty, plus lack of litter, billboards and heat, seemingly forgetting all else. Dad would tell all listeners about the mystery of Magnetic Hill.

But my mother’s brow would raise, her eyes round before exploding. “Tunnels and bridges! Bears in Maine! Overtaxed hairspray costs in Canada! Miles of nothing! That hideous, hot station wagon! Never. Again.”

“Say what you want,” Dad would muse affably, a changed man once home in his easy chair. “That’s some bee-yoo-tee-ful country up there. Can’t wait to get back.” OH

Cynthia Adam is a contributing editor to O.Henry magazine.

2024 Department Home Grown

Home Grown

12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS

The Dog Who Owned Us

Goodbye to a good girl

By Cynthia Adams

Paintings by Dana Holliday

Left: Zoe loved to wear a circus-like collar and do tricks

Right: Kip was a take-charge (versus a take-commands) dog . . . who wore his authority seriously

A gray February fog clung to us as we walked. Our shoulders slumped in the slackened posture of sorrow. Clasping hot cups of coffee couldn’t ease the chill; the worst of the cold was soul deep.

Our eyes flickered towards one another, then slid away to the marsh grasses our two dogs sniffed, then to the sea beyond. Zoe, a gentle-natured mutt, stumbled, stiffly hinged as if her body parts no longer worked together as a coherent whole. Once, she had moved with loose-limbed grace.

Kip, the younger, trailed slowly and I tugged at his leash, wondering. With a canine’s exquisite sixth sense, did he grasp the reason for our sad silence?

Zoe came from humble beginnings as a “pound puppy” 16 years earlier at the Guilford County animal shelter. She was a terrier mix, part Australian shepherd; the greater part was a sweet mystery.

When we had first sought a pet, I produced a picture of a small terrier torn from a magazine long ago. My husband pocketed it, and so began frequent forays to the animal shelter.

“I’ll find our dog,” he assured. “Just be patient. ” On weekly walks through the shelter, the picture in hand, he did.

The story of our charismatic Zoe’s adoption — how my husband got into a lottery with others who also wanted her, then lost out — only underscored the pleasant shock when Zoe was discovered there again, returned. (“She found us. It’s because she was meant to be ours all along,” Don explained.)

Amazingly, Zoe was a look-alike to the dog in the now dog-eared picture.

Initially, she was so well behaved she wouldn’t even bark. Don coaxed her with pats, treats and constant assurances that she was “a good — no — a wonderful girl.”

Zoe wanted nothing more than to please and be pleasing. In her, we discovered a clever dog quickly mastering David Letterman’s stupid pet tricks (she unfailingly chose the larger of two bills when asked!). Zoe also trained us well.

What she loved most was to walk twice daily — even on several-mile-long treks. She also had endless reserves of gratitude, sweetly thanking us for small favors with devotion. Her bright eyes seemingly welled with gratitude. Initially healthy, Zoe battled with nerve sheath tumors in middle age. But inoperable retinal disease left her completely blind. By age 12, cognitive changes began as well, then deafness.

She had found her voice, and used it — now barking at nothing. Still, Zoe demanded twice-daily walks along routes so frequent they had names, so familiar she needed neither her sight nor hearing to follow them. The “Homer route” looped past the home of a corgi Zoe liked. The “Belle route” passed a sweet yellow lab’s home. The “Weaver” looped past a business park. In Zoe’s older age, a half-mile loop in front of the house could only be managed in a no-hurries gait.

Our slightly younger terrier, Kip, had pancreatitis. Both geriatric dogs’ medical files grew thicker. Both required carrying up and down stairs.

We discovered Zoe was in renal failure while vacationing at the coast. The kindly emergency vet gently advised: “It is time.”

We determined to make those final days Zoe’s best. We took exceedingly slow walks, keeping to our routine. We gave her cheeseburgers. No matter what special wine we uncorked, nor what gorgeous, pink-tinged sunset played out that weekend, we soldiered on, miserable. Kip sniffed Zoe’s frail body knowingly.

The appointed day arrived with impenetrable fog low over the Intracoastal Waterway. As Zoe sniffled and snuffled the marsh grasses, I snapped one last picture with my cell phone. Her eyes showed a ghostly blue-white, otherworldly iris.

Zoe had chosen us 16 years ago; now, it was our final gift to surrender her to the sweet hereafter. The vet stroked her, too, as Zoe’s eyes closed. She left us as she had come to us, in trusting innocence.

A good — no — a wonderful girl. OH

Cynthia Adam is a contributing editor to O.Henry magazine.

2024 Department Home Grown