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Food, Actually

If you look for it, I’ve got a sneaky feeling you’ll find that love actually is all around the table

By David Claude Bailey

This is a love story. It began 60 years ago.

Our new Boy Scout executive, Wofford Malphrus, is explaining how we’ll have more guns, more bows and arrows, more everything at summer camp. As he’s leaving, he pulls a photo from his wallet and says, “This is my daughter and some of you will be going to school with her next year.”

I am stunned. She is without doubt the most beautiful woman on the planet. At the same moment, I realize I have zero chances of ever dating her. In fact, at age 15 — shy, one-eyed, gawky, a beatnik wanna-be — I’m yet to have my first date.

Fast-forward two years and my best friend, Spencer, tells me that Anne Malphrus has seen my ’45 Ford army surplus heap of a Jeep and wants to ride in it.

And she does. Double dating with my cousin, Bill, and Anne’s best friend, Mary, we picnic at my uncle’s farm. My mother packs leftover roast duck and blue cheese, while Bill’s mom sends deviled eggs and savory lemon bars. It’s love at first bite as two foodies feast away. In sprinkling rain on the way back to the car, our first kiss comes as we huddle under the picnic blanket.

We remain an item through Anne’s freshman year at UNCG, when we elope and get married under our Greek professor’s whispering pines. A year later, we take a sabbatical from school and hitchhike all over Europe, mostly in Spain and Greece where we can afford to stay in a hotel instead of a youth hostel. We discover heady gazpacho, goat cheese and succulent melon served with paper-thin slices of Iberian ham. Hello, rabo de toro (bull’s tail stew), calamari and bacalao (salt cod with tomato sauce).

Time passes and we’re still together — me, a reporter covering the earliest days of the Space Shuttle; Anne, an artist and food columnist. On our 13th anniversary, Anne tells me no more excuses, no more delays, it’s time to have a child.

We do, first Sarah and then Alice. And so begins the most magical years of our lives, reliving youth through our children’s eyes, building villages out of twigs and rocks for Terabithians, reading them the same fairy tales our mothers read us. Our girls learn to ride bikes, swim, make and keep friends, drive cars. We blink and they’re off to college.

A few years later, Sarah announces she’s moving to Spain. She does and loves it. Over the next 20 years, she manages to acquire a husband, a horse and an apartment in Europe’s equivalent to Myrtle Beach, Mallorca. Gaining Spanish residency, she works in a digital job we barely understand. A cordial divorce follows.

She moves to Málaga and falls for Toni Mayo, a landscape designer, serial entrepreneur and Airbnb owner. After spending Christmas with his family in La Higuera, way up in the mountains, she becomes part of a loving Spanish family, who adopt her without reservation.

Finally, at age 43, Sarah figures out how to have children and presents us with a perfect grandchild, Jeva.

It’s Christmas Eve. As a fire crackles in the hearth, Toni’s mother’s house fills with Jeva’s aunts, uncles, her great grandmother and the world’s dumbest Labrador. Anne and I are on the floor with Jeva, who is now, surprise, a bossy 2-year-old. She is sitting very contentedly in my lap as I read to her, for the 40th time this season, the adventures of Santa Bear. Soon, we sit down to shrimp croquettes, gazpachuelo (a rich fish soup creamy with mayonnaise), antequerano (cod with oranges) and an array of other traditional holiday dishes, washed down with sparkling Spanish cava. Standing up, I propose a toast to love and to family, a family that has adopted me and my loved ones — heart, soul and stomach.

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A Last Last Name

Heading into 50 with a nifty new surname

By Danielle Rotella Guerrieri

At the beginning of our fifth date, I finally knew how to pronounce Tom’s last name. After walking into 1618 Midtown’s entrance on a scorching July evening, the hostess asked if we had a reservation, and he kindly replied, “Yes, it’s under Guerrieri.” Needless to say, I spent a chunk of that dinner silently pronouncing his name in my head.

For the first chapter of my life, I had a unique name that I loved — Danielle Rotella. Easy to pronounce, no middle name. Government forms have three blank spaces for your full name, and I discovered, from frustrated government employees, that I couldn’t leave the “middle name” box blank, because, as one agitated DMV employee told me when I got my first driver’s license in 1991, “It looks like it was left blank by mistake.” I quickly learned to always write “NMN” for “no middle name” in that space.

