O.Henry Ending

Embracing Juno

The tarot reading — and tattoo — that changed my life

By Corrinne Rosquillo

In 2018, I visited New Orleans for the first time. It’s a magical city, full of history and an old energy that cannot be described, only felt. It was where I received my first tarot reading — not from some Creole witch (missed opportunity, I know), but from an elderly white man with a calming presence.

I don’t remember his name now. I wish I did. I’m sure it was something like John or Mark. Ordinary, simple — fitting. He did a standard reading with twelve cards. The first eleven of them are a blur, but the final card — the card meant to represent me — still appears in my mind’s eye with crystal clarity: Juno, Queen of the Gods, a force to be reckoned with. That, and the reader’s parting words: “You are your own worst enemy. You can accomplish anything if you get out of your own way.”

I cried because I knew it was true. His words resonated, touching something deep within me that had been there all along, a continuing theme throughout my life. That’s what tarot does — it doesn’t tell you your future or some hidden secret of the universe. It points out what’s right in front of you that you’ve been too busy, too distracted to notice.

At the time, I struggled with anxiety and depression. I still do; I probably always will. But I got the message loud and clear.

I paid him via Venmo and left.

Fast forward to 2019, when a knee surgery plunged me into the deepest depression of my life, a depression that almost killed me. Key word: almost. I’m still here, winning battles against myself.

Those words, spoken to me years ago, still resonate. I knew in 2019 that I wanted to create a permanent reminder for when my depression would inevitably rear its ugly head again. This year, I finished that reminder with the help of Gene Cash at Seven Sagas Tattoo Studio.

I took a look at the classic Roman Juno and made her mine. I have a woodblock-style crane on my right shoulder that represents my first triumph over depression, so I thought, why not a Japanese Juno? Some of her classic symbols are still there: the peacock feathers, the spear, the moon, the lotus. The words beside her, written in Japanese, are a constant reminder to me: “watashi no kataki wa jibun.” My enemy is me.

But my favorite element of the whole piece? If you look carefully, the top line of the moon isn’t finished. It’s intentional, an aesthetic called “wabi sabi” in Japanese. It’s about appreciating beauty that is “imperfect, impermanent and incomplete” in nature. Fitting.

Juno is on my right arm to remind me that I am a goddess, capable of overcoming anything. So long as I believe it, I know I will.

To that tarot reader, wherever you are, thank you for awakening the divine in me.  OH

A goddess with a gorgeous tattoo of Juno on her arm, Corrinne Rosquillo is a regular contributor to O.Henry.

O.Henry Ending

The Sunfish

It was too small to keep. Or maybe it wasn’t.

By Ashley Walshe

This isn’t a big fish story. Quite the opposite, actually. And it starts right here on Lake James, the massive hundred-year-old reservoir lapping the eastern edge of our state’s Blue Ridge Mountains.

It’s the pinnacle of summer. High on a red-clay ridge, the whippoorwill, whose incessant chanting often stretches well into the balmy morning, has gone silent. The red dog is weaving among windswept pines, and I am sitting on the wooden deck of a Coachmen RV, a sparkling sliver of lake visible one half-mile in the distance.

My grandparents used to live here. Not in this 32-foot travel trailer, home to my husband, the dog and me for a warm and watery season. But on down the meandering shoreline, in the brick-and-stucco home with the vaulted ceiling, lakeside gazebo and sweeping view of Shortoff Mountain.

Papaw kept his pontoon at a nearby marina. If I close my eyes, I can almost see two kids swinging their legs at the edge of his boat slip. I’m the little girl with the auburn curls and wild swath of freckles. My younger brother, all blue-eyes-and-dimples, is perched beside me. Neither of us have fished before.

On this day, Papaw is cradling a box of live crickets, and Dad is showing us to how to hook them. The black-and-silver schnauzer, whose feet and beard are permanently stained from the red earth, is barking at the wake as a neighboring boat glides up to dock.

Once we cover the basics (don’t snag your sibling or grandpa), we cast a few lines, jiggling the rod to make our crickets dance.