At 26, I took on a third name when I married my first husband. Scooting Rotella to the middle name spot was a relief, knowing I wouldn’t have to write the three-letter acronym anymore, although I quickly realized that some folks thought I hyphenated my name, and one of my relatives wrote Danielle Rotella-Adams for more than 15 years on my birthday cards.

When I became a mom in my 30s, I wanted my two boys to have middle names, mainly so they didn’t have to deal with the whole “NMN” hindrance. Call it a family legacy or call it lazy for not wanting to scroll through that huge baby-name book a million more times, but both of my sons have Rotella as their middle name. Sleep-deprived and exhausted, I filled out my firstborn son’s birth certificate at Women’s Hospital two days after he entered the world on a sweltering late August day in 2007. I carefully made sure the stern administrator sitting next to me could clearly read my handwriting so there would be no question that he had three names. I love that we share this name, even though, now, as teenagers, my sons may cringe at having an unusual family name. They’d probably rather have something more common there — Peter, Joseph, Andrew or, frankly, anything that isn’t Rotella. 

My 40s took me on a wild ride. With two young boys at home, I went through a divorce, became a single mom, helped care for my own mom after her dementia diagnosis, lived through a pandemic and shifted my career. Don’t get me wrong, there were bright spots, too. It’s also when I met Tom, watched my little sister get married and become a mom, celebrated one brother’s engagement and another’s path to college — a true whirlwind.

Now, at age 50, I’m writing a new chapter at the halfway point of my life — and with a new name. You guessed it, Tom and I are now newlyweds, and I get to switch around my name boxes yet again. Despite the hassle of filling out oodles of online name change requests, there’s a newfound excitement I feel each time I hit “submit.”

Yes, a lot has happened since that fifth date with Tom eight years ago, when I first imagined him being the one I could spend the rest of my days with. Just last week, we walked into GIA’s entrance and were greeted by the smiling host, who asked if we had a reservation.

“Guerrieri,” I said confidently. His eyebrows raised in confusion as he quickly peeked back at his reservation list, then back at my face, my pronunciation clearly not jiving with the name he read.

“It’s pronounced, ‘Gary-air’ and rhymes with ‘derriere,’” I added. The name is nothing like its spelling, but it has distinction and sophistication – exactly how I hope to mark my next 50 years.

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The Light That Binds Brightly

Reflections on traditions

By Ivan Saul Cutler

With warm, fond memories, I cherish my youth, especially those sweet middle childhood years in Compton, the vibrant working-class suburb of L.A. My family, the Cutlers, was the only Jewish family on McDivitt Avenue. We lived happily among many wonderful neighbors and friends.

Religious differences — Catholics, Protestants and Latter Day Saints — made no difference because Jimmy McAuley, Jimmy Hoffman, Craig Lee and Wayne Stiglbauer were my friends, my buddies. Yes, in those halcyon days of my youth, all of us guys were typical boys, doing what boys did together — playing sports, having newspaper routes, riding bikes, goofing off.

On one late-1950s, sunny, Southern California Christmas Day, I arose early. Of course, I knew what day it was. Even though no gift-bearing Santa Claus ever visited my home, my vicarious thrill to see and share their gifts was real, and my friends knew it.

Yes, I couldn’t wait to see what gifts they’d received and join in playing with their new toys and games, while righteously dismissing clothes as a real present.

Just as I was ready to dash out the door, Dad gestured gently with his hand to stop. “Son,” he said in his thick Lithuanian accent, “today is a special holiday for our Christian friends. Your buddies need to be with their families now.”

He was right. Thanks, Dad, for forever imprinting that lesson on my heart that’s been guiding me in life. Respect and honor are the Cutler holiday traditions and best gifts instilled by my immigrant father, Harry.

Now, almost 70 years later, Dad’s no longer here, but I’ve embraced those enduring values and then some. Back then as the Jewish kid in the neighborhood, I could rejoice in the distinct year-end holiday differences of Hanukah and Christmas, yet savor the exhilarating similarities of the radiating light of my heirloom Menorah (an eight-branch candelabra my Grandfather Meyer Cutler handmade in 1936 for my father and his two brothers) and my friends’ glowing Christmas trees, which I helped decorate every year.

My father’s respect-honor ethos teaching remains bright, illuminating and enhancing my diverse relationships with all people I encounter. It’s my father’s enduring gift of wisdom — the presents of presence — that keeps on giving all year.  

Hanukah (dedication in Hebrew), the bright eight-day Jewish Festival of Lights, commemorates the rededication of the Jerusalem Temple in 165 B.C.E. (before the common era) by the Maccabees after its desecration by the Syrian Greeks.

Hanukah’s brightness usually occurs in late November or December, depending on its coincidence on the Hebrew lunar calendar, 25 Kislev, corresponding this year to December 15 to 22, with the first candle kindled on December 14.

Although Hanukah is a post-Hebrew-Bible (Torah) holiday, the metaphor of bright light in the year’s shortest days warrants sharing and receiving its fortified reflection in Christmas brightness. For years, a joy of the season has been kindling the Hanukah candles with non-Jewish friends, especially when the leader candle (Shamash) and all eight candles are burning brightly on the eighth night. The glow from everyone’s eyes confirms the warmth of engaged humanity.

Again, this Hanukah, I happily return to that Christmas Day on McDivitt Avenue, when I couldn’t wait to check out the new toys under my friends’ trees. I can still hear Dad’s voice echoing clearly in my mind, even though he’s been gone for more than 46 years: “Wait until this afternoon or tomorrow to be with your friends. You have plenty of time.”

I did then and will continue to. 

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Trot Till You Drop

A mother and son’s Thanksgiving tradition

By Cassie Bustamante

Thanksgiving traditions? Everyone has ’em. Some families habitually sign up for the local turkey-trot races, dressed in matching tees with some cutesy saying like “First we run, then we eat” paired with fall-colored tulle skirts at their waists and coordinating, striped, knee-high socks. We are not that family.

And yet, in 2023, I ambush my oldest, 18-year-old Sawyer, begging him to turkey trot with his momma in the Greensboro Gobbler 5K. My motives are not entirely self-centered: A cross-country and track athlete when he graduated from Grimsley earlier that year, since then his sneakers have been collecting dust — not the kind kicked up on a trail.

An avid, albeit slow, runner myself, I know the benefits exercise has on my mental health. Trust me when I tell you that my family has many times breathed a sigh of relief when I hit the pavement. Of course, tell a teenager you think anything would be good for them and watch their eyes roll. Even if you can’t see the movement in their eye sockets — trust me — you can feel it.

Nevertheless, Sawyer oh-so-reluctanty agrees to join me in the race. I get to work training, suggesting that he do the same. And yet the weeks tick by without him so much as glancing at his Asics. But he’s a cross-country runner, after all, and confident that he can just wing it and be absolutely fine. Oh, to have that kind of confidence!

Race day arrives and we make our way to the starting line. Music blares on nearby speakers, families decked out in the aforementioned outfits huddle together and Davie Street thrums with energy. The gun goes off, and off we go. Within seconds, Sawyer’s feet swiftly take him way ahead of me. After less than a block, Sawyer’s gone from my line of vision and I know I won’t see him again until the end, but that’s OK. I am not trying to prove anything — to my son or to myself. Surprisingly, I cross the finish line a full minute and a half earlier than I’d expected and I feel great.

Smiling and panting, I scan the crowd for my son. Finally, I spot him. He’s fair-skinned as it is, but his face is as white as a ghost. I hate to call my own child pasty, but there’s no other word to describe him just then.

“Let’s take a selfie and commemorate this moment!” I say, excitedly whipping out my phone. He winces as I snap the photo and does a quick about face. “I don’t feel so good,” he ekes out. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

So, in the middle of downtown Greensboro’s Center City Park, Sawyer leans his head over a garbage can while I look around to make sure we aren’t in the background of anyone else’s photos.

As quickly as we can, we hop in the car and head home. Sawyer, gripping a half-drunk bottle of water, once again has color in his cheeks.

When we pull up in our driveway five minutes later, the lucky teenager has bounced right back as if nothing out of the ordinary happened. He turns to me before opening his car door and says, “Well, Mom, I think we’ve just started a new tradition.”