Papaw watches from the captain’s chair as Dad teaches us a ditty from his own childhood. The song changes based on who’s singing it. Mine goes like this:

Fishy, fishy in the lake, won’t you swim to Ashley’s bait?

I sing incessantly. And guess what? In no time, I feel the coveted tug of what must be a whopper at the end of my line.

I squeal. I reel. And up shimmies the smallest sunfish you’ve ever seen. A bluegill, I think. No bigger than my tiny, freckled hand.

“Can we keep it?” I ask, twitching with excitement. 

“If he’s long enough,” says Papaw. Gripping my whopper in his leathery hands, he gently slides out the hook then slips the fish into a shallow bucket of water. “We’ll measure him later.” 

My brother and I cast several more lines — first at the boat slip, then out in a quiet cove on the water. Although the song appears to have lost its magic, that doesn’t deter us from our fervent chanting. We sing until the crickets are spent, my sunfish our singular catch of the day.

I know now, 25 years later, that we had no business keeping that tiny sunfish. But it was never about the fish for Papaw.

Peering down into the bucket, my grandpa announces that the bluegill is “just big enough,” then gives me one of his signature winks. I wink back from my seat outside the camper, smiling through time at a proud little girl and her very first fish.

That night, while the rest of the family ate crappie from a previous haul, I savored every bite of my pan-fried sunfish. It didn’t look like much on the plate, but the memory has fed me for a lifetime.   OH

Ashley Walshe is a former editor of O.Henry magazine and a longtime contributor of PineStraw.

O.Henry Ending

All That Glitters Is Not Gold

An unexpected visitor leaves a lasting impression

By Barbara Rosson Davis

Illustration By Harry Blair

Dogwoods and Azaleas were in full bloom. Robins tweaked worms from my just-tilled garden plot. As my son hurried off to school, I heard him yell, “Mom! Heads up — there’s a big goose in the bathroom!” I thought he was joking. We didn’t have a pet goose and this wasn’t some kind of secret “emergency-code.” I went inside to investigate the situation. We had previously dealt with a black snake in the toilet bowl, a bat in the fireplace and a rabbit in the carport, but a goose in the bathroom?

As I opened our guest bathroom door, I discovered not the Golden Goose, but a large Canada goose, staring into the toilet bowl. I decided he must have gotten in through the slit in the patio-screen, wandered through the open kitchen door and, curiously, ended up in the bathroom, where Matt, as boys will do, had left the toilet seat up.

I wanted to lure this wild fowl out of the house, but our “guest goose” was fierce and attacked me with each attempt. After a tumultuous evening of Mr. Goose’s distress signals coming from the bathroom, Matt tried feeding him couscous. I feebly attempted coaxing our feathered guest out of the bathroom with my ridiculous imitation goose calls. No luck. Flustered and terrified, the goose continued squawking, honking and flapping. The next day, we noticed that “guest goose” grew agitated at certain times — near dusk and in the early morning.

I thought about calling animal rescue, but the sounds of geese flying over the house gave me a better idea. I noticed that local geese flew early in the morning from their nesting area to feed at Sedgefield golf course, returning to their roost at the end of the day, after grazing. I thought: Just maybe, Mr. Goose wants to rejoin his flock. If I could get him outside at those times, he might then join his fellow geese. The following morning, before sunrise, and protected by Matt’s trusty Lacrosse helmet, arm-guards and gloves, I managed to open the bathroom window from the outside. I peered in. The goose seemed calm.

I went back inside the house to find “guest goose” had instantly transformed itself into a boisterous beast, flapping and crashing around the bathroom, seeking escape through the open window. After several attempts, he finally launched his feathered frame airborne, honking loudly as he flew off in pursuit of the flock.

Free at last! His victory was not without consequences for us earthbound mortals. I entered the bathroom to find total chaos: a sprawling, stinking mess! The bathtub was littered with grain, feathers, shampoo and the foulest greenish “goose-goo,” as was the tile floor, counter, sink, and toilet. Where to start?? I held my nose and considered replacing the entire bathtub.

Jars of creams, bottles of cologne, mouthwash and the contents of a spray can of glitter were everywhere. The toilet seat, shower curtain, tub and tile floor sparkled with glitter. Too exhausted after two days of dealing with this rambunctious and uninvited guest, I couldn’t begin to fathom the clean-up campaign for this fowl’s foul-aftermath.

Later that evening, returning from playing golf, my neighbor told me about the most extraordinary phenomenon he had witnessed on the golf course: “I saw this glittering goose grazing the greens, shimmering in the sunlight! Amazing!” OH

Barbara Rosson Davis is a freelance writer, living in Greensboro.

O.Henry Ending

A Shot of the Dark

A Brief History of an Espresso Obsessive

By David Claude Bailey

It was at Friendly Shopping Center’s Potpourri gift shop that I purchased the shining brass apparatus that turned my yen for European espresso into an obsession. It was a flip-drip, Neapolitan coffee maker that I fueled with Medalgia D’Oro, which always smells ever so slightly — and invitingly — of burnt anchovies.

A gruff Frenchman pulled my first cup of espresso in a bar in Cherbourg, where the rising sun fell on dock workers throwing back shots of espresso and something vile in tiny, little glasses. Hitchhiking across Europe at 16, the intensity of Europe’s café experience and the potent black jets of java rocked my world.

But my mother had prepared me for espresso in my hometown of Reidsville by keeping a percolator on our stove reheating and re-perking coffee. As the day progressed, a dark slurry coalesced so potent it triggered endorphins before I knew I had them.

Since then, I’ve led a coffee-centric life, preparing gallons of the stuff in a succession espresso machines and pots, one of which I backpacked into the Grand Canyon. I remember in the ’60s and ’70s when espresso in fancy American restaurants was accompanied by a lemon peel and cube of sugar that you dipped into your brew. I had espresso in Greenwich Village and Pike Place Market before Starbucks existed. I spent a week in Trieste at Illy’s Università del Caffè learning barista skills for an article for Delta’s in-flight magazine, Sky. Later, Dennis Quaintance kindly did not fire me after an enthusiastic coffee consultant and I recalibrated the machines at Green Valley Grill, triggering a fire storm of complaints from regulars whose coffee was suddenly kicked up several notches. I’ve had inexpressibly bad espressos traveling in Peru, Malaysia, Greece, and, yes, even in Italy, France and Spain, from self-serve machines in gas stations.

But the oddest cup of espresso I’ve ever had was in Reidsville. A few years ago, I’d discovered that McDonald’s has decent espresso for $1.38 if you can coach the cashier to find it on the computer screen. For the longest time, the manager had to be called over to make it, but nowadays, most of the burger flippers are sufficiently cross-trained to realize all you have to do is hit the right button.

So one day on the way home from taking my sister hiking at Hanging Rock I informed her I was stopping at the Lucky City’s McDonald’s to have an espresso. “This is Reidsville,” she said. “They won’t know how to make it.” I countered, “If they serve coffee, which they do, they’ll have it.” She gave me that look that said, “you’ve always been bull-headed.”

I was able to help the cashier put in the order and got my endorphin receptors ready — as I waited and waited and waited. I noticed a gaggle of employees around the coffee machine. Finally, the manager came over to say that they were working on my order. After an eternity, a chagrined clerk came forward with my espresso. “Something’s wrong with our machine,” he said. “It took forever to get your cup full, but here it is.” It was luke-warm and instead of an ounce and a half of java, the cup brimmed with at least ten espresso shots pulled one after another.

You can go home again, but you might not get a decent cup of espresso.  OH

Contributing Editor David Claude Bailey concedes that you can get an excellent cup of espresso in downtown Reidsville at Sip Coffee House.

O.Henry Ending

Splash or not Splash?

A risk taken to prove a point

By Mary Best

As the youngest of five dangerously independent — and always mischievous — children of a couple of educators in the Greensboro school system, I weathered many storms as a toddler. Don’t get me wrong: I grew up in a loving home with devoted parents. But being the runt of the litter, I suffered a disadvantage — the last to receive nourishment at mealtime, endless ribbing about my clothes and toys, relentless teasing about being “sweet.” Why were my three brothers so different from me? They didn’t play with dolls, for heaven’s sake. Who doesn’t play with dolls? And don’t even get me started about Barbie.