“I’d love that! And maybe next year we can get fun outfits,” I say, already picturing them in my head and wondering if I can run with a heavy stuffed-turkey hat on my head.

“Not happening,” he says, quickly squashing that dream. “But next year I might train a little bit.” 

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Bad, Bad Baby

He’s the one to blame

By Cynthia Adams

Some years ago, I bought a blue-eyed, Gerber-perfect baby boy. With molded blonde curls, an upturned nose, and wide eyes, his expression features bow-like lips, opened slightly, frozen in permanent surprise.  

My baby is a cherubic-looking bust. Picture a 1950s-era doll head. He presides over my work life.

It soon struck me that those rosebud lips were parted just enough for a cigarette.

Which, I discovered, they handily accommodated. 

The ciggie, a fake one I’ve used in a cigarette holder when I dressed as a flapper for a Halloween party, appears lighted. This took Gerber baby to another dimension. Unexpected. Unsettling.

There and then he became Bad Baby, official muse. Bad Baby, office mascot.  

Bad Baby has presided over many false starts and rewrites. He sits right above my computer, where Bad Baby never fails to make me smile when I need it. An artist friend, Dana, was particularly delighted when she popped into my office and spotted Bad Baby, who is parked beside a primitive painted folk-art bus with “Guanajuato” scrawled on it. 

The most compelling thing about the bus is the various clay figures of passengers. It’s difficult to say exactly what the crudely formed figures are doing, their arms raised in a gesture of helplessness, but it is appears they are trying to bail out. One figure stands on top of the hood and two on the roof, with others at the rear, appearing ready to leap into the unknown. I like the irony.  

Who hasn’t felt like bailing? Who hasn’t had feet of clay? I identified with the hapless figures wanting to exit.

Dana has no shortage of creative projects. So, when I confessed to having a creative dry spell, she laughed.

“Blame it on Bad Baby,” she drawled. Problem solved!

Bad Baby as scapegoat.  

Bad Baby is responsible for many things in my daily life. Typos. Missing the postal carrier when something needs to go out. Buying a greeting card and bungling the address.

Hangnails. Hangovers.   

When my iPhone texts were hacked (something that Apple aficionados suggest cannot happen), it didn’t occur to me to blame Bad Baby for the psycho-gibberish, disturbing rant, given he has no texting fingers.  

The recipient, a good friend, believed I had actually sent them. He asked his colleague to find out what had so provoked me. 

No, I assured her, I had sent no such messages. Yet there they were, on my phone.  

Also embarrassing? Misspellings, poor grammatical construction, and lack of sense. Worse, too, that a friend would think that a writer sent something so garbled. 

With red hot cheeks, I erased the texts (wouldn’t that make sense?), urged my friend to do the same, and dialed Apple support, immediately learning they needed the texts to trace the source.   

Calls are spoofed. Seems texts are as well.

So, a few months later, I flinched when Dana reacted to a jokey text, responding that I was a filthy animal.  

Was this real? Or had she also been hacked? Or had I been hacked again?

Shaken, I phoned her. She snorted, saying her text was merely a joke, a riff borrowed from the flick, Home Alone. Explaining how unnerved I’d been since the texting spoof, she snorted again.

“Blame it on Bad Baby,” my friend suggested again and laughed.

Just in case you’re wondering, Bad Baby is my invention. The OG. Turns out there is a 20-year-old rapper, Danielle Peskowitz Bregoli, who assumed the name Bhad Bhabie. I firmly believe my Bad Baby predates her Bhad Bhabie.  

And I like old-school spellings far better. No phat bhabie nor brat bhabie for me. Just plain old, conventional, ciggie-puffing Bad Baby.

“You can be too old for a lot of things, but you’re never too old to be afraid,” seems apropos, another line borrowed from Home Alone. Some are frightened by dolls — an actual phobia called pediophobia. 

An inexplicable text that appears to be from me but isn’t? That scares me.

And so, now I sit, scowling with narrowed eyes at Bad Baby, afraid to wonder just what havoc he might wreak next. But — if you should get a text rant from Bad Baby, please ignore it.

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The Sun Also Rises — and Shines Where It Shouldn’t

Hollywood fantasy versus stark-naked reality?