When I wanted to play with the “big kids,” I sometimes bit off more than I could chew. For example, my family belonged to Lawndale pool, and for hours I would watch my brothers climb to the top of the high dive and plunge into the deep end. Effortlessly. Joyfully. Thoughtlessly.

So, when I was about 3 or so — younger than I could count my years on one hand — I decided to follow in their footsteps and jump off the high diving board. I had watched them master it many times. If they could do it, I thought, how hard could it be?

Fearlessly, I climbed the ladder to the top of the diving board. As I neared the end of the board, lifeguards, pool members and my poor parents froze and watched as a kid who couldn’t recite the alphabet was about to take a death-defying leap.

Up until then, my greatest adventure had been getting lost in Meyer’s downtown. Oh, and that misadventure in Franklin Drugs, when I had to go to the restroom but couldn’t read the signs on the door. Yikes, I chose the wrong door.

But I digress. Back to the pool.

My father quietly ascended the ladder, and when he reached the top, he gently, calmly, called my name. “Mary Frances,” he nearly whispered, “I’d like for you to come to me. I have something I want to tell you.”

I frowned. “But I want to show my brothers I’m as tough as they are.”

“They know, Sweetheart,” he replied. “I was the youngest too. And I endured my share of teasing.”

I never thought about other kids being teased. I had assumed it was some unique, degenerative condition from which only my brothers suffered. I had no idea their ceaseless mocking could be a sign of a pandemic, an epidemic or — even worse — ubiquitous.

The pool crowd silenced. Swimmers, sunbathers and hungry patrons in line at the concession stand held their breath as my father coaxed me toward him.

“Can you make them stop picking on me?” I pleaded. Why the hell not? I wasn’t exactly a prosecutor or defense attorney, but I felt pretty darn powerful for someone who only recently had mastered 4 + 4 = 7, right?

“I can’t promise you that,” my dad said. “But I can promise this: I will never let anyone hurt you. I know your brothers don’t show it because they are knuckleheads, but they love you, and they will always be there for you.”

Convincing. Plus, the water seemed much farther away than it did a few minutes ago.

As my father shepherded my descent from the ladder, I saw my brothers surrounding the area around the foot of the diving board. As sentinels. At that point, I knew they loved me — as protectors, friends, brothers. The teasing didn’t stop, but I knew that day at the pool they loved me.  OH

Mary Best is a freelance writer living in Greensboro. Contact her at marybest04@gmail.com.

O. Henry Ending

Mulch Ado

How moving a compost pile
lifts a family’s spirits

By Cassie Bustamante

“Oh, you’re a fitness trainer,” my doctor said. “This’ll be easy. Just imagine you’re doing a crunch.”

After a few more core exercises, my wriggling baby boy entered the world. We spent two glorious days in the hospital with doctors and nurses guiding our every move. Babies don’t come with user’s manuals, but bookstore shelves are lined with guides, and websites are loaded with tips for navigating those first years. We got this, my husband and I conveyed through exhausted, new-parent eyes.

Sixteen years later, our eyes are a different kind of tired and the silent glances exchanged are more anxious than adoring. There are few, if any, field guides to parenting the modern sulky teen — something that explains the array of inexplicable mood shifts or identifies the meaning behind a glare or sigh. Toss the world of social media and a pandemic into the mix and not even the so-called parenting experts are experts anymore.

Last spring, we were all feeling pandemic fatigue in our house. Missing the connections that come through sports, my son was sinking into a worrying place. I wanted to toss him a rope, but I wasn’t sure I had anything strong enough. After all, I’d never lived through the experience of being a teen boy, let alone during the time of COVID.

Each morning, I’d tote my youngest male prodigy to preschool, reflecting on the unsettling silence of his older brother during the short drive, wondering what it would take to unlock the happy kid we knew was in there. Ironically, an answer to my prayer lay closer than I knew — almost at the end of our own driveway.

A mountainous mulch pile stood at the foot of our neighbor’s yard. As I passed by the house several days in a row, I noticed the mound wasn’t shrinking. Something American politician and orator Robert Ingersoll had said back in the 1800s — as true today as ever — rang in my head: “We rise by lifting others.”

I texted my neighbor: “Let me send Sawyer down to help you with that mulch. He’s had a ton of experience hauling and spreading it and knows what he’s doing.”

When he arrived home that afternoon, I cheerfully pounced. “I volunteered you to help our neighbors spread mulch!” I exclaimed. He rolled his eyes and began muttering excuses not to go. Finally, he shrugged and agreed, if only because spending time there meant not having to deal with me. Sometimes you take a win any way you can get it.

Two days later, he made his trek down the street, garden gloves in hand. Watching him go, a tightness crept over my chest and I choked up a little, knowing this was what he needed. Call it a mother’s hunch that we sometimes rise by lifting others’ mulch. Plus, it’s a scientific fact that once a mother has a child, she can no longer keep her feelings, opinions or the occasional proud tear inside.

When Sawyer returned home, red-faced and sweaty, he was wearing something I hadn’t seen in some time — the beginnings of a smile and a glimmer of pride in his eye.

I tried to play it cool even though I could barely contain my happiness.

“Well,” I casually inquired, “how did it go?”

If we don’t have plans tomorrow,” he said, “is it OK if I go back to help again?”

I told him that would be just fine with me.

The spark was back.

And so was that proud little tear.  OH

Cassie Bustamante is the digital content manager for O.Henry. Subscribe to her witty roundup of Greensboro events in our weekly newsletter, O.Hey, at oheygreensboro.com.

Love During Lockdown

How my parents maintained a steady diet of simple pleasures during COVID

By Georgianna Penn

“It’s the little things that mean a lot, just like the song,” says my mom, who, as a teenager in Gretna, Va., sang that song a dozen times on her radio show in the mid-1950s. For my parents, who have been married for more than 63 years, it has been the little things that have kept their love alive.

During COVID lockdown, I got a brief glimpse through that lens of love my parents so cherish.

My mom remembers the Alta Vista Rotary Club recommending her as a singer for the Russ Carlton Orchestra. Sax player met young jazz singer, and the rest is history.

Remember the saying, “Those who play together stay together”? Dad courted Mom by writing arrangements for her. “In My Solitude” was the first tune. And when they did not have a gig, they danced in the living room on Saturday night. “You Send Me” by Sam Cook was their favorite for non-gig date nights. “We never went to prom because we always played proms,” Mom says. Performing at places like Virginia’s Hotel Roanoke and riding home in the back of the band’s station wagon holding hands was date night for them.

On their first Valentine’s together, George gave Dixie a huge heart-shaped box of chocolates. Because of a massive snowstorm, Dad was unable to drive from Danville to Gretna in his 1941 turtle-back Mercury Coupe for weeks, so Dixie made that box of chocolates last an entire month by eating one piece a day. Fast forward 60 years, George and Dixie, who live in Madison, still eat one piece of chocolate a day — after dinner but before the TV show Suits.

Dad’s biggest accomplishment during COVID has been having his 1935 Conn Naked Lady baritone sax worked on by Greensboro’s saxophone whisperer, Evan Raines, at Moore Music. He also patched the toe hole in his New Balance sneakers during COVID. That’s a trick he learned from his dad, who patched the innertube tires on his 1936 Ford sedan during World War II when rubber was rationed.

If the sweater fits, buy eight of them. With a December birthday, four daughters and Christmas, Mom racked up turtlenecks from Chico’s. One for each day of the week and an extra one for non-gig date nights in the basement.

Watching daily rituals of meal planning or choosing what to wear for Rotary Zoom meetings have been special.

I often catch them holding hands in their matching recliners with their matching Maine Coon cats and matching Timex watches. Each year for New Year’s, they somehow manage to give each other the same gift, a Timex Indiglo watch. Mom has so many, she keeps extras as backup. During lockdown, gig night has turned into basement jazz. Mom and Dad’s most treasured gigs, however, are playing with their four daughters for the O. Henry Hotel’s Jazz Series before COVID.