By Cynthia Adams

Same Time, Next Year’s setting — which movie critic Janet Maslin sniped was the only thing that saved the 1978 film from being ruinously boring — nearly upstaged star-crossed lovers Ellen Burstyn and Alan Alda. When opportunity (aka cheap airfare) allowed, I envisioned a romantically windswept trek to the rugged cliffs of Mendocino with my husband.

But Mendocino in autumn was dead but for a whistling wind. A tour of the quaint, old inn left little to do beyond admiring said cliffside. The cottage where Burstyn and Alda trysted was a set that Universal Studios transported southward to the Heritage House Resort.

Disappointed, we decided to meander back down Highway 1 to San Francisco.

Outside of Mendocino, a roadside stand turned out to be a pop-up head shop where I spied a little pink pottery pipe. This scandalized my more conventional husband, but it seemed to me the perfect souvenir.

When signs for Bodega Bay came into view, I shrieked excitedly that we couldn’t miss Hitchcock’s setting for The Birds.

Bodega Bay was another sleepy outpost — an actual bay with working fishermen. No ominously gathered birds.

Hitchcock deployed mechanical birds, plus over 25,000 live seagulls, sparrows, finches and crows. Of the 3,200 birds trained for the film, Hitch mostly used ravens. Seagulls, he told Dick Cavett, were the most aggressive. Many were trapped at the San Francisco city dump by the trainer, who revealed they instinctively “go for your eyes.” By the time the film wrapped, a traumatized Tippi Hedren had endured not only bird assaults, but Hitchcock’s, too.

Of course, I knew none of this.

Over a seafood lunch in Bodega Bay, I gloomily realized that it was not that California had changed since Hitchcock and Alda had worked their movie magic: It was me.

Yet I remained resolved to continue whatever explorations our teensy-tiny budget allowed. Discovering cut-rate fares to Key West, I pounced. Hemingway! Cuba! Key West practically screamed bucket-list adventure. Knowing little, I relied upon my hairdresser for information, booking his favorite inn.

We escaped a cold, dreary Triad to re-emerge inside a sunny haven.

A pastel golf cart driven by a gorgeous man collected us at the airport. Key West pulsed with energy. Colorful restaurants abound, including Blue Heaven, started by a Chapel Hill family, Louie’s Backyard and Pepe’s Cafe, a President Truman favorite. 

Our inn overflowed with beautiful, tanned people. With an exception: a pasty-white, portly couple who were anything but. They were improbable in such a setting; him, stentorian, Orson Wellesian, and she wore her gray hair primly coiled in a perm.

We hurriedly dropped off our bags bound for Hemingway’s house and its storied cats. The innkeepers suggested a private sunset sail for guests later.

Which, we discovered once aboard, was swimsuit optional.

As Nora Ephron quipped, our young selves had no idea we would never again look as good in — or out — of swimsuits. But the majority remained fully suited up . . . apart from the pale couple we noted at check-in. 

Shucking off suits, cellulite be damned, they hoisted themselves to the prow of the sailboat. There, they proceeded to suck each other’s lips off as he twined his fingers through her curls. 

The rest of us awkwardly averted our eyes as they eventually cannonballed off the bow to swim au naturel. That evening, the lovebirds padded through the lobby scantily clad, sunburned the deepest scarlet of a Key West sunset. 

Checking out days later, we inquired about their, uh, sunburns. The innkeeper leaned close. “They’re Chicagoans. A same time, next year couple,” he whispered. “She’s his secretary. He’s a big deal lawyer.  And they meet up here. Every. Single. Year.”

My husband could barely contain himself as we left, me stunned into silence. “Well, you finally got your wish,” he chortled, doing his best to stifle outright laughter. “Be careful what you wish for,” he managed to choke out as I ignored him, another illusion shattered, our golf cart streaking past a Hollywood-perfect Key West sunrise.