Their biggest little thing, however, during this time of less-is-more, is their 3 p.m. Bake Me Happy parking lot cupcake dates in Madison, which has taken their romance full circle for sure — while, yes, holding hands. But this time, in the front seat, not the back.  OH

Madison native and Greensboro College graduate, Georgianna Penn loves sharing stories of hope and finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. Performing the music of the Great American Songbook with her family at O. Henry Hotel’s Jazz Series is what she has missed most during the pandemic.

Illustration by Harry Blair

O.Henry Ending

The Short Cut

Shorn but not forgotten

By Cynthia Adams

In the flush of youth, Don loved having  his thick hair tugged and pulled whenever watching one of his educational TV programs. As the narrator droned on about the mating habits of sloths (sloth foreplay alone could fill an entire program), I admired his mane’s manly thickness. Mr. Burgess, his barber, actually thinned it. 

Don was a regular, returning with a G.I. Joe haircut and tales of Mr. Burgess and his investments. The Burgess portfolio was a thing to marvel over when you are young and have only a full head of hair in the credit column. Then, Mr. Burgess hit 100 and closed shop. 

Don was accustomed to sitting in the company of unhurried men who let stories fall out of their mouths as clipped hair fell around their draped shoulders. He and his fine head of hair were adrift after Mr. Burgess hung up his clippers. 

The only thing to do was to patronize a walk-in shop. Don grew experimental, gradually letting his hair grow out when a persuasive female barber convinced him it was more stylish. Stylish was a new possibility! Then Don snagged an interview with a conservative firm. He purchased an interview suit, tie, shirt and wing-tips and returned to the single stylist he trusted. But she was vacationing.  

He shrugged, deciding to fly unshorn to the interview early Monday morning. As Don polished his CV, I fretted that he would look unpolished. I got to thinking. We had recently bought clippers and plunged into grooming our mutts. Admittedly, our dogs looked a bit off. Mottled skin shone through unfortunate places on their ears, rumps, tails and legs. Both had wriggled and protested throughout. 

But humans sat still.  

I eyed Don’s hair, deciding I could not allow him to go off on this job interview looking shaggy. He relented, and perched tensely on the bathroom toilet seat. 

“Just a little overall,” he cautioned, as I aimed the razor attachment on the clippers at Don’s forehead. The razor thrummed against my palm, ticklish and heavy. A two-by-two-inch swatch revealed pinkish white skin behind the razor’s trajectory. A fat swatch of black hair fell to the floor before I jerked the razor back. “Hunh!” I said, my heart galloping.  

Don’s eyebrows flew up. “What did you do?!” he shouted, rising up.  

“Sit back down,” I reproached. “You would never jump up like that if Mr. Burgess was giving you a cut.”  

Don had the beginnings of a reverse Mohawk.  

“It’s just a little short. For you.” (It was short by anyone’s standards, unless, say, you were a skinhead.)  

“How short?!”  

“A little shorter than Mr. Burgess cuts it.”  

At that, Don vaulted off the toilet seat. “Oh. My. God,” he uttered. My hand began shaking, but not from the vibrating razor. When something goes tragically wrong I am prone to laugh. He touched his scalp tentatively. “Wait, let me fix it! Something is wrong with this razor! It’s just the first base line cut,” I protested. “This thing didn’t cut that close with the dogs,” I argued— the only true thing I said that Sunday afternoon. 

Don rounded on me, snatching the razor. “You turned it the wrong way!  You turned it downward to shave and shaved a strip of hair in the very middle  of my forehead!” The gash atop his forehead now matched the spreading pink of his face. 

“But I like it,” I lied instantly. What a fantastic lie this was. 

He scowled. 

“You could wear a hat!”  

“To a job interview? Seriously?” Don was apoplectic. We discussed barber options on a late Sunday afternoon. I sprinted to find the phone book. Only one salon was open. 