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A Wild Ride

Please disembark safely and enjoy your day

By Cassie Bustamante

I stand, feet firmly planted on the ground, next to my two kids, a large, looping rollercoaster looming above our heads. Sawyer, 9, has zero interest in being thrust upside-down — no thank you, sir! Emmy, 8 and not yet tall enough to board, watches wistfully as my husband, Chris, hands me his baseball cap and makes his way alone to the line for the 97-degree drop of Fahrenheit, one of Hersheypark’s wildest rides

Like Emmy, I was the second of two children and much more the thrill seeker than my older brother, Dana. He was no scaredy-cat, but he wasn’t leaping in blindly either. Meanwhile, I boarded the jankiest of old wooden coasters, not an ounce of concern for my safety. If others had ridden before — and walked away OK — that was enough for me. As my height inched slowly up, so did the rides. No more wimpy-hilled kid coasters for me, I was ready to be thrown upside-down-and-around at great speeds and even greater heights.

Thankfully, the summer I turned 11, my parents planned a vacation that would scratch everyone’s itch, a road trip from our home in Massachusetts to Virginia. My father sat on our family-room sofa, knees splayed and a road atlas opened on the coffee table in front of him, sketching out our route on a yellow legal pad. This was the 1980s after all, before the days of Waze.

We took a rolling scenic route through the Blue Ridge Mountains on the way down. Dad’s always been interested in nature photography. In fact, a photo he shot graces the cover of the fall 2009 Chesapeake Magazine. And Mom? Colonial Williamsburg was top of her list. For Dana and me, 12 and 10 at the time, there was bicycling along the Virginia Beach boardwalk and — my thrill-loving heart pitter-pattered at the very thought of it — Busch Gardens, an amusement park where roller coasters, whirling, spinning rides and a white-water-rafting adventure awaited.

After waiting in line, Dad and I buckled into the Kelly-green seats of the school-bus-yellow Loch Ness Monster ride, which has been thrilling passengers for just as long as I’ve been taking my parents and brother on a wild ride, since 1978. I can’t even tell you what happened, it went so fast. All I know is, as soon as my feet hit the ground, I was shouting, “Again!” Dana joined me for my second ride.

While the Loch Ness was a hard pass for Mom, she put on a brave face for The Big Bad Wolf, a suspension-seat rollercoaster with zero loops. I opted for the very front car and Dana took the seat next to me. Mom sat behind us with another woman, probably mother to some other pair of kiddos. After the Nessie, the Wolf seemed rather tame. However, Mom howled the entire time, screaming as if an actual wolf was chasing her over the entire German-inspired village below. Dana and I were mortified.

But now, standing at Hersheypark with my own two kids, I understand. Something in me changed when I had kids and, at the very thought of a wild rollercoaster ride, my knees quake.

Windswept, Chris returns to where Sawyer, Emmy and I stand. I hand him back his hat to cover the mess his hair has become. “That,” he says with a dramatic pause, “was incredible!” His eyebrows inch up at me. “You want me to stay with the kids so you can have a turn?”

I look him in the eye as a spark of adventure passes briefly through me. I answer confidently, “Not in a million years.”

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Obits and Pieces

The tale of a quirky hobby practically writes itself

By Cynthia Adams

Collecting clever obituaries is a hobby of mine. 

It’s a far less time-consuming undertaking, erm, endeavor, than you might think.

Interesting obits are as rare as zorses (a zebra and horse hybrid). When they happen, the social media universe is alerted and the obit boomerangs around 10 jillion times. Fun, intriguing, even weird obituaries are snapshots of the strangest of hybrids: the rare, true originals who have roamed this Earth.

Douglas Legler, who died in 2015, planned his obit for the local newspaper in Fargo, N.D. “Doug died,” he wrote. Just two words guaranteed a smile and a wish that we had known him.

Yet navigating the truth about our dearly departed is a tricky thing. I know, having attempted writing tender, true or even mildly interesting obits.

Uncle Elmer’s beer can collection or lifelong passion for farm equipment may not a fascinating individual reveal, but it beats ignoring the details that made Elmer, well, Elmer. Maybe loved ones wish to eulogize a different sort than they actually knew, say, an Elmer possessing panache. Ergo, an unrecognizable Elmer.

My father, in fact, worried that his own obit might one day portray him as suddenly God-fearing, upright and flawless.

“I know some will probably show up for my funeral just to be sure I’m dead,” he’d joke, shucking off the funeral suit we nicknamed his dollar bill suit — the tired hue of well-worn money. It didn’t even complement his twinkling green eyes, which seemed especially twinkly after a funeral or wake.