Cowardly and embarrassed, I waited in the car as Don went inside. He returned unrecognizable. His fine, thick hair was now a few centimeters long. What would the interviewer think? That Don had head lice? That he was sporting gansta chic? 

So I lied again. “I love it!” I exclaimed. Don glowered.  

On Monday morning, Don wore his new suit, crisp shirt and Windsor-knotted tie as he departed for the Big Deal Interview. But he looked twenty years older with no hair. His “I’m game!” gait was off. But when he returned on Tuesday, a smile wreathed his face as he dropped his bags.  

“No big deal,” Don said. “I don’t think I’m actually a very good fit for that place.” He did not say the obvious: I had undercut him. Short cut him.  

Could I ever make this up to him? 

Fifteen years passed. Don eventually developed his father’s receding hairline in the very place where I permanently scared his follicles to death. He isn’t bald, but his hair is no longer dark nor lush. Of late, though, he has been growing it a bit. Last Sunday, I eyed him as he shaved. 

“I could even that up, just a little,” I ventured, touching his graying sideburns. 

“No,” Don flatly replied. 

“Just with scissors,” I added. 

“Noooooooooooo. Nope. Never.” Don repeated.  

“Well, that was an unfortunate thing about the razor,” I mumbled; a final, stupefying lie.  

“You know,” Don added, kindly searching my face, “I was wrong for that job. I wouldn’t have liked it.”  

But we both understood, standing inside the sweet silence filling the bathroom, that sometimes half-truths are the only way to Super Glue a relationship back to the sticking place.  

And we smiled.

O.Henry Ending

A World Without Hugs

I’ve been waiting for this my whole life

By David Claude Bailey

I know. I know. Everybody misses hugs, getting them and giving them.

But I don’t. Not one bit. For me, one of the few silver linings of the Great Pandemic is not getting all hot and bothered about spreading a cloud of cooties, dandruff, body odors and cat hairs with someone I really don’t care to know intimately.

Those who are still reading are surely wondering what trauma from my youth turned me into an utterly unhuggable misanthrope.

My mother hugged me lovingly, and I reciprocated. But I would also let her grab my ear and give it a good scrub with a washrag. My daddy’s family weren’t much into hugging, but dad hugged me as a kid. That said, I could tell he was relieved when I began shaking hands with him, when, for instance, I’d go off to Scout camp for a week.

So maybe that’s where it came from.

It might very well have been my mother’s bottle-blonde bridge partner, who would press my face into her ample bosom, where I was convinced I would surely smother to death on the combination of baby powder and Chanel No. 5, 6, 7 and 8. Another bridge player would scoop me up for a big, slobbery, red-smear of a lipstick kiss, giving me the full effect of her last cigarette and the chemical aura surrounding her freshly permed hair. No wonder I ran from her.

I married a hugger from a hugging family and when I’m having a terrible day, few things are more restorative than a hug from Anne. My children are huggers and as they cast off into the great unknown for months at a time, a warm and heartfelt hug says much more than a teary goodbye. To me, hugs should be something of a sacred connection between two people. My body is yours, I say to my daughters and my wife. I would give my life to save yours, and here’s our bond.

I assure you I never felt that way toward my great and ample aunt Gus or my willowy uncle Reid.

Men hugs are tricky. Some friends give a manly, chest-to-chest, arm-over-the-shoulder squeeze. With others, it’s just a quick shoulder-to-shoulder bump. I have a friend, though, who savors hugs. And he is eminently huggable, Teddy-bear-like in bearing and girth and completely unselfconscious. Many a woman delights in hugging the daylights out of him. And there I am, giving a triangular, shoulder-contact-only, ersatz hug and wondering what’s wrong with me.

Funerals and weddings are the worst. But who needs a hug more than someone whose daddy just croaked? Or whose daughter just got married? Nieces of a certain age are also awkward. What to do about the niece who hugged you like a bear just a year ago but has since matured? And nephews? Even the subteens get handshakes from me — and seem actually grateful.

Believe me, people can sense us unhuggables; it’s amazing how they develop memories for the types of hugs that are wanted or unwanted.

I envy people who never give this sort of thing a second thought. And I sure wish I didn’t. But I do. And I know others who feel the same way. Once this COVID thing is over and done with, do we really want to go back to sharing our germs, dandruff and garlic breath? Can’t we just get along with elbow bumps?  OH

Hug David Claude Bailey, O.Henry’s intimacy-skills columnist, remotely at davidclaudebailey@gmail.com.

O.Henry Ending

Don’t Forget to Write

For our family, the mailman was more than just a welcome sight — he was a lifeline

By Ruth Moose

As a child during World War II, I lived with my grandparents on a farm near Cottonville in Stanly County, North Carolina. With gas rationing, there was no traffic and so quiet we could hear the mailman long before we could see the cloud of dust his car made on the unpaved road. In a world turned upside down and torn apart, mail was the only thing we could count on.

We lived for the mail. It meant the world to us. We had the radio and a weekly newspaper, also delivered by the mailman. But letters told us the people we loved were safe.  At least for the time being.  My grandparents’ four children were in four corners of the world: my father stationed in France; my Uncle Tom a navigator with the Army Air Corps in London; my Aunt Pearl, an Army nurse, was with MacArthur’s troops in the Philippines; and my Uncle Edgar, who had just graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill with a masters in physics was in Washington, D.C., and alternately, Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Each of them wrote a letter home every week. You could depend on it.  And my grandparents wrote back.

When two weeks went by without a letter from her daughter, my grandmother was more than worried, fearing the worst. She sent inquiries. Discovered my aunt was in this country, hospitalized with a mental and physical breakdown. But she was alive and recovered.

The mail not only brought letters each week but also a brand new, fresh copy of my grandmother’s favorite reading, The Saturday Evening Post. That was her recreation, her relaxation, her reward at the end of each long, worried day. On special occasions the mailman might bring a box of Whitman’s Sampler, picked up from a PX somewhere I’m sure. We rationed a single chocolate a day as long as it lasted.

The mailman also brought books! My aunt in D.C. was a librarian and regularly mailed me books, books that were read aloud to me until I taught myself to read. Poems from A Child’s Garden of Verses, The Adventures of Peter Rabbit and others. Books were magic doors to a larger world and gave me a lifelong love of the printed word, of learning, of no greater pleasure than reading.

When the war was over, they all came home, wounded in body, mind and spirit, but thankfully alive. They continued the weekly letters home and to each other the rest of their lives.

After my grandfather died, the farm was sold and my grandmother lived three months at a time with her four children: my aunt a school nurse in New Jersey; my uncle on the faculty at N.C. State in Raleigh; Uncle Edgar teaching at Georgia State; and my family in Albemarle. Always letters back and forth, specialty cards for all the occasions. Cards to be kept and displayed on mantels and dressers. Cards to be re-enjoyed for days and weeks following. Not the same as today’s emails, a blink here and gone forever. I remember getting an e-condolence card after my husband’s death and crying in frustration. If the sender really wanted to send some sympathy, they could have bought a card, or written a note, signed, addressed, stamped and mailed it. An e-condolence was a quick click and no more thought than that. Obligation over.

Sadly none of the old letters survived. Tossed in the purging of estates after a death; nieces, nephews, cousins, grandchildren who saw them as only pieces of paper, not family history.

During the pandemic, I’ve being purging files, boxes from storage and attics. Deep in one box I was amazed to find my letters to my husband, who was then my boyfriend during our four college years. He had somehow, somewhere, kept them and they had survived many moves, packing and unpacking. Don’t tell me emails could do that. Not in a million years. Yellowed and with three-cent stamps, the letters tell the story of a summer romance that lasted over 50 years. I’ve been reading, alternately laughing and crying. We were so young.  So 1950s crazy and scared. The question is: Will my sons want these letters? My grandchildren? I can only hope.  OH

Ruth Moose taught Introduction to Writing Short Fiction at UNC-Chapel Hill for 15 years. Her students have since published New York Times Bestsellers and are getting Netflixed. She recently returned to her roots in the Uwharrie Mountains.