Why so upbeat? “It wasn’t me,” he sheepishly confessed after the funeral of a prickly neighbor.

Bob, an older, popular colleague of mine, had a sardonic wit, too, even as personal losses mounted. Each Friday he’d drawl, “Guess me and Becky will ride down to Forbis & Dick tonight and see who died. Then we might go to Libby Hill for dinner.” 

In a similarly irreverent spirit, I offered to help my father with his funeral plans in advance, jabbing at his habitual lateness. “You’ll be late for your own funeral,” I accused.

“We’ll request the hearse to circle town before the service so we’re all forced to wait the usual half hour.”

Dad rolled his eyes.

He died suddenly at age 61. Much later, I wished we had mentioned in his obituary how his end was almost as he’d hoped: in the arms of a beautiful woman. 

True, his newest paramour had arms. They may, in fact, have been her best attribute. (My siblings never let me near his obituary.)

To our surprise, Preacher Lanier wanted to speak at Dad’s funeral. But Dad was not a churchgoer, we said delicately; the service would be at the funeral home. Then he revealed that they were old friends, breakfasting together each Wednesday.

Carefully, I asked that he not proselytize — as he was often inclined. He knew our father far too well to do that, he chuckled. 

True to his word and a shock to me, the preacher revealed that our father underwrote the church’s new well. 

Disappointingly, there would be no tour of town before the service either; the hearse wasn’t involved until we drove to the interment.

For once, therefore, Dad was exactly on time. 

Like funerals, obits offer the chance to surprise us in a good way. 

Lately, my friend Bill got me thinking about mine. Given my inglorious beginnings in Hell’s Half Acre, he knew exactly what he’d say at my end. 

“I’d say I’d have you buried in a trailer, but it would cost too much to dig the hole,” he quipped, mocking my uncultured life.

I would never admit it to him, but that was pure genius; it ought to at least be mentioned in my obit.

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The Album

Family photos launch a new road trip down memory lane

By Danielle Rotella Adams

My mom may remember my name today.

Or not.

I’ve come to terms with this as I enter her memory care home, walk down the bright hallway and round the corner into her room.

One of my mom’s neighbors is taking a lap down her hallway, walking toward me. I know for sure that he won’t remember my name.

“Hi, Bill, nice to see you,” I say as I walk closer. He replies with a curious, somewhat confused expression, “Nice to see . . . you?”

Last month, Bill told me that he takes 600 laps a day inside the building using his rollator. He said that he likes to keep moving.

Walking through my mom’s doorway, I don’t hear anything. Pure silence. We make eye contact and she recognizes me. I can see it in her eyes.

“Hi, Mom, how are you doing?”

The question lingers for a moment. She then breaks into her playful smile, which I’ve known my whole life. The smile I remember from countless soccer games and chorus performances.

I give her a hug and remove the cloth bag from my shoulder. “Mom, I brought another photo album for us to look through today,” I explain as she starts to look more comfortable and more herself.

A few short years ago, back in June of 2021, my mom was diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia and Parkinson’s Disease. But I suspected something was up when I noticed that her right foot was always trembling, and she stumbled on words and phrases.

After the diagnosis, we worked together to sell her house and move her to an assisted living apartment. We carefully reviewed her financial and insurance accounts and added my name to her bank accounts.

Her disease held steady until it didn’t.

On September 30, 2024, I got the dreaded call that we couldn’t put it off any longer. She needed to move from assisted living to memory care.

Did it go smoothly? No, not really, but we got through it. She is adjusted now, our new normal taking shape.

Her speech is worse than ever, her words often jumbled or inaudible. She often knows the word she’s looking for, but can’t seem to locate it. She rarely knows what day it is and can’t operate her iPhone without help.

Despite this, I made a fortuitous discovery. Her words and memories return miraculously when we look at old photos together. As we start looking through albums, whether they are from 10, 20 or 40 years ago, she points to faces, clearly naming people she hasn’t seen in decades.

On this particular day, we’re looking at an album from 1983, reminiscing about a road trip we took to visit family in Upstate New York. Photos of my cousins, aunt and uncle gathered around my grandparents’ kitchen table transforms Mom back into the laughing, energetic young woman.

She remembers it all.

She points to her brother, my Uncle Rennie, remarking at how young and different he looked back then. Her words flow freely when talking about that summer. Photos of our 1972 Volkswagen Westfalia van bring us back to our long drive from North Carolina.

“I made those curtains on my sewing machine,” she remarks, her shaky finger pointing to the red floral pattern on the windows, which matched the faded exterior of her beloved van.

We laugh as we flip each page, surprised at how different life was in 1983. Our hairstyles were long and shaggy. No gray hair or reading glasses for either of us. No cane or walker for her.

Because at this moment, sitting on a small couch in her room on this cold, winter day, we are the 1983 versions of ourselves again — before a debilitating diagnosis had taken over.

She is once again a fearless single mom, and I am a wild, long-legged 8-year-old girl, both of us laughing back then and grinning widely now. I can almost feel the wind hitting my face as we drive southward home in the faded, familiar camper van.

O.Henry Ending

O.HENRY ENDING

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A Visitation on Epiphany

Walking Kiki home

By Woodson E. Faulkner

Lingering after the resounding organ postlude, I pause to take in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York. Stepping through its arched entrance is like walking into a portal of a distant time when things happened slowly, deliberately. Being one of the last to exit after the Feast of the Epiphany service, I catch a glimpse of the vicar and compliment his homily, which asked the question, “Why are we here?” In his sermon, he suggested that those of us who were present were seeking to build a community not just of believers, but of members of a “peaceable kingdom,” where common respect, kindness, and desire for truth and beauty might come together. He accepts my compliments graciously, bidding me “Happy New Year.” 

As I step outside into the night, assaulted by a cold, bracing wind that New York is famous for, I begin the journey back to my Westside Avenue apartment when suddenly, gently, a hand reaches out to my left arm. A little voice breaks my stride: “Would you please help me home? I’m blind, you see, and can’t navigate the steps and curbs very well anymore.” I extend my arm and graciously agree to guide her the two blocks to her apartment.

I finally get a good look at this tiny woman wearing a broad-brimmed hat that flops up and down in the wind, obscuring her face. She is no more than 5 feet tall, wearing an elegant overcoat and dainty shoes. She speaks to me in short, fast sentences, giving me tips on how to help someone who’s blind. “Now, you have to walk slowly and time your footsteps with mine so I can follow you.” At the first intersection, she tells me she’s a jaywalker “because they don’t see you when you’re using the zebra stripes,” aka the designated crosswalk. “They’re just looking at the light. So, you have to make them see you by walking in a way that they are not expecting.” While this seems like a risky idea, I take her advice and guide her kitty-cornered across the street. 

I’m fascinated by this lady’s spunk and determination to get around, relying on the kindness of strangers. As we time our footsteps together, I find the slower pace relaxing, devoid of the anxiety that the typical, brisk-walking New Yorker seems to exhibit. 

“Just one more block,” she says. She slides her hand up, taking hold of my shoulder as we make our way down the final terminus. “You know, I hitchhiked my way around the world when I was younger,” she exclaims. “I’ve been blind all my life, but that didn’t stop me. People expected me to shut up in my room and just wither away! I wasn’t going to do it!”

“Wow,” I say, gasping in amazement at what this little lady must have experienced. “That’s incredible. Were you afraid?” I ask.

“Well, at times, maybe a little, but most people were good to me and helped me get right along.”  

As the Cathedral bells sound their hourly peel, we arrive at her apartment. Just then, tiny, drifting snowflakes begin falling like fairy dust. “Here we are. I’m in the one way up there — you see it?” she asks, pointing with her cane to a place in the dark.

“Oh yes, it’s lovely,” I respond. Just then, the doorman opens the door. As she releases her grasp on my shoulder, I ask, “What’s your name?”

“Kiki,” she says. I stop in my tracks, jolted by suddenly remembering that tonight is the 10th anniversary of my mother’s passing. Her nickname was also Kiki. 

Passing Kiki off to the doorman, I turn and look up at the gentle snow, falling more and more fully as it caresses my face. As the door closes, I catch a faint scent of gardenia coming from the apartment building’s lobby. That was my mother’s favorite flower. 

 “Goodnight, Kiki!” I say as the snow begins to melt down my cheeks